A theme of human development is that continuity and change are evident throughout life. In emerging adulthood, the legacy of early development is apparent amidst new achievements. Erikson recognized this ongoing process in his description of the fifth of his eight stages, identity versus role confusion. Remember that the crisis of identity versus role confusion begins in adolescence, but it is not usually resolved then.

As already mentioned, Erikson believed that the outcome of earlier crises provides the foundation for each new stage. The identity crisis is an example (see Table EP.3); adults of all ages continue to reflect on their identities.

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Developmental psychologists, influenced by Erikson and emerging adults themselves, consider establishing a vocational identity to be part of growing up (Arnett, 2004). Emerging adulthood is a “critical stage for the acquisition of resources”—including the education, skills, and experience needed for vocational success (Tanner et al., 2009, p. 34).

Current emerging adults often quit one job and seek another. Between ages 18 and 25, the average U.S. worker changes jobs every year, with the college-educated changing jobs more than those who are less educated (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, July 25, 2012). They want work that interests them, with co-workers who share their values, which makes them likely to seek a new job more often.

Young workers are not ready to climb a particular vocational ladder, rung by rung. That is a problem for employers, who must interview, choose, and train new employees (Meister, 2012). It is less problematic for the young adults themselves, since exploration is part of the identity search.

Emerging adulthood is a crucial time for developing values regarding work. Are job security and salary (extrinsic rewards) more important than the joy of doing the work one loves (intrinsic rewards)?

The economic recession, apparent worldwide beginning roughly in 2008, is likely to affect how those entering the job market develop their vocational identity (Johnson et al., 2012; Chow et al., 2014). For all emerging adults, the development of personal identity and a sense of purpose are likely to further vocational identity and result in a happier work life (Porfeli et al., 2013).

Continuity and change are evident in personality. Of course, temperament, childhood trauma, and emotional habits endure lifelong: If self-doubt, anxiety, depression, and so on are present in childhood and adolescence, they are often still evident years later. Traits strongly present at age 5 or 15 do not disappear by age 25.

Yet personality is not static. After adolescence, new characteristics appear and negative traits diminish. Emerging adults make choices that break with the past. This age period is now characterized by years of freedom from a settled lifestyle, which allows shifts in attitude and personality. Overall, a study with almost a million adolescents and adults from 62 nations found that “[d]uring early adulthood, individuals from different cultures across the world tend to become more agreeable, more conscientious, and less neurotic” (Bleidorn et al., 2013, p. 2530).

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Psychological research finds both continuity and improvement. For example, one longitudinal study found that 17-year-olds who saw life in positive terms maintained their outlook as time went on, while those who were negative often changed for the better (Blonigen et al., 2008). A study of college students found a dip in self-confidence over their freshman year, and then gradual improvement, with a significant—but not large—rise in self-esteem from the beginning to the end of college (Chung et al., 2014).

This positive trend of increasing happiness has become more evident over recent decades, perhaps because young adults are more likely than adolescents to make their own life decisions and move past the role confusion at the beginning of the identity search (Schwartz et al., 2011).

Emerging adults are open to new experiences (a reflection of their adventuresome spirit), and this allows personality shifts as well as eagerness for more education (McAdams & Olson, 2010). Going to college, leaving home, paying one’s way, stopping drug abuse, moving to a new city, finding satisfying work and performing it well, making new friends, committing to a partner—each of these might alter a person’s life course. The feeling of self-efficacy builds with each successful accomplishment.

Total transformation does not occur since genes, childhood experiences, and family circumstances always affect people. Nor do new experiences always lead to improvement. Cohort effects are always possible: Perhaps the rising self-esteem now documented in longitudinal research will no longer be found if unemployment and financial distress cause lower self-esteem in today’s young adults. But there is no doubt that personality can shift after adolescence.

In Erikson’s theory, after achieving identity, people experience the sixth crisis of development, intimacy versus isolation. This crisis arises from the powerful desire to share one’s personal life with someone else. Without intimacy, adults suffer from loneliness and isolation. Erikson (1963) explains:

The young adult, emerging from the search for and the insistence on identity, is eager and willing to fuse his identity with others. He is ready for intimacy, that is, the capacity to commit himself to concrete affiliations and partnerships and to develop the ethical strength to abide by such commitments, even though they call for significant sacrifices and compromises.

