19.1 Continuity and Change

A theme of human development is that continuity and change are evident throughout life. In emerging adulthood, the legacy of childhood is apparent amidst new achievement. Erikson recognized this in his description of the fifth of his eight stages, identity versus role confusion. As you remember, the identity crisis begins in adolescence, but it is not usually resolved until adulthood.

Identity Achieved

Erikson believed that the outcome of earlier crises provides the foundation of each new stage. The identity crisis is an example (see Table 19.1). Worldwide, emerging adults ponder all four arenas of identity—religious commitments, gender roles, political loyalties, and career options—trying to reconcile plans for the future with beliefs acquired in the past.

As explained in Chapter 16, the identity crisis sometimes causes confusion or foreclosure. A more mature response is to seek a moratorium, postponing identity achievement while exploring possibilities. For instance, earning a college degree is a socially acceptable way to delay marriage and parenthood.

Just Like Me Emerging adults of every ethnicity take pride in their culture. In Japan, adulthood begins with a celebration at age 20, to the evident joy of these young women on Coming of Age Day, a national holiday.

© ISSEI KATO/REUTERS/CORBIS

Societies offer many other moratoria: the military, religious mission work, apprenticeships, and various internships in government, academe, and industry. These reduce the pressure to achieve identity, offering a ready rejoinder to an older relative who urges settling down (see Visualizing Development, p. 545).

Emerging adults in moratoria do what is required (as student, soldier, missionary, or whatever), which explains why a moratorium is considered more mature than role confusion. However, they also postpone identity achievement. This respite gives emerging adults some time to achieve in the two arenas that are particularly difficult in current times—political/ethnic identity and vocational identity.

As you remember from Chapter 16, aspects of identity change as the historical context changes, even as the search for self determination continues. One expert explains “identity development…from the teenage years to the early 20s, if not through adulthood,…has been extended to explain the development of ethnic and racial identity” (Whitbourne et al., 2009, p. 1328). Ethnic identity includes Erikson’s political and religious identities, both crucial in our modern multiethnic world.

Ethnic identity becomes pivotal when the young person prepares for adulthood. For example, high school senior Natasha Scott “just realized that my race is something I have to think about” (Saulny & Steinberg, 2011, p. A-1). Her mother is Asian and her father is African American, which was not an issue as she was growing up. However, college applications (and the U.S. Census) require people to make choices regarding ethnic identity.

VISUALIZING DEVELOPMENT

Marital Status in the United States

Adults seek committed partners, but do not always find them—age, cohort, and culture are always influential. Some choose to avoid marriage, more commonly in northern Europe and less commonly in North Africa than in the United States. As you see, in 2010, U.S. emerging adults were unlikely to marry, middle-aged adults had the highest rates of separation or divorce, and widows often chose to stay alone while widowers often remarried.

SOURCE: US CENSUS, AMERICA’S FAMILIES AND LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: 2012.

SOURCE: UN STATS, DECEMBER 2012.
SOURCES & CREDITS LISTED ON P. SC-1

One of Many Combining tradition and adventure, as these Boston tourists from the United Arab Emirates do, is the task for many emerging adults.

© ANDREW LICHTENSTEIN/CORBIS

Natasha is not alone. In the United States and Canada, almost half of 18- to 25-year-olds are of African, Asian, Latino, or Native American (or, in Canada, First Nations) heritage. Many of them identify as Americans or Canadians and also as something else, as they have ancestors of more than one ethnic group.

For an increasing number of emerging adults, those diverse ancestors are their parents. Intermarriage (between adults from diverse racial groups) in the United States was less than 7 percent in 1980, more than 15 percent in 2010 (Wang, 2012). Their children are typically proudly bicultural. Beyond that are millions of other emerging adults whose heritage includes more than one nation. Bicultural identity correlates with healthy psychosocial development, not the opposite (Nguyen & Benet-Martínez, 2013).

No matter what their background is, college students who explore their ethnic identity experience less anger and anxiety, although, as is true of every other aspect of identity, some people become stuck trying to figure out what it means to be themselves (Richie et al., 2013). One study found that Hispanic college students who resisted both assimilation and alienation fared best: They were most likely to maintain their ethnic identity, deflect stereotype threat, and become good students (Rivas-Drake & Mooney, 2009).

Young adults whose parents were immigrants have an immediate challenge—they must reconcile their heritage with their new social context. Conflicts arise not only in choosing a vocation or partner (an issue for every emerging adult) but also in making a more basic choice: between family loyalty and personal autonomy. Parents expect their children to be proud of their ethnic roots—and many are—but peers expect them to make independent choices. They encounter attitudes from the native-born that make them reexamine themselves (Rodriguez et al., 2010).

Confused Identity? Bruno chose Mars as his last name because “I’m out of this world,” It represents an inspired combination of his parents’ ethnicities: Filipino, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Puerto Rican. His music is rock, rap, soul, R & B, and hip-hop, a mixture that made him a global superstar.

