A stage of adult development that you would like to explore. Emerging Adulthood

Question

A stage of adult development that you would like to explore. Emerging Adulthood -18-26yrs: the 30's: the 40's: Midlife -45-55 yrs. or so: Early Elderhood - 60-75 yrs or 50: Late Elderhood -75-110yrs Pick a stage of adult development and summarize two different psychological viewpoint about that stage of life. One of the psychological viewpoints must be from the following adult developed theorist: Jeffery Arnette (Emerging adulthood). Lawerence Kolberg, Carol Gillighan (adult women's development). Daniel Levenson, Erik Erikson, or Joan Erikson (for Late Edlerhood). You are free to choose a viewpoint or theory about adult development based on your interest, which could be through then lens of cultural, gender theory, development of faith, or socioeconomic class understanding. You could also use Liberation Psychology, Indigenous Psychology, and other schools of psychology

Explanation / Answer

Answer: I chose to explore the phase of ‘emerging adulthood’ that ranges from 18-26 years of age. Jeffery Arnett first proposed this term representing early adulthood. He called this period a roleless role because individuals in this phase engage a variety of activities without being associated with a particular role. This phase of development is descriptive particularly of young adults from developed countries who do not have children, live alone, and are financially still dependent. Therefore this stage of development is lies somewhere in-between the adolescence and adulthood. The individual in physiologically adult and he/she becomes equipped to reproduce. Even from the perspective of cognitive development a person is more or less able to take independent decisions about relationship, works etc.

Jennifer Lynn Tanner has given a picture of how this stage fits into the rest of life span development. She identified two key processes - re-centering and ego development – as the differentiators of emerging adulthood from adolescence. Recentering – the individual shifts from dependence upon his/her parent towards engagement and commitment into the larger system such as work, intimate partner and due to this transition, the period is often characterized as exploratory and instable. Regarding ego development Tanner underlines that this stage is also characterized by lack of social control since the parental control is at minimum and the individual has not yet entered into other institutional arrangement like marriage, employment. Therefore this phase of development provides lot freedom for making choices but also at the same time requires extra efforts and responsibilities on the part of emerging adults. They need to learn to stand on their own feet. They need to develop a master trait of ego development characterized by feeling of agency, self-regulation, and impulse control.

However, Arnett focuses upon one of the key features development during this phase as identity exploration.                

Arnett also identified a clear differentiation of developmental trajectory between developed and developing countries. He proposed that in the industrially developed countries (OECD countries) the cultural norms of marriage, schooling, employment vary significantly from developing or third wold countries. For example in most developed countries the period of schooling and education has extended upto late 20s whereas in most developing countries adolescents not only join the workforce before 20 years of age but also get married and have children. Therefore their experiences regarding social and institutional expectations are very different from those adolescents in developed countries, therefore they may not experience the stage of emerging adulthood.

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