Psychosocial development during adolescence is often understood as a search for a consistent understanding of oneself. Self-expression and self-concept become increasingly important at puberty. Each young person wants to know, “Who am I?”

According to Erik Erikson, life’s fifth psychosocial crisis is identity versus role confusion: Working through the complexities of finding one’s own identity is the primary task of adolescence (Erikson, 1968/1994). He said this crisis is resolved with identity achievement, when adolescents have reconsidered the goals and values of their parents and culture, accepting some and discarding others, forging their own identity.

510

The result is neither wholesale rejection nor unquestioning acceptance of social norms (Côté, 2009). With their new autonomy, teenagers maintain continuity with the past so that they can move to the future. Each person must achieve his or her own identity. Simply adopting parental norms does not work, because the social context of each generation differs.

Erikson’s insights have inspired thousands of researchers. Notable among those was James Marcia, who described and measured four specific ways young people cope with the identity crisis: (1) role confusion, (2) foreclosure, (3) moratorium, and finally (4) identity achievement (Marcia, 1966).

Over the past half-century, major psychosocial shifts have lengthened the duration of adolescence and made identity achievement more complex (Côté, 2006; Kroger et al., 2010; Meeus, 2011). However, the above three way stations on the road to identity achievement still seem evident (Kroger & Marcia, 2011).

Role confusion is the opposite of identity achievement. It is characterized by lack of commitment to any goals or values. Erikson originally called this identity diffusion to emphasize that some adolescents seem diffuse, unfocused, and unconcerned about their future. Perhaps worse, adolescents in role confusion see no goals or purpose in their life, and thus they flounder, unable to move forward (Hill et al., 2013).

Identity foreclosure occurs when, in order to avoid the confusion of not knowing who they are, young people accept traditional roles and values (Marcia, 1966; Marcia et al., 1993). They might follow customs transmitted from their parents or culture, never exploring alternatives. Or they might foreclose on an oppositional, negative identity—the direct opposite of whatever their parents want—again without thoughtful questioning. Foreclosure is comfortable. For many, it is a temporary shelter, to be followed by more exploration (Meeus, 2011).

A more mature shelter is moratorium, a time-out that includes some exploration, either in breadth (trying many things) or in depth (following one path but with a tentative, temporary commitment) (Meeus, 2011). In high school, a student might become focused on playing in a band, not expecting this to be a lifelong career. A few years later, during emerging adulthood, someone might choose a moratorium by signing up for two years in the army. Moratoria are more common after age 18, because some maturity is required to reject some paths while choosing others (Kroger et al., 2010).

Several aspects of the search for identity, especially sexual and vocational identity, have become more arduous than they were when Erikson described them, and establishing a personal identity is more difficult. Fifty years ago, the drive to become independent and autonomous was thought to be the “key normative psychosocial task of adolescence” (Zimmer-Gembeck & Collins, 2003, p. 177). Adolescents still search for identity, but a review of “studies among adults revealed that identity progression is a life-long process” (Meeus, 2011).

511

Erikson (1968/1994) highlighted four aspects of identity: religious, political, vocational, and sexual. Terminology and emphasis have changed for all four, as has timing. In fact, if an 18-year-old is no longer open to new possibilities in any of these four areas, that may indicate foreclosure, not achievement—and identity might shift again.

None of these four identity statuses occurs in social isolation: Parents and peers are influential, as detailed later in this chapter, and the ever-changing chronosystem (historical context) makes identity dynamic. Nonetheless, each of these four arenas remains integral to adolescence. (Developmental Link: The chronosystem is explained in Chapter 1.) A crucial question is whether the adolescent ponders the possibilities and actively chooses an identity, or whether identity comes from external pressures (Lillevoll et al., 2013), either to conform or to rebel.

For most adolescents, their religious identity is similar to that of their parents and community. Few adolescents totally reject religion if they’ve grown up following a particular faith, especially if they have a good relationship with their parents (Kim-Spoon et al., 2012).

Past parental practices influence adolescent religious identity, although some adolescents express that identity in ways that their parents did not anticipate: A Muslim girl might start to wear a headscarf, a Catholic boy might study for the priesthood, or a Baptist teenager might join a Pentecostal youth group, each surprising their less devout parents.

Such new practices are relatively minor, not a new religious identity. Thus, almost no young Muslims convert to Judaism, and almost no teenage Baptists become Hindu—although such conversions can occur in adulthood. Most adolescents question beliefs because their cognitive processes allow more analytic thinking, but few teenagers have a crisis of faith unless unusual circumstances propel it (King & Roeser, 2009).

512

Parents also influence their children’s political identity. In the twenty-first century in the United States, party identification is weakening, with more adults saying they are independent rather than Republican, Democrat, or any other party. Their teenage children reflect their lack of party affiliation; some proudly say they do not care about politics, echoing their parents without realizing it.

For everyone, adolescent political leanings are likely to continue in adulthood, although there is also a trend among current young adults toward more liberal leanings than their parents (Taylor, 2014). That doesn’t usually happen during adolescence: Hillary Clinton’s parents were Republican and she was a Young Republican at age 17, becoming a Democrat at age 21.

