Chapter 22 Summary

Personality Development in Adulthood

  1. The personalities of adults remain quite stable, and the midlife crisis is more myth than fact, more a cohort effect than a universal experience. Nonetheless, some individuals experience notable shifts, and many become more mature, as described by Erikson and Maslow.
  2. The Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—are typically fairly stable in each individual over the decades of adulthood, as each person chooses a particular ecological niche. Culture and context affect everyone, with neuroticism most likely to be reduced with maturity.

Intimacy: Family and Friends

  1. Every adult has powerful intimacy needs, which are met by social support and companionship as the decades roll by. Friends and consequential strangers are part of the social convoy that helps adults navigate their lives.
  2. Family relationships remain important throughout adulthood as a source of social support, especially between parents and adult children and between siblings. How crucial relatives are to a particular person depends on past history, cultural values, and current situation.
  3. Family members have linked lives, continuing to affect one another as they all grow older. In the U.S., they are less likely to live together than in earlier times and in other nations, but family members are often mutually supportive, both emotionally and financially. Siblings typically become closer over the years of adulthood, and adult children and their parents continue to help one another in practical and emotional ways.

Intimacy: Romantic Partners

  1. Marriage typically occurs later than it did in previous decades, but most adults still seek a partner (same sex or other sex) with whom to share life. Marital happiness often dips after the honeymoon period but improves over time, especially once children are grown.
  2. Divorce is difficult for both partners as well as for their family members, not only immediately but also for years before and after the event. As divorce becomes more frequent, it may become less disruptive.
  3. Remarriage is common, especially for men, and solves some of the problems (particularly financial and intimacy troubles) that many divorced adults experience—but remarriage is complicated and may end in a second divorce.

Generativity

  1. Adults seek to feel generative, achieving, successful, instrumental—all words used to describe the major psychosocial need of generativity. This need is met through creative work, caregiving, and employment.
  2. Caring for partners, parents, children, and others is a major expression of generativity. Often one family member becomes the chief kinkeeper and caregiver, usually by choice.
  3. Parenthood is a common expression of adult caregiving. Even wanted and planned biological children pose challenges to their parents; stepchildren, foster children, and adoptive children bring additional stresses. Adults usually consider this aspect of caregiving rewarding as well as challenging.
  4. Many adults feel special concern for other adult members of their families. Caregiving is more likely to flow from the older generations to the younger ones, rather than vice versa. The “sandwich generation” metaphor is misleading.
  5. Employment brings many rewards to adults, particularly intrinsic benefits such as pride and friendship. Changes in employment pattern—including job switches, shift work, and the diversity of fellow workers—can affect other aspects of adult development.
  6. Combining work schedules, caregiving requirements, and intimacy needs is not easy, and consequences are mixed. Some adults benefit from the diversity of employment; others find that new patterns of work impair family well-being.