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.

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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 inspired thousands of researchers. Notable among them 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. However, the above three precursors to identity achievement (confusion, foreclosure, moratorium) 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 lives, 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, take longer and have become more complicated than they were when Erikson described them. Fifty years ago, the drive to become independent and autonomous was thought to be “one of the key normative psychosocial developmental issues of adolescence” (Zimmer-Gembeck & Collins, 2003, p. 177). That task remains and adolescents still seek identity, but “studies among adults revealed that identity is a life-long process” (Meeus, 2011).

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.

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None of these four identities 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. A crucial question is whether the adolescent ponders possibilities and actively makes a choice, thus achieving identity, or whether the adolescent responds to external pressures (Lillevoll et al., 2013), either conforming or rebelling, which signifies foreclosure.

RELIGIOUS IDENTITY 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 Muslim converts to Judaism, and almost no teenage Baptist becomes Hindu—although that might occur in adulthood. Most adolescents question beliefs because cognitive maturation fosters analytic thinking, but few teenagers have a crisis of faith unless unusual circumstances propel it (King & Roeser, 2009).

POLITICAL IDENTITY 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, political views are heavily influenced by parents and their culture, with current teenagers somewhat less conservative than their parents (Taylor, 2014). Actually changing one’s political identity, if it occurs, is more likely in adulthood than adolescence. For example, Hillary Clinton’s parents were Republican and she was a Young Republican at age 17, not becoming a Democrat until age 21.

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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 (Rivas-Drake et al., 2014). 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, her college applications required choices regarding ethnic identity (Saulny & Steinberg, 2011).

Natasha is not the only one. In the United States and Canada, about half of all adolescents are of non-European heritage, often with ancestors of more than one ethnic group. Although the census lumps all people of African, or Asian, or Latin American backgrounds together, teenagers forging their personal identity become more specific.

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

VOCATIONAL IDENTITY Vocational identity originally meant envisioning oneself 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 practiced family medicine, lawyers handled all kinds of cases, teachers taught all subjects).

Obviously, such 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, with specific skills and knowledge best learned on the job. Currently, vocational identity is dynamic and flexible: People eventually find a career or, even better, a calling that can lead to several jobs (Skorikov & Vondracek, 2011).

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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 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.

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 10.1).

SEXUAL IDENTITY The fourth type of identity, described by both Erikson and Marcia, is sexual identity. As you remember from Chapter 6, 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 (Miller & Simon, 1980). They assumed that adolescents who were confused about sexual identity would soon adopt “proper” male or female roles (Erikson, 1968/1994; A. Freud, 1958/2000).

Thus, adolescence was once a time for “gender intensification,” when people increasingly identified as male or female (Priess et al., 2009). No longer. 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 (but not always) begins with the person’s biological sex and leads to a gender role, but many adolescents (with the hypothetical reasoning that Piaget described) question aspects of gender roles. This often troubles their parents and grandparents.

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). Even today, women in every nation do far more child care and elder care than men. There is a “slow but steady pace of change in gender divisions of domestic labor . . . combined with a persistence of gender differences and inequalities” (Doucet, 2015, p. 224).

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Now, gender roles are changing everywhere. The speed and specifics of the change vary dramatically by culture and cohort, which makes gender identity complicated for many youth. It is particularly complex for adolescents who feel their sex at birth is not their true gender identity.

Among Western psychiatrists in former decades, people who had “a strong and persistent cross-gender identification” were said to have gender identity disorder, a serious diagnosis according to DSM-IV. However, DSM-5 instead describes gender dysphoria, when people are distressed at their biological sex.

This is not simply a change in words: A “disorder” means something is amiss with the individual, no matter how he or she feels about it, whereas in dysphoria the problem is in the distress, which can be mitigated by social conditions and/or by perception (Zucker et al., 2013).

No matter what gender identity a young person develops, every teenager experiences a surge of sexual hormones and most adjust to that. As Erikson recognized, although the hormones are universal, many adolescents are confused regarding when, how, and with whom to express their sexuality.

Some foreclose by exaggerating male or female roles; others seek a moratorium by trying to be asexual. Some who feel their gender identity is fragile aspire to a gender-stereotypic career (Sinclair & Carlsson, 2013). Choosing a career to establish gender identity, rather than to follow interests and affirm values, is another reason why settling on a vocational identity during adolescence may be premature.