Related to political identity is ethnic identity, not a topic discussed by Erikson. Historical changes over the past few decades have made ethnic identity crucial for adolescents in the United States. High school senior Natasha Scott “just realized that my race is something I have to think about.” Her mother is Asian and her father is African American, which had not been a concern of hers as she was growing up. However, college applications (and the 2010 Census) required choices regarding ethnic identity (Saulny & Steinberg, 2011).

Natasha is not the only one. In the United States and Canada, almost half of all adolescents are of African, Asian, Latino, or Native American (First Nations, in Canada) heritage, and many of them also have ancestors of another ethnic group. Although the census lumps all people of each of these groups together, teenagers forging their personal identity must become more specific.

Hispanic youth, for instance, must figure out their personal identity in relation to, for example, having grandparents from Mexico, Peru, or Spain, and/or California, Texas, or New York. Many also have ancestors from both Europe and Africa. Similarly, those who are European American must decide the significance of having grandparents from, say, Italy, Ireland, or Sweden. No teenager adopts, wholesale, the identity of their ancestors, but each one must incorporate, somehow, their family’s history. Often ethnic identity blends into political identity.

Vocational identity originally meant envisioning oneself as a worker in a particular occupation. Choosing a future career made sense for teenagers a century ago, when most girls became housewives and most boys became farmers, small businessmen, or factory workers. Those few in professions were mostly generalists (doctors did family medicine, lawyers handled all kinds of cases, teachers taught all subjects).

Obviously, early vocational identity is no longer appropriate. No teenager can realistically choose among the tens of thousands of careers available today; most adults change vocations (not just employers) many times.

Vocational identity takes years to establish, and most jobs demand specific skills and knowledge that are best learned at the workplace. Currently, vocational identity is best seen as a dynamic, flexible path: People find a career, or even better, a calling, that can lead to a variety of specific jobs (Skorikov & Vondracek, 2011).

Although some adults hope that having a job will keep teenagers out of trouble as they identify as workers, the opposite may occur (Staff & Schulenberg, 2010). Research that controlled for SES found that adolescents who are employed more Identity than 20 hours a week during the school year tend to quit school, fight with parents, smoke cigarettes, and hate their jobs—not only when they are teenagers but also later on.

513

Typically, teenagers with a paycheck spend their wages on clothes, cars, drugs, fast food, and music, not on supporting their families or saving for college (Mortimer, 2013). Grades fall: Employment interferes with homework and school attendance (see Figure 16.1).

As you remember from Chapter 10, for social scientists sex and sexual refer to biological characteristics, whereas gender refers to cultural and social attributes that differentiate males and females. A half-century ago, Erikson and other theorists thought of the two sexes as opposites (P. Y. Miller & Simon, 1980). They assumed that adolescents who were confused about their sexual identity would soon adopt “proper” male or female roles (Erikson, 1968/1994; A. Freud, 2000).

Adolescence was once a time for “gender intensification,” when people increasingly identified as male or female. No longer (Priess et al., 2009). Erikson’s term sexual identity has been replaced by gender identity (Denny & Pittman, 2007), which refers primarily to a person’s self-definition as male, female, or transgender.

Gender identity often (not always) began with the person’s biological sex and led to a gender role that society considered appropriate. Gender roles once meant that only men were employed; they were breadwinners (good providers) and women were housewives (married to their houses). As women entered the labor market, gender roles expanded but were still strong (nurse/doctor, secretary/businessman, pink collar/blue collar).

Now, gender roles are changing everywhere. The speed and specifics of the change vary dramatically by culture and cohort, and gender theorists note that specifics are complex (Doucet & Lee, 2014). Some gender roles seem resistant to change, but almost everywhere, women do less housework than they did when Erikson wrote, while men do more.

Gender roles have changed particularly in parenting. According to data from many European nations, when fertility is low and education is high, fathers often provide direct child care (Sullivan et al., 2014). In the United States, single mothers still far outnumber single fathers (fathers were 13 percent of all single parents in 1980; 17 percent in 2013). However, since the total number of single-parent households is increasing, far more children (especially teenagers) are in single-father families than even two decades ago, and most adolescent boys expect to become active fathers.

Achieving gender identity is a lifelong task, because possibilities and roles keep changing. Gender identity is particularly complex for adolescents who feel their sex at birth is not their true gender identity. In former decades, people with “a strong and persistent cross-gender identification” were thought to have a gender identity disorder, a serious diagnosis in DSM-IV.

The DSM-5 instead describes gender dysphoria, when people are distressed at their biological gender. A “disorder” means something is wrong, no matter how the person feels, whereas dysphoria implies that the psychological problem is emotional distress, not necessarily gender identity (Zucker et al., 2013). Social conditions and self-perception can relieve dysphoria, allowing someone to take on a new gender identity and be psychologically healthy. Fifty years ago, psychiatrists never contemplated that possibility.

514