Chapter 13-14 Early Adulthood

Chapter 13/14: Early Adulthood Becoming an Adult: Emerging adulthood: The transition from adolescence to adulthood ● Occurs from approximately 18 to 25 years of age - Characterized by experimentation and exploration ● Key features: Emerging Adulthood. - Identity exploration, especially in love and work - Instability, self-focused, and feeling in-between - The age of possibilities, a time when individuals have an opportunity to transform their lives Parents role in Emerging Adulthood: ● Provide them with opportunities to be contributors - Give candid, constructive, and quality feedback to adolescents - Create positive adult connections; adolescents learn to handle autonomy maturely - Challenge adolescents to become more competent Markers to becoming an adult: - Holding a full-time job - Economic independence - Taking responsibility for oneself The transition from high school to college: ● Top-dog phenomenon - The movement to a larger school structure - Interaction with peers from a more diverse geographical and ethnic background ● The transition from high school to college - Increased focus on achievement and assessment ● Positive features - Intellectual challenges, time with peers, different lifestyles, independence ● Negative features - Stress and depression Physical Performance and Development: ● Peak physical performance typically occurs between 19 and 26. - Muscle tone and strength usually begin to decline ~ age 30. Emerging Adults Health: ● Emerging adults have a mortality rate twice that of adolescents. - More chronic health problems - Engage in more health-compromising behaviors. - More likely to be obese - More likely to have a mental disorder than adolescents 1/8 Exercise Habits: ● Help prevent chronic disorders Aerobic exercise: sustained exercise stimulates heart and lung activity - Exercise benefits both physical and mental health (e.g., anxiety and depression) Strategies: ● Reduce screen time and replace it with exercise. - Chart your progress. - Get rid of excuses. - Imagine the alternative. (E.g., “What will my life be like if I lose my health?”) Substance Use: Addiction: overwhelming involvement with using a drug and a preoccupation with securing its supply ● Alcohol - Pregaming: men and women drinking at home before events (Food as well) - Binge drinking: more than five drinks in a row in the past two weeks - Extreme binge drinking: 10 to 15 or more drinks in a row in the last two weeks. - Alcoholism: long-term, repeated, uncontrolled, compulsive, and excessive alcohol use impairing user’s health and relationships Sexual Activity Emerging Adult: ● Patterns of heterosexual behavior - Males have more casual sex partners, while females report being more selective - Women still under stricter social norms and criticized for having multiple sexual partners - About 60% percent of individuals have had sex by emerging adulthood - Casual sex is more common in emerging adulthood.“Friends With Benefits” Piaget’s View ● Formal operational thought is the final stage in cognitive development, and it characterizes adults as well as adolescents. ● Postformal thought - Reflective, relativistic, and contextual - Provisional - Influenced by emotion - Wisdom and meaning are important developments in emerging adulthood. - Critical life experiences, reminiscence and reflectiveness, openness to experience, emotional regulation, and humor Developmental Focus of Emerging Adults ● From their mid-twenties on, individuals seek to establish their emerging career in a particular field ● Finding a path to a purpose - Only 20% of 12- to 22-year-olds had a clear vision of where they want to go in life. - Students focus only on short-term goals. - Don’t explore the big, long-term picture of what they want to do in life Occupational Outlook: ● Be knowledgeable about different fields and companies. - 74% of employers say they will hire recent college graduates ● The impact of work - Most spend 1/3 of their lives at work, working up to 50 hours per week - An important consideration is how stressful the work is - The physical and emotional negative impact ● Work during college - 78% of college students are working - Cooperative (co-op) programs: paid apprenticeship in a field one is interested in pursuing Workplace Issues: ● Unemployment - Produces stress and is related to physical and emotional problems, marital difficulties, and homicide ● Dual-earner couples - Face special challenges in balancing between work and family life ● Diversity in the workplace - Women have increasingly entered the labor force. - Increasing ethnic diversity requires a sensitivity to cultural differences and an appreciation of the cultural values that workers bring to a job. ● Glass ceiling - Women and ethnic minorities still not being promoted based on accomplishment and merit, preventing career advancement to managerial or executive jobs Stability and Change From Childhood to Adulthood: Temperament ● Individual’s behavioral style and characteristic emotional responses - Easy and difficult temperaments - Inhibition and disinhibition - Ability to control one’s emotions Attachment in Early Adulthood: ● Attachment/Internal Working Models - Secure attachment style: have a positive view of relationships and find it easy to get close to others - Avoidant attachment style: hesitant about getting involved in romantic relationships - Anxious attachment style: demand closeness, less trusting, more emotional, jealous, possessive Young Adults and Attraction: ● First impressions ● Familiarity and similarity - People seek others who have similar attitudes, values, and lifestyles. - Consensual validation: our own attitudes and values are