Chapter 19 Summary

1. Although Erikson thought that most people achieved identity by the end of adolescence, for today’s youth the identity crisis continues into adulthood.
2. For emerging adults in multiethnic nations, ethnic identity becomes important but difficult to achieve, and requires complex psychosocial adjustment.
3. Vocational identity requires knowing what career one will have. Few young adults are certain about their career goals. Many societies offer some moratoria on identity achievement (such as college) that allows postponement of vocational identity.
4. In today’s job market, many adults of all ages switch jobs, with turnover particularly quick in emerging adulthood. Most short-term jobs are not connected to the young person’s skills or ambitions. Vocational identity, as Erikson conceived it, is elusive.
5. Personality can change in emerging adulthood, but continuity is also apparent. Many emerging adults find an appropriate combination of education, friendship, and achievement that improves their self-esteem. Even unusually aggressive or shy children can become quite happy adults.

6. Close friendships typically include some other-sex as well as same-sex friends. Gender separation is less common than it once was, but women still exchange more confidences and physical affection than men do.
7. Romantic love is complex, involving passion, intimacy, and commitment. In some nations, commitment is crucial and parents arrange marriages with that in mind. Among emerging adults in developed nations, passion is more important but does not necessarily lead to marriage.
8. Many emerging adults use social networking and matchmaking sites on the Internet to expand and deepen their friendship circles and mating options. This has advantages and disadvantages.
9. Cohabitation is increasingly common, with marked national variations. This arrangement does not necessarily improve marital happiness or stability.
10. Marriages work best if couples are able to communicate well and share responsibilities. Changes in relationships between spouses are evident over the past decades, with some positive as well as negative results.
11. Conflict is part of many intimate relationships. The pattern called demand/withdraw interaction harms a partnership. Domestic abuse is common worldwide; it takes a variety of forms and is perpetrated by both genders.

12. Family support is needed lifelong. Family members have linked lives, always affected by one another and often helping one another at every age.
13. In most nations, emerging adults and their parents are closely connected. Sometimes this means living in the same household, but even when it does not, complete separation of the two generations is unusual and impairs young adults’ achievement.
14. Especially in nations with less public support for young adults, parents often pay college costs, provide free child care, and contribute in other ways to their young-adult children’s welfare.
15. Parental support for emerging adult children usually is helpful, but it may also impede independence. The actual effect of parental care depends on cultural support for education, infant care, and so on.