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The urge for social connection is a powerful human impulse, one reason our species has thrived. Other theorists use different words (affiliation, affection, interdependence, communion, belonging, love) for the same human need. Attachment experienced in infancy may well be a precursor to adult intimacy, especially if the person has developed a working model of attachment (Chow & Ruhl, 2014; Phillips et al., 2013). Adults seek to become friends, lovers, companions, and partners.

All intimate relationships (friendship, family ties, and romance) have much in common—in both the psychic needs they satisfy and in the behaviors they require. Intimacy progresses from attraction to close connection to ongoing commitment. Each relationship demands some personal sacrifice, including vulnerability that brings deeper self-understanding and shatters the isolation caused by too much self-protection.

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As Erikson (1963) explains, to establish intimacy, the emerging adult must

face the fear of ego loss in situations which call for self-abandon: in the solidarity of close affiliations [and] sexual unions, in close friendship and in physical combat, in experiences of inspiration by teachers and of intuition from the recesses of the self. The avoidance of such experiences … may lead to a deep sense of isolation and consequent self-absorption.

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According to a more recent theory, an important aspect of close human connections is “self-expansion,” the idea that each of us enlarges our understanding, our experiences, and our resources through our intimate friends and lovers (Aron et al., 2013). Casual sex, as in “hook-ups” and fleeting acquaintances, are contrary to the intimacy that Erikson thought was crucial for psychosocial health.

Love, romance, and commitment are still important for emerging adults, although specifics have changed. Most emerging adults are thought to be postponing, not abandoning, marriage. As one U.S. sociologist explains, “despite the culture of divorce, Americans remain optimistic about and even eager to enter marriages” (Hill, 2007, p. 295). One of the hottest political issues in 2014 in the United States was whether gay and lesbian couples can marry legally. The fact that people care deeply about this issue indicates that marriage is still considered desirable.

The relationship between love and marriage depends on era and culture. Three distinct patterns are evident.

In about one-third of the world’s families, love does not precede marriage because parents arrange marriages to join two families together.

In another one-third, adolescents meet only a select group. (Single-sex schools keep them from meeting unsuitable mates.) Parents supervise all male–female interactions. When young people decide to marry someone of that preselected group, the young man asks the young woman’s father for “her hand in marriage.” Historically, if parental approval was not forthcoming, the teens parted sorrowfully or eloped—neither of which occurs as often today.

The third pattern is relatively new, although familiar to most readers of this book. Young people socialize with hundreds of others and pair off but do not marry until they are able, financially and emotionally, to be independent. Their choices tilt toward personal qualities observable at the moment, such as physical appearance, personal hygiene, personality, sexuality, a sense of humor, not qualities more important to parents, such as religion, ethnicity, or long-term stability.

Suggesting “one-third” for each of these is a rough approximation. In former times, most marriages were of the first type; young people almost never met and married people unknown to their parents. Currently, in developing nations, a pattern called modern traditionalism often blends the first two types. For example, in Qatar, couples believe they have a choice, but more than half the marriages are between cousins, often anticipated by relatives from the time they were children (Harkness & Khaled, 2014).

For Western emerging adults, the third type is idealized. Love is considered a prerequisite for marriage and then sexual exclusiveness is expected, as found in a survey of 14,121 people of many ethnic groups and orientations (Meier et al., 2009). They were asked to rate from 1 to 10 the importance of money, same racial background, long-term commitment, love, and faithfulness for a successful marriage or a serious, committed relationship.

Faithfulness to one’s partner was considered most important of all (rated 10 by 89 percent) and love was almost as high (rated 10 by 86 percent). By contrast, most thought being of the same race did not matter much (57 percent rated it 1, 2, or 3). Money, while important to many, was not nearly as crucial as love and fidelity.

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This survey was conducted in North America, but emerging adults worldwide share many of the same values. Six thousand miles away, emerging adults in Kenya also reported that love was the primary reason for couples to connect and stay together; money was less important (S. Clark et al., 2010).

One major innovation of the current cohort of emerging adults is the use of social networks. Web sites such as Facebook and Instagram allow individuals to post their photos and personal information on the Internet, sharing the details of their daily lives with thousands of others. College students almost all (93 percent) use social media sites, particularly to connect with each other (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014). Many also use Internet matching sites to find potential partners.

