SUMMARY

1. Personality traits over the years of adulthood are quite stable, although many adults become more mature, as described by Erikson and Maslow, becoming closer to their culture’s ideal.

2. The Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—characterize personality at every age, with each person relatively high or low on each. Adults choose their particular ecological niche based partly on personality. Culture and context affect everyone.

3. Intimacy is a universal human need, satisfied in diverse ways, with romantic partners, friends and family, and consequential strangers.

4. Marriage typically occurs later now than it did in earlier decades. Cohabitation and living apart together are sometimes alternatives to, sometimes preludes to, marriage. Most adults still seek a romantic partner (same-sex or other-sex) with whom to share life.

5. Divorce is difficult for both partners and their family members, not only immediately but for years before and after the event. Many factors make divorce better or worse than marriage.

6. Remarriage is common, especially for men. This solves some of the problems (particularly loss of income and increase in loneliness) of divorced adults, but the success of second marriages varies. Children add complications.

7. Friends are crucial for buffering stress and sharing secrets, for everyday companionship and guidance. This is true for both men and women. Friends and consequential strangers are part of the social convoy that helps adults navigate their lives.

8. Family members have linked lives, continuing to affect one another as they all grow older. Parents and adult children are less likely to live together than in earlier times, but family members are often mutually supportive, emotionally and financially.

9. Adults seek to be generative, successful, achieving, instrumental—all words used to describe a major psychosocial need that each adult meets in various ways.

10. Parenthood is a common expression of generativity. Even wanted and planned-for biological children pose challenges; foster children, stepchildren, and adoptive children bring additional stresses and joys.

11. Caregiving is more likely to flow from the older generations to the younger ones, so the “sandwich generation” metaphor is misleading. Many families have a kinkeeper, who aids generativity within the family.

12. Employment brings many rewards to adults, including intrinsic benefits such as pride and friendship. Changes in employment patterns—job switches, shift work, and the diversity of fellow workers—affect other aspects of adult development. Unemployment is particularly difficult for self-esteem.

13. Combining work schedules, caregiving requirements, and intimacy needs is not easy; consequences are mixed. Some adults benefit from new patterns within the labor market; others find that the demands of work impair family well-being.