supported when someone else’s is similar to ours Physical Attractiveness: ● Standards of what is attractive change over time and across cultures. - Matching hypothesis: we choose partners who match our own level of attractiveness Intimacy! Intimacy: Self-disclosure and the sharing of private thoughts ● Erikson: intimacy vs. isolation - Intimacy is finding oneself while losing oneself in another person. - Failure to achieve intimacy results in social isolation. ● Intimacy and independence - The balance between intimacy and commitment, and independence and freedom Falling out of Love: ● Ending a close relationship benefits your happiness and personal development if - You are obsessed with a person who repeatedly betrays your trust - You are involved with someone who is draining you emotionally or financially or both - You are desperately in love with someone who does not return your feelings Robert J. Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Love ● Three dimensions of love: passion, intimacy, and commitment - Consummate love: the strongest, fullest form of love with passion, intimacy, and commitment - Infatuation: passion, no intimacy, and commitment - Affectionate love: the combination of intimacy and commitment, no passion - Fatuous love: passion and commitment without intimacy Single Adults: ● Stereotypes associated with being single range from - Swinging single to the desperately lonely, suicidal single ● Millenials - Tend to find dates online more - A pattern of “fast sex, slow love” ● Common problems - Forming intimate relationships with other adults - Confronting loneliness - Finding a place in a society that is marriage-oriented Advantages to Being Single: - Having time to make decisions about one’s life course - Time to develop personal resources to meet goals - Freedom to make autonomous decisions - Pursue one’s own schedule and interests - Opportunities to explore new places and try out new things - Privacy Cohabiting Adults: ● Living together in a sexual relationship without being married ● Reasons for cohabiting - Spend time together - Share expenses - Evaluate compatibility Married Adults: ● Marriage rates in the United States have declined in recent years. - In 2014, 20% of U.S. adults never married. - In 2016, the U.S. average age for a first marriage climbed to 29.5 for men and 27.4 for women. - Marriage in adolescence is more likely to end in divorce. - The average duration of a marriage in the U.S. is currently just over nine years. - Emerging adults are optimistic about marriage and see it as an impetus to create a stable life for a successful marriage. Factors leading to Divorce: - Adultery - Growing apart - Domestic violence - Youthful marriage - Low educational level - Low-income level - Not having a religious affiliation Having divorced parents Having a baby before marriage Dealing with Divorce: ● The enhancers - Grew from divorce ● The good-enough - Copers of divorce ● The seekers - Finding a new relationship ASAP ● The libertines - Sensation seekers and casual sex ● The competent loners - Well-adjusted but not seeking companions ● The defeated - Problems before divorce and increased from divorce Adult Lifestyles: ● Gay and lesbian adults - Similar to heterosexual relationships in satisfaction and conflict ● Contrary to common misconceptions, research suggests - Masculine/feminine roles are relatively uncommon. - Only a small segment of the gay male population has a large number of sexual partners, - A smaller segment of the lesbian population has a large number of sexual partners. - Generally, gays and lesbians prefer long-term, committed relationships. Making a marriage work: Gottman - Establishing love maps - Nurturing fondness and admiration - Turning toward each other instead of away - Letting your partner influence you - Solving solvable conflicts - Overcoming gridlock - Creating shared meaning Remarried Couples: - Have realistic expectations. - Develop new positive relationships within the family - Counter set relationship patterns or “ghosts” Becoming a Parent: ● Parenting myths and reality ● Myths - The birth of a child will save a failing marriage. - The child will think, feel, and behave as the parents did in their childhoods. - Having a child gives the parents a second chance at achievement. - Parenting is an instinct and requires no training. Trends in Childbearing: - The average age of a first-time mother is 27 years old. - In 2016, for the first time, more U.S. women were giving birth in their 30s than in their 20s. - By giving birth to fewer children and reducing the demands of child care, women free a significant portion of their life spans for other endeavors. - Men are apt to invest a greater amount of time in fathering. - Parental care is often supplemented by institutional care. Gender and Communication: - Women prefer rapport talk. - Men prefer report talk. ● Gender and Relationships - Women highly value relationships and nurturing connections. - Men are less relationship-oriented than women. Gender Communication, Relationships, and Classification: ● Men’s Development - Health - Male-female relationships - Male-male relationships ● Reconstructing masculinity - Becoming more emotionally intelligent - Reexamine beliefs about manhood - Valuable aspects of the male role - Destructive male role aspects Gender’s Role in Friendships: - Women tend to have closer, more supportive friendships. - Men tend to have more competitive friendships. - Female-male friendships - Learn about common feelings and interests and shared characteristics about each other and each other’s genders - Problems may arise in cross-gender friendships if one friend wants romance and the other does not.