Emerging Adulthood: Biosocial Development

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Part VI
Chapter Seventeen

• Emerging Adulthood Biosocial Development

Growth, Strength, and Health Habits and Risks
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Emerging Adulthood Biosocial Development

• Over the past few decades, a social shift has
  pushed forward the age at which people are
  expected to commit to career and family, or at
  least to have a good plan.

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Ages and Stages
• for children, physical maturation correlates with
  chronological age and developmental stage
• the play years and the school years also have
  biological markers
• in adulthood chronological age is an imperfect
  guide to development

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Ages and Stages
• social roles vary
• a group of 40-year-olds might include those
  married, divorced, expecting children or who are
  grandparents
• developmentalists, however, still cluster adults
  into chronological groups and report differences
• age is not definitive within one community,
  cohort, or culture

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Strong and Attractive Bodies
• muscles grow and shape changes in ways that
  differ by sex
• males gain more arm muscle and females more hip
  fat
• physical strength for both sexes increases in the
  20s

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Strong and Attractive Bodies
• the body systems function optimally at the
  beginning of adulthood
• serious diseases are not yet apparent, some
  childhood ailments are outgrown

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Senescence
• the process of aging, whereby the body becomes
  less strong and efficient

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Homeostasis
• the adjustment of the bodys systems to keep
  physiological functions in a state of equilibrium
• as the body ages, it takes longer for these
  homeostatic adjustments to occur, so it becomes
  harder for older bodies to adapt to stress
• Organ Reserve
• the capacity of young adults organs to allow the
  body to cope with stress

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Appearance
• most emerging adults look vital and attractive
  because of overall health, strength, and activity
• oily hair, pimpled faces, and awkward limbs of
  adolescence are gone
• wrinkles and hair loss of adulthood have not yet
  appeared

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Appearance
• muscles are stronger and obesity is less common
  in emerging adulthood than earlier or later in
  life
• young adults worry about how they look because
  they want attention from each other

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Sexual Activity
• the sexual-reproductive system is at its
  strongest during emerging adulthood
• adults have a strong sex drive
• fertility is greater and miscarriage is less
  common
• orgasm is more frequent
• testosterone, is higher for both men and women

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Sexual Activity
• sex drives lead to many joyous interactions
• many young adults want sex but do not want
  spouses or children
• more methods today for women to not become
  pregnant
• the reality that sex need not entail pregnancy is
  one reason that people are marrying later

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Sexual Activity
• most emerging adults still believe that marriage
  is a serious and desirable commitment
• premarital sex postpones marriage without sexual
  deprivation
• this new pattern makes for two complications
  distress and disease

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Emotional Stress
• emerging adults have more partners and more
  sexual intercourse than adults who are somewhat
  older
• unanticipated emotional entanglement is likely
  to produce emotional stress
• most sexual interactions include unspoken
  assumptions

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs)
• have been around since the beginning of time
• much higher today than ever before
• half of all adults have had at least one STI

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Growth, Strength, and Health

• Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs)
• STIs can have no symptoms (about half the time)
• infertility and even death can occur
• public health experts recommend check-ups every
  six months
• at the end of a sexual relationship and before
  starting sex with a new partner

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Habits and Risks

• Some emerging adults begin good habits and
  sustain them lifelong others make destructive
  choices.

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Habits and Risks

• Exercise
• protects against serious illness at every stage
  of life
• reduces blood pressure
• strengthens the heart and lungs
• makes depression, osteoporosis, heart disease,
  arthritis, and even some cancer less likely

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Habits and Risks

• Eating Well
• Set Point
• a particular body weight that an individuals
  homeostatic processes strive to maintain
• Body Mass Index (BMI)
• the ratio of a persons weight in kilograms
  divided by his or her height in meters squared

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Habits and Risks

• Eating Disorders
• Anorexia Nervosa
• a serious eating disorder in which a person
  restricts eating to the point of emaciation and
  possible starvation
• most victims are high-achieving females in early
  puberty or early adulthood

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Habits and Risks

• anorexia nervosa is diagnosed when four symptoms
  are evident
• refusal to maintain a body weight that is at
  least 85 of normal for age and height
• intense fear of weight gain
• disturbed body perception and denial of the
  problem
• in adolescent and adults females, lack of
  menstruation

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Habits and Risks

• Eating Disorders
• Bulimia Nervosa
• an eating disorder in which the person, usually
  female, engages repeatedly in episodes of binge
  eating followed by purging through induced
  vomiting or use of laxatives

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Habits and Risks

• Theories of Eating Disorders
• in all eating disorders, consumption is
  disconnected from the internal cues of hunger
• a developmental perspective finds that eating
  disorders may originate early in life
• not only with genes but also with early hunger
  and family food habits

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Habits and Risks

• Theories of Eating Disorders
• women are 10 times more likely to engage in
  destructive self-sabotage
• is it nature or nurture?
• remember the theories in Chapter 2
• psychoanalytic
• behaviorism
• cognitive
• socialcultural
• epigenetic

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Habits and Risks

• Taking Risks
• emerging adults bravely, or foolishly, take risk
• risk taking is not age-related, it is also
  genetic and hormonal
• some people are naturally more daring than others
• males are more likely to be brave or foolish
• society benefits because each generation of
  emerging adults takes chances

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Habits and Risks

• Edgework
• occupations or recreational activities that
  require a degree of risk or danger it is this
  prospect of living on the edge that makes
  edgework compelling to some individuals

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Habits and Risks

• Drug abuse
• and addiction can involve a wide range of drugs,
  from the perfectly legal to the highly illegal
• two of the most harmful and addictive
  substancesnicotine and alcoholare legal in the
  United States
• from a health perspective, legality is
  irrelevantwhat matter is the effects of abuse
  and addiction

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Habits and Risks

• drug abuse
• the ingestion of a drug to the extent that it
  impairs the users biological or psychological
  well-being
• drug addiction
• a condition of drug dependence in which the
  absence of the given drug in the individual's
  system produces a drivephysiological,
  psychological, or bothto ingest more of the drug
• delay discounting
• the tendency to under-value, or downright ignore,
  future consequences and rewards in favor of more
  immediate gratification

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Habits and Risks

• Social Norms
• the standards of behavior within a given society
  or culture
• social norms approach
• a method of reducing risky behavior that uses
  emerging adults desire to follow social norms by
  making them aware, through the use of surveys, of
  the prevalence of various behaviors within their
  peer groups