Kathleen Stassen Berger

Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield

Tattoon, M.A.

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Part VII

Adulthood: Psychosocial Development

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ages and Stages

Intimacy

Generativity

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Adulthood: Psychosocial Development

• emotional reactions to events in

adulthood are fluid

• marriage, parenthood, divorce, and the

empty nest, each sometimes joyous and

sometimes not, are ages and stages of

adult development

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Ages and Stages

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Ages and Stages

• The Social Clock

– refers to the idea that the stages of life,

and the behaviors ―appropriate‖ to them,

are set by social standards rather than

by biological maturation—for instance,

‖middle age‖ begins when the culture

believes it does, rather than at a

particular age in all cultures

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Ages and Stages

• Culture, Cohort, and SES– culture

• the patterns of behavior that are passed from one generation to the next, groups have their own culture—values, customs, clothes, dwellings, cuisine, assumptions--people are influenced by more than one culture

– cohort• people born within a few years of one another--these

people are affected by the same: values, events, technologies, culture

– socioeconomic status (SES)

• ―social class‖--more than money, occupation, education, place of residence--includes advantages and disadvantages

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Ages and Stages

• The ―Midlife Crisis‖

– a period of unusual anxiety, radical

reexamination, and sudden

transformation that is widely associated

with middle age but which actually has

more to do with developmental history

than with chronological age

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Ages and Stages

• Personality Throughout Adulthood

– personality is a major source of

continuity providing coherence and

identity, allowing people to know

themselves and be known

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Ages and Stages

• The Big Five

– the five basic clusters of personality traits that

remain quite stable throughout adulthood—

openness, conscientiousness, extroversion,

agreeableness and neuroticism

– ecological niche

• the particular lifestyle and social context adults

settle into that are compatible with their individual

personality needs and interests

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Ages and Stages

• Culture and Personality

– personality variations are more evident

between one person and another in the

same nation than between one nation

and another

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Ages and Stages

• Gender Convergence

– a tendency for men and women to

become more similar as they move

through middle age

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Intimacy

• intimacy needs are lifelong

• adults meet their social needs for social

connection with relatives, friends,

coworkers, and romantic partners

– social convoy

– collectively, the family members, friends,

acquaintances, and even strangers who move

through life with an individual

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Intimacy

• Friends

– typically the most supportive members

of the social convoy, because they are

chosen

– research study found that friendships

tend to improve with age

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Intimacy

• Protection Against Stress

– allostatic load

• the total, combined burden, of stress and

disease that an individual must cope with

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Intimacy

• Gender Differences

– linked lives

• the notion that family members tend to

share all aspects of each other’s lives,

from triumph to tragedy

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Intimacy

• Family Bonds

– household

• a group of people who live together in

one dwelling and share its common

spaces, such as kitchen and living room

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Intimacy

• A Developmental View

– familism

• the idea that family members should

support one another because family

unity is more important than individual

freedom and success or failure

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Intimacy

• Adult Siblings

– fictive kin

• a term used to describe someone who

becomes accepted as part of a family to

whom he or she has no blood

relationship

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Intimacy

• Marriage

– a public commitment to one long-term

sexual partner

– adults seek committed sexual

partnerships to help meet their needs for

intimacy, to raise children, share

resources, and provide care

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Intimacy

• Marriage and Happiness

– from a developmental perspective,

marriage is useful

– adults thrive if another person is

committed to caring for them; married

people are a littler happier, healthier and

richer than unmarried people

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Intimacy

• Long-Term Marriage

– long-term quality of a marriage relationship is affected by family relationships in childhood

– empty nest

• a time in the lives of parents when their grown children leave the family home to pursue their own lives

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Intimacy

• Homosexual Partners

– everything that applies to heterosexual

partners applies to homosexual partners

who make a commitment to each other

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Intimacy• Divorce

– marriages never ends in a vacuum—they are influenced by the social and political context

• Divorce Rates– the power of the social context is evident in

variations in divorce rates

• Over the Years, Divorce and Remarriage– divorce is most likely to occur within the first

five years

– for long-term marriages, divorce is less likely but more devastating when it happens

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Generativity

• after intimacy comes generativity,

– generativity versus stagnation

• when adults seek to be productive in a

caring way, usually through work or

parenthood (Erikson)

– generativity comes with maturity–age is

not a necessary marker

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Generativity

• Caregiving

– Erikson wrote, a mature adult ―needs to be needed‖

– some caregiving is physical

– but much is psychological

– kinkeeper– the person who takes primary responsibility for

celebrating family achievements, gathering the family together, and keeping in touch with family members who do not live nearby

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Generativity

• Caring for Children

– bearing and raising children is labor

intensive

– the insistence on dramatizing the

dependence of children on adults often

blinds us to the dependence of the older

generation on the young one

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Generativity

• Many paths to parenthood

– a parental alliance assumes two cooperating parents

– children can develop well in any family

– 1/3 of North American adults become stepparents, adoptive parents, or foster parents at some point in their lives

– the social construction about ―real‖ parents is misleading

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Generativity

– Caregiving for Aging Parents

• sandwich generation– a term for the generation of middle-aged

people who are supposedly ―squeezed‖ by the needs of the younger and older generations—some adults do feel pressured by these obligations, but most are not burdened by them, either because they enjoy fulfilling them or because they choose to take on only some of them, or none

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Generativity

• Employment

– Many benefits

• extrinsic rewards of work

– the tangible rewards, usually in the form of

compensation, that one receives for a job (e.g., salary,

benefits, pension)

• intrinsic rewards of work

– the intangible benefits one receives from a job (e.g.

job satisfaction, self-esteem, pride) that come from

within oneself

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Generativity

• Human Needs

– it is crucial to learn how new work

conditions support development—in the

functions of family caregiving, personal

creativity, satisfaction, and esteem and

mentoring of other workers

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Generativity

• Diversity

– benefit of modern economy is increased

diversity

• more employed women and minority

groups

• higher employment rates have helped

with those once shut out