One problem is that social networking may produce dozens of potential partners, increasing choice overload when too many options are available. Choice overload increases second thoughts after a choice is made. (People wonder whether they would have been happier with another choice.) Some people, overloaded with possibilities, refuse to make any selection (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; Reutskaja & Hogarth, 2009).

Choice overload has been demonstrated with consumer goods—jams, chocolates, pens, restaurants—and now it seems true also for choosing a date, a hook-up, or a mate (Sprecher & Metts, 2013). Contrary to the assumptions of most emerging adults, some research finds that love flourishes better when choice is limited.

A second major innovation among emerging adults is cohabitation, the term for living together in a romantic partnership without being married. Cohabitation varies widely from one generation and one nation to another.

Two-thirds of all newly married couples in the United States have lived with their partner before marriage (Manning et al., 2014), as have most couples in Canada, northern Europe, England, and Australia. Many couples in Sweden, France, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico live with a partner and plan to stay together, never marrying. In other nations—including Japan, Ireland, and Italy—fewer people cohabit, although the rate is rising everywhere.

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Research from 30 nations finds that acceptance of cohabitation within their nation affects the happiness of those who cohabit. Demographic differences within those 30 nations (such as education, income, age, and religion among both the married and cohabiting couples) affect happiness as well (Soons & Kalmijn, 2009).

In the United States, cohabiting couples have higher rates of breakups than married couples. Furthermore, children born to cohabiting couples are more likely to have academic, health, or emotional difficulties (Schmeer, 2011). Although there are practical reasons for cohabitation—it saves money and postpones commitment—no longitudinal research has found that it improves psychosocial development.

On the other hand, it is not proven that, for contemporary couples, cohabitation is harmful. Some factors—such as a couple being already engaged to marry before moving in together and being financially secure (rare for most cohabiting couples)—mitigate such problems. Further, the likelihood of divorce when marriage follows cohabitation is closely related to the age of those who cohabit. If a pair of 20-year-olds live together and then marry, their divorce risk is much higher than for a pair of 30-year-olds who do the same (Kuperberg, 2014).

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the family during any period of the life span. Although a family is made up of individuals, it is much more than the persons who belong to it. In the dynamic synergy of a well-functioning family, children grow, adults find support, and everyone is part of a unit that gives meaning to, and provides models for, daily life.

If anything, parents today are more important to emerging adults than ever. Two experts in human development write: “[W]ith delays in marriage, more Americans choosing to remain single, and high divorce rates, a tie to a parent may be the most important bond in a young adult’s life” (Fingerman & Furstenberg, 2012).

All members of each family have linked lives; that is, the experiences and needs of each family member at one stage of life are affected by every other family member (Elder, 1998; Macmillan & Copher, 2005). We have seen this in earlier chapters: Children are affected by their parents’ relationship, even if the children are not directly involved in their parents’ domestic disputes, financial stresses, parental alliances, and so on. Brothers and sisters can be abusers or protectors, role models for good or for ill.

Many emerging adults still live at home, though the percentage varies from nation to nation. Almost all unmarried young adults in Italy and Japan live with their parents. Fewer do so in the United States, but many parents underwrite their young-adult children’s independent living if they can afford to do so (Furstenberg, 2010). When they do not live at home, emerging adults see their parents, on average, several times a week and phone them even more often (Fingerman et al., 2012b).

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There is a downside to parental support: It may impede independence. The most dramatic example is the so-called helicopter parent, hovering over an emerging adult child, ready to swoop down if any problem arises (Fingerman et al., 2012a).

When we look at actual lives, not the cultural ideal of independence or interdependence, emerging adults worldwide have much in common, including close family connections and a new freedom from parental limits. Family members continue to feel obligated to one another no matter where they live or how old they are.

On the first page of Chapter 1, you learned that the science of human development is about how people change over time and that change is ongoing, with variations by culture, family, SES, and history. Every chapter describes potential problems as well as strategies that help most individuals survive and thrive.

This chapter began by explaining that emerging adulthood provides a review and a preview. Both are now apparent: Most 18- to 25-year-olds survive risks (e.g., overcome substance abuse, combat loneliness, and deal with other problems through further education, friends, family, and maturation). Ideally, surviving risks and thriving is what every developing person does at every age.

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