EARLY ADULTHOOD: EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

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CHAPTER 14

• EARLY ADULTHOOD EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL
  DEVELOPMENT

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Theories of Emotional-Social Development

• Social Relationships Relationships with other
  people
• Expressive tie social link formed when we
  invest ourselves in and commit ourselves to
  another person
• Primary relationships friends, family, lovers

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Instrumental tie

• Social link formed when we cooperate with
  another person to achieve a limited goal
• Secondary relationships Social interactions
  that rest on instrumental ties

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Erikson Psychosocial Stages

• Sixth stage Intimacy versus isolation task is
  to reach out and make connections with other
  people
• Cultural dislocation feeling of homeless ness
  and alienation from a traditional way of life
  Immigrants

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Levinson Phases in Adult Male Development

• 1. Leaving the Family
• 2. Getting into the Adult World
• 3. Settling Down
• 4. Becoming Ones Own Man

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Levinson Stages in a Womans Life

• Entry into adulthood similar for men and women
• Differences Age-30 transition

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Men see themselves

• Tied to a future in terms of their job
• Women find ways to combine work and family
• Women have to sacrifice one or the other in
  struggle to maintain both
• Women reprioritize goals

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New Social Definitions for Women Family and Work

• Role conflict women experience pressures within
  one role that are incompatible with the pressures
  from another role
• Role overload too many role demands and too
  little time to fulfill them

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Reentering the Paid Labor Force

• Women find mentors who guide them through
• Stocktaking
• Time of reassessment and transitions

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Differing Adult Experiences

• Gilligan Girls are socialized toward
  cooperation, mutuality and consensus rather than
  competition

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A Critique of the Stage Approaches

• Comparison with non-Western cultures
• Not all persons go through a crisis and move to a
  next stage of development

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Establishing Intimacy in Relationships

• Friendships
• Major source of socializing and support during
  adult years
• Love
• Romantic love what we think when we say we are
  in love
• Companionate love love for a very close friend

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Sternbergs Triangular Theory of Love

• Three elements
• 1. Passion
• 2. Intimacy
• 3. Commitment

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Relationships lacking one element

• 1. Infatuation
• 2. Fatuous Love
• 3. Companionate Love
• 4. Romantic Love
• 5. Nonlove
• 6. Liking someone
• 7. Empty Love

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Consummate love

• All three elements
• Significance of Romantic Love
• Findings (Willi)
• 1. Special relationship, distinguished from
  other kinds, but not necessarily leading to what
  was expected
• 2. Marriage to ones great love does not
  guarantee happiness and satisfaction in
  relationship

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Diversity In Lifestyle Options

• Lifestyle The overall patter of living whereby
  we attempt to meet our biological, social, and
  emotional needs
• Intimacy ability to experience a trusting,
  supportive, and tender relationship with another
  person

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Leaving Home

• Between 15-23 18 (majority)
• Parents use resources to influence children to go
  or to stay
• Emphasis on autonomy
• Delaying marriage

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Other factors

• Postponed careers, recurrent recessions, low
  beginning salaries, rising housing costs, high
  divorce rates, high levels of non-marital
  childbearing and damaged lives from drug abuse

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Living at Home

• Economic factors
• Negative loss of privacy
• Best scenario ample space and open, trusting
  communication

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Staying Single

• One fourth of U.S. households single
• Many kinds of singles never married, divorced,
  widowed
• No social stigma

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Cohabiting

• 4.1 million couples (1995)
• More permissive morality
• New step between dating and marriage
• Higher incidence of violence
• Break-up just as painful

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Living as a Lesbian or Gay Couple

• Heterosexual and Homosexual orientation
  opposites in a continuum with bisexual somewhere
  in center

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Consensus in findings

• 1 to 2 of adults exclusively homosexual
  throughout entire lives
• Western world regards behavior as deviant
• Lesbians form more lasting ties than gay men are
  less detected and harassed
• Relationships resemble heterosexual

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Getting Married

• Marriage a socially and/or religiously
  sanctioned union between a woman and a man with
  the expectation that they will perform the
  mutually supportive roles of wife and husband
• Monogamy dominant lifestyle in U.S.
• Americans and Europeans marriages psychological
  well-being

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Family Transitions

• Family Life Cycle the sequential changes and
  realignments that occur in the structure and
  relationships of family life between the time of
  marriage and the death of one or both spouses

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Family Life Cycle

• 1. Establishment
• 2. New Parents
• 3. Preschool Family
• 4. School-age Family
• 5. Family With Adolescents
• 6. Family with Young adult
• 7. Family as Launching Center
• 8. Post-parental family
• 9. Aging family

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Pregnancy

• Compels a woman to reflect on her long-term life
  plans, particularly as they relate to marriage
  and a career also to reconsider her sense of
  identity
• Period of adjustment for couple

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Four developmental tasks for women

• 1. Accept her pregnancy
• 2. Differentiate from fetus
• 3. Reevaluate relationship with mother
• 4. Come to terms with dependency

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Transition to Parenthood

• Shift from two-person to three-person system
• Decline in overall quality of couples life
• Couples with most problems most unrealistic
  expectations of parenthood
• Problems with division of labor
• Children stabilize marriages

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Lesbian Parenthood

• 1-5 million lesbians have had children in
  heterosexual relationships
• No evidence of mental instability
• Lesbian parents face social stigma

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Findings for children of gay and lesbian parents

• (Tasker and Golombok)
• 1. Not likely to have gay or lesbian
  orientation
• 2. Not likely to experience anxiety or
  depression
• 3. Fear of group stigmatization

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Employed Mothers

• 77 of mothers with children under 6 years of age
  are working
• Do children miss out in terms of supervision,
  love and cognitive enrichment?
• Findings from research
• Working mothers provide positive role model for
  children little difference in development for
  children

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Mothers who are happy with their choice

• report having happiest children
• Time spent with children not as important as
  attitudes and behaviors of parents

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Separation and Divorce. Some findings

• Increased psychiatric disorders
• Children Decreased intimacy in relationships
• Increased risk of offspring divorce
• Women major decline in standard of living men
  increase

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Well-Being

• Children and Young Adults Whose Parents Have
  Divorced
• Level of life satisfaction depends on level of
  conflict in remarried or single parent household
• Higher incidence of child abuse and homicide in
  remarried families for children under 3
• Extended family and social networks provide
  support

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Single-Parent Mothers

• Increase of households headed by single mothers
• Lower incomes and lower levels of social support
  more stress
• Lower sense of self-esteem, effectiveness and
  optimism
• Half of women awarded child support receive it
• Children likely one year behind peers in school

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Single-Parent Fathers

• 2.1 million father-child families (1998)
• Most fathers successful
• Fathers make more money have more job
  flexibility
• Better prepared for physical aspects of parenting
• Ill-equipped for childrens emotions
• Anxiety over sexual behavior of daughters

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Work

• American work-week 47 hours
• College provides better opportunities
• Number of non-traditional students in colleges
  half of all college students

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The Significance of Work for Women and Men

• Reasons for work
• Self-interest not just wealth
• Provide life satisfaction
• Structures time
• Context for relationships
• Escape from boredom
• Sense of identity and self-worth

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Work and Women

• Economic necessity
• Self-fulfillment
• Price of admission to independence
• The Disabled
• ADA makes it easier for disabled persons
• All Work necessary for healthy development