PSYCHOLOGY 2012: ADULT DEVELOPMENT & AGING
What is an adult?
1. End of education? Now lifelong.
2. Paying your own way? (Working,
financial independence): Many in their
30s, exceptionally all their lives, don’t.
3. Living apart from family? University,
social assistance, apt. paid by parents,
student loan.
4. Marriage? Some just live together, others
not interested.
5. Parenthood? Almost 20% now not
interested.
What is an adult (Cont’d)?
•
“Social Clock” no longer runs on time.
•
Impact of need for more education.
•
Beginning of adulthood: Between 20-25
to end of life: about 60 years.
•
Young adulthood: 20-40. First and
second decade.
•
Middle adulthood: 40-65
What is an adult (Cont’d)?
•
Old adulthood: 65-death.
•
•
•
•
Young-old: 65-75
Old-old: 75-85
Very old: 85+
Young adults:
•
•
•
•
•
establish identity: who am I? What do I want?
Evolving.
choose field of work, acquire qualifications, start job.
find spouse.
become parents.
conflict between intimacy and independence
What is an adult (Cont’d)?
Middle adults:
•
settle in and advance in chosen field of work
•
take care of family needs
•
generativity (guiding next generation)
•
take care of aging parents
•
achieve maximum potential
•
grow financially
•
continue identity development
•
prepare for retirement and old age
Older adults:
•
adjust to retirement
•
adjust to changing capabilities
•
choose appropriate housing
•
prepare and adjust to spouse’s death
•
•
•
The terms development and age have
undergone substantial change in the past
two decades.
Development: used to refer to changes
of growth and increased complexity.
Aging: meant loss, decay, trend toward
simplicity.
•
•
•
Current view: growth and complexity
continue into old age, while loss can
begin at birth (at the cellular level at
least).
Development now refers to any agerelated change in body or behaviour.
Age-related is not the same as age
caused.
Can principles of development explain
the changes that occur throughout the
lifespan?
DEVELOPMENTAL VARIABLES
(text: forces)
•
Biological
•
•
Heredity, health (nutrition, pollution, etc.), anything
physical
Psychological
•
•
Cognitive, emotional, behavioural, personality
(temperament) and variables derived from those.
Sociocultural
•
•
Social and cultural environment, ethnicity, religious
beliefs and practices
Life-cycle
•
Interaction of all the above with each life stage of
each individual
AGE CAN BE:
•
Chronological (time since birth)
•
Biological (physical wear and tear)
•
Social (benchmark roles)
•
Psychological (emotional maturity,
identity development, memory status,
etc.)
•
•
•
•
Development: age-related changes
Primary Aging: normal aging (wrinkles,
gray hair, slower CNS)
Secondary Aging: changes due to
lifestyle, disease, etc. (overweight,
smoking, no exercise)
Many aging problems due to secondary
aging not inherent to aging per se.
1900
OLD
YOUNG CHILDREN
2000
OLD
YOUNG CHILDREN
CHANGES IN LIFE EXPECTANCY
1 AD – 35
1900 – 46-48
2005 – 78-82.7
Of the 10 Canadian provinces, NL has the lowest
life expectancy
*Also important: How many years after 50 have
good quality of life?
Two countries with the same life expectancy could
have different figures e.g.
UK (women): life expectancy: 82.7~ healthy
years after 50: 20.8
France (women): life expectancy: 85.4 ~ healthy
years after 50: 19.7
CHANGES IN LIFE EXPECTANCY
•
Reasons for increase:
•
•
•
•
sanitation
nutrition
medical advances
Consequences:
•
•
•
•
demographics
marriage/divorce
career/retirement/second career
lifestyle of the old
•
Scientific interest in aging:
•
•
•
geriatrics
gerontology
thanatology
CHANGES RELATED TO INCREASED
LIFESPAN:
•
Technological advances
•
Need for more education
•
Prolonged childhood/adolescence
•
Fertility control
•
Later parenting, fewer children
•
Attitudinal changes
•
Health Care
APPENDIX
There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood
and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey,
adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least
understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs
between adolescence and adulthood.
During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school.
They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They
try one career and then try another.
Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s
bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when
they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five
years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even detect a clear sense of
direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that are
being delayed.
They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage. They’re
delaying having children. They’re delaying permanent employment. People who
were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments —
moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married
and starting a family.
In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By
2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.
Yet with a little imagination it’s possible even for baby boomers to understand
what it’s like to be in the middle of the odyssey years. It’s possible to see that
this period of improvisation is a sensible response to modern conditions.
Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, Wuthnow observes, but
then graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching
and tinkering. Old success recipes don’t apply, new norms have not been
established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of
itself.
Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to
cohabitation. Church attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper
reading gives way to blogging. (In 1970, 49 percent of adults in their 20s read a
daily paper; now it’s at 21 percent.)
The job market is fluid. Graduating seniors don’t find corporations offering them
jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement. Instead they find a vast menu
of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared
for.
Social life is fluid. There’s been a shift in the balance of power between the
genders. Thirty-six percent of female workers in their 20s now have a college
degree, compared with 23 percent of male workers. Male wages have
stagnated over the past decades, while female wages have risen.
This has fundamentally scrambled the courtship rituals and decreased the
pressure to get married. Educated women can get many of the things they want
(income, status, identity) without marriage, while they find it harder (or, if they’re
working-class, next to impossible) to find a suitably accomplished mate.
The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive
pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few
opportunities. Moreover, surveys show that people living through these years
have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more highly than their
own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives.
Rather, what we’re seeing is the creation of a new life phase, just as
adolescence came into being a century ago.
But there is every reason to think this phase will grow more pronounced in the
coming years. European nations are traveling this route ahead of us. They
delay marriage even longer than we do and spend even more years shifting
between the job market and higher education.
And as the new generational structure solidifies, social and economic
entrepreneurs will create new rites and institutions. Someday people will look
back and wonder at the vast social changes wrought by the emerging social
group that saw their situations first captured by “Friends” and later by “Knocked
Up.”