CHRISTOPHER POLK/GETTY IMAGES FOR CLEAR CHANNEL/GETTY IMAGES

One example is whether or not young adults listen to their parents’ advice. In mainstream American culture, unsolicited parental advice is not welcome. Yet among many cultures (including some American subcultures) family members offer opinions about everything from clothing styles to marriage partners—they would consider themselves negligent not to do so (Chentsova-Dutton & Vaughn, 2012). Americanized emerging adults might see such comments as hostile and intrusive, whereas their parents might consider their children’s reaction selfish and arrogant.

Some emerging adults become more dedicated to their ethnic/religious identity than their parents are. For example, young Arabic women in Western nations may choose to wear the hijab, the headscarf that indicates they are observant Muslims, even when their parents wish they would not. Paradoxically, the headscarf may make it easier for them to attend college and secure employment with non-Muslims. The headscarf becomes a protective shield against male advances, advertising that this woman is a student or a worker, not a potential date for non-Muslims (Ahmed, 2011).

Generally, having a firm identity frees a person to interact with people of other identities. More than other age groups, emerging adults tend to have friends and acquaintances of many backgrounds. As they do so, they become more aware of history, customs, and prejudices. Many refuse to limit themselves to one ethnicity, one culture, one nation: Some defiantly write “human” when a questionnaire asks, “Race?”

As emerging adults undergo cognitive development, many of them strive to combine objective and subjective identity: They take courses in history, ethnic studies, and sociology, and they also seek close friends, lovers, and affinity groups whose identity struggles are similar to their own. Emerging adults strive to combine academic and personal connections in their ethnic identity, similar to their struggle to achieve sexual identity, as described in Chapter 16.

Establishing a vocational identity is considered part of growing up, not only by developmental psychologists influenced by Erikson but also by emerging adults themselves. Many go to college to prepare for a good job. Emerging adulthood is a “critical stage for the acquisition of resources”—including the education, skills, and experience needed for lifelong family and career success (Tanner et al., 2009, p. 34) (see Table 19.2).

Ordinary Workers Most children and adolescents want to be sports heroes, entertainment stars, billionaires, or world leaders—yet fewer than one in 1 million succeed in doing so.

CLIVE GODDARD/CARTOONSTOCK.COM

Unfortunately, achieving vocational identity is more difficult than ever. Children tend to want work that fewer than one in a million of them will ever obtain—rock star, sports hero, U.S. president—and adults often encourage such fantasies. By emerging adulthood, however, more practical concerns arise, as they seek to determine what employment is actually available and how enjoyable, remunerative, and demanding it is.

For such practical concerns, adults are of little help. Parents usually know only their particular work, not what labor-market projections in the next decade will be. High school guidance counselors in the United States have an average caseload of 367 students a year, many of whom want to apply to a dozen colleges as well as some who need time-consuming emotional support to prevent violence, suicide, or drug addiction (The College Board, 2012).

Counselors often have neither the time nor the expertise to offer vocational guidance (Zehr, 2011). College counselors may be more skillful than their high school counterparts, but many are overwhelmed by the need to counsel students with serious emotional problems, as detailed in Chapter 17.

Thus many emerging adults contemplating future careers are left on their own. John Holland’s description (1997) of six possible interests (see Figure 19.1, p. 548) offers some help to these students. Unfortunately, however, even if they know what they want and they earn their degree, many are unable to find the work they want. This has been particularly true since the economic downturn that began in 2008: Emerging adults are the age group with the highest rate of unemployment (Draut & Rueschin, 2013).

Happy at Work John Holland’s six-part diagram helps job seekers realize that income and benefits are not the only goals of employment. Workers have healthier hearts and minds if their job fits their personal preferences.

Today’s job market has made development of vocational identity particularly difficult for emerging adults. A life-span perspective suggests that young adults may still be affected when the financial picture improves (M. K. Johnson et al., 2011). The experiences, habits, and fears of early adulthood are not easily forgotten.

Many young people take a series of temporary jobs. Between ages 18 and 25, the average U.S. worker has held six jobs, with the college-educated changing jobs even more than average (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). Part of this change occurs because many college students have summer jobs—a different one each summer. Beyond that, however, emerging adults do not yet seek to climb, rung by rung, a career ladder: They would rather try various kinds of work. For them “the process of identifying with society’s work ethic, the core of this issue [identity achievement] in Erikson’s scheme, continues to evolve throughout early adulthood” (Whitbourne et al., 2009, p. 1329).

Same Situation, Far Apart: Connecting with Their Generation Neither of these young women considers her job a vocation, but both use skills and knowledge that few older adults have. The DJ (left) mixes music for emerging adults who crowd thousands of clubs in China to drink, dance, and socialize despite regulations that attempt to close down such establishments. More than 10,000 Apple Store “geniuses” (right) work at low pay to meet the booming young-adult demand for the latest social networking tools.

STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
© SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS/CORBIS

Personality in Emerging Adulthood

Continuity and change are evident in personality as well (McAdams & Olson, 2010). Of course, personality is shaped lifelong by genes and early experiences:

If self-doubt, anxiety, depression, and so on are present in adolescence, they are typically evident years later. Traits present at age 18 rarely disappear by age 25.

Yet personality is not static. After adolescence, new personality dimensions may appear. As the preceding two chapters emphasize, emerging adults make choices that break with the past. Unlike youth in previous generations, contemporary youth are more likely to pursue higher education and postpone marriage and parenthood. Their freedom from a settled lifestyle allows shifts in attitude and personality.

Many researchers study what factors lead a young adult to thrive in secondary and tertiary education. Background and genes are influential, but so is personality. Not only is success in school affected by personality but it also affects personality (Klimstra et al., 2012). In other words, college success can change personality traits for the better.

One team of researchers traced the experiences of 3,912 U.S. high school seniors until age 23 or 24. Generally, chosen transitions (entering college, starting a job, getting married) increased well-being. In the United States, those who lived away from home in college showed the largest gains, and those who had become single parents or who still lived with their own parents showed the least. Even the latter, however, tended to be happier than they had been in high school (see Figure 19.2) (Schulenberg et al., 2005).

Worthy People This graph shows a steady, although small, rise in young adults’ sense of well-being from age 18 to age 24, as measured by respondents’ ratings of statements such as “I feel I am a person of worth.” The ratings ranged from 1 (complete disagreement) to 5 (complete agreement). The average rating was actually quite high at age 18, and it increased steadily over the years of emerging adulthood. Source: Schulenberg et al., 2005, p. 424.

Source: John Schulenberg et al., 2005.

Some increasing happiness may be part of becoming more adult: Young adults in western Canada, repeatedly questioned from ages 18 to 25, reported increasing self-esteem (Galambos et al., 2006), as did German emerging adults (Wagner et al., 2013).

Logically, the many stresses and transitions of emerging adulthood might be expected to reduce self-esteem. However, only a minority experienced a decline in self-esteem during these years (Nelson & Padilla-Walker, 2013). As detailed in Chapter 17, some emerging adults develop serious psychological disorders (Twenge et al., 2010), but most do not.

Shifts toward positive development were also found in another longitudinal study that began with 4-year-olds who were at the extremes of either of the two traits known to have strong genetic roots: extreme shyness and marked aggression. Those two traits continued to be evident throughout childhood. But by emerging adulthood many of these children had changed for the better (Asendorpf et al., 2008).

This is not to say that old patterns disappeared. For example, those who had been aggressive 4-year-olds continued to have conflicts with their parents and friends. They were more likely to quit school and leave jobs before age 25. Half had been arrested at least once, another sign of their unusually aggressive personalities.

Yet, unexpectedly, these aggressive young adults had as many friends as their average peers did. They wanted more education than they already had, and their self-rating on conscientiousness was at least equal to the self-ratings of a control group who had been less aggressive as children. Their arrests were usually for minor offenses, typically adolescent-limited, not life-course-persistent. As emerging adults, most seemed to be developing well, controlling their anger and putting their childhood problems behind them. [Lifespan Link: Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent offenders are discussed in Chapter 16.]

As for the emerging adults who had been shy, they were “cautious, reserved adults” (Asendorpf et al., 2008, p. 1007), slower than average to secure a job, choose a career, or find a romance (at age 23, two-thirds had no current partner). However, they were no more anxious or depressed than others of their cohort, and their self-esteem was not low. They had many friends, whom they saw often. Their delayed employment and later marriage were accepted, even envied, by their peers. The personality trait (shyness) that was a handicap in childhood had become an asset.

A major reason for the increasing self-esteem of many emerging adults is that they are able to set their own goals, make their own friends, and work toward whatever goals they seek. They are no longer the actors in someone else’s drama but the agents and authors of their own lives, which is what young adults can finally be as they break away from earlier limits (McAdams, 2013).

In the research just discussed and in other research as well, plasticity (which, as you remember, refers to the idea that development is both moldable and durable, like plastic) is evident. Personality is not fixed by age 5, or 15, or 20, as it was once thought to be. Emerging adults are open to new experiences (a reflection of their adventuresome spirit), an attitude that allows personality shifts as well as eagerness for more education (McAdams & Olson, 2010; Tanner et al., 2009).

Clearly, genes do not determine behavior, but they do make a person more or less susceptible to environmental forces. Some genes have been called plasticity genes (Simons et al., 2013). A person who inherits them is affected, for better or for worse, by going to college, leaving home, becoming independent, stopping drug abuse, moving to a new city, finding satisfying work and performing it well, making new friends, committing to a partner.

Although total change does not occur, since genes, childhood experiences, and family circumstances affect people lifelong, personality can shift in adulthood. Increased well-being may underlie another shift: Emerging adults become less self-centered and more caring of others (Eisenberg et al., 2005; Padilla-Walker et al., 2008). This can be the foundation of the next psychosocial stage of development, which we now discuss.