What Have You Learned?

  1. Question 22.1

    Describe the two basic needs of middle adulthood according to Erikson.

    According to Erikson, intimacy (a close, reciprocal connection with another human being) and generativity (caring for the next generation, either by raising their own children or by mentoring, teaching, and helping others) are the two basic and universal needs of adulthood.
  2. Question 22.2

    How might the midlife crisis reflect cohort rather than matu-rational changes?

    Middle-class men in the United States who reached age 40 in about 1970 were affected by historic upheavals in their families and in society as a whole. Many began marriages and careers in the 1950s, but cultural shifts changed the expectations associated with relationships and employment. The limited research done during that time period found evidence of a midlife crisis, as many men were troubled by shifting roles, rules, and norms. However, further research indicates that their crisis was caused by personal reflections, family pressures, and historical circumstances, not by chronological age.
  3. Question 22.3

    How would each of the Big Five personality traits influence an adult’s choice of jobs, mates, and neighborhoods?

    Individuals make choices about their relationships, work, and living situation that reinforce their personality traits. Conscientious people are more likely to complete college, extroverts are more likely to marry, neurotics are more likely to divorce, fertility is lower for women in recent cohorts who are more conscientious, IQ is higher in people who are more open, verbal fluency is greater in people who are high in openness and extroversion, and political conservatives are less open.
  4. Question 22.4

    Explain the concept of a social convoy.

    A social convoy consists of the family members, friends, and acquaintances that move through life with a person, providing a protective layer of social relationships that guide, encourage, and socialize the individual.
  5. Question 22.5

    What roles do friends play in a person’s life?

    Friends are chosen for the traits that make them reliable fellow travelers through life. Mutual loyalty and aid are expected from friends. Friends offer companionship, information, and laughter in daily life. Unlike family members, if friends are not supportive, the relationship ends.
  6. Question 22.6

    What are the differences between friends and consequential strangers?

    Individuals choose their friends and develop an intimate connection with them. Consequential strangers are neighbors, coworkers, store clerks, local police officers, or members of a religious or other community group. A consequential stranger is not in a person’s closest convoy but is one who nonetheless has an impact on the person’s experience through at least one, and often repeated, interactions. Consequential strangers include people of diverse religions, ethnic groups, ages, and political opinions without the shared values, lifestyles, and background that are often the glue that keeps friendships close.
  7. Question 22.7

    What is the usual relationship between adult children and their parents? What factors might explain this relationship?

    The relationship between adult children and their parents becomes stronger, not weaker, as adult children live apart from their parents. The intergenerational support network is both durable and flexible. Due to the economic recession, more adult children 25- to 34 years old have been living with their parents than during the last major recession in 1980. Most of these modern young adults report feeling comfortable staying with their parents when they needed to.
  8. Question 22.8

    What usually happens to sibling relationships over the course of adulthood?

    Marriage and childbearing in adulthood typically enhance closeness in sibling relationships. Parents want their children to know their aunts, uncles, and cousins, and that reduces sibling distance. Furthermore, adulthood frees siblings from forced cohabitation and rivalry, allowing them to differ without fighting.
  9. Question 22.9

    Why do people have fictive kin?

    Some adults may become fictive kin in another family because they have been rejected by their original family, are far from home, or are changing their habits. Adults benefit from kin, fictive or not.
  10. Question 22.10

    What needs do long-term partners meet?

    Long-term partners meet needs for intimacy and also help to raise children, share resources, and provide care when needed.
  11. Question 22.11

    How and why does marital happiness change from the time of the wedding through old age?

    The honeymoon period tends to be the happiest time, but soon frustration increases as conflicts arise. Partnerships tend to be less happy after the first child is born, and again when children reach puberty. Divorce risk rises and then falls during these times. Happiness rises when children leave the nest and happiness continues to be high and steady after that, barring serious health problems.
  12. Question 22.12

    What evidence is there that political and cultural attitudes toward same-sex partnerships are changing?

    Political and cultural contexts for same-sex couples are changing markedly. Seventeen U.S. states and many nations, including Canada and Spain, recognize same-sex marriages. While many other nations and U.S. states are ambivalent, and most countries, as well as many states, explicitly outlaw same-sex marriage, changing laws and open public debate have increased in recent years.
  13. Question 22.13

    What are the usual consequences of divorce?

    Consequences of divorce often include reduced income, family problems, lost friendships, and weakened relationships with one’s children. That said, if the divorce ends an abusive or difficult situation, it could improve life for at least one adult and for the children.
  14. Question 22.14

    Many people who repartner are happy at first, but their happiness may not last. Why might this be the case?

    Personality tends to change only slightly over the lifespan; therefore, people who were chronically unhappy in their first marriage may also become unhappy in their second. In addition, if there are stepchildren, they add unexpected stresses, and stepparents may have difficulty letting the spouse’s former mate continue to care for their own children.
  15. Question 22.15

    What is the basic idea of generativity?

    Generativity refers to the need to be productive in a caring way. Without generativity, adults experience “a pervading sense of stagnation and personal impoverishment.” Adults satisfy their need to be generative in many ways, including through parenthood, caregiving, and employment.
  16. Question 22.16

    In what ways does parenthood satisfy an adult’s need to be generative?

    Childbearing and rearing is a labor-intensive expression of generativity. Every parent is tested by the experience of raising children. Children sometimes reorder adult perspectives, as parents become less focused on their own personal identities or intimate relationships, focusing instead on their children.
  17. Question 22.17

    What factors might make it difficult for foster children and foster parents to bond?

    Children may be put into foster care if birth parents are so neglectful or abusive that the children are seriously harmed by their care. In these cases the child’s early attachment to their birth parents can impede connection to the foster parent. Furthermore, a secure new attachment may be hampered if both adult and child know that their connection can be severed for reasons unrelated to caregiving quality or relationship strength.
  18. Question 22.18

    How might each of the Big Five personality traits make it easier or more difficult to develop positive relationships with stepchildren?

    Someone high in openness may be more willing to deal with the new experience of stepparenting. A person high in conscientiousness might not like the disorder that stepchildren bring to a family. A person high in extroversion and/or agreeableness may have an easier time relating to and accepting stepchildren. A person high in neuroticism may not be able to tolerate the increased anxiety that may come with caring for stepchildren.
  19. Question 22.19

    What advantages do adoptive parents have over foster parents or stepparents?

    Adoptive parents are legally connected to their child for life and typically they desperately wanted the child. Both of these factors may lead to a strong parent–child bond.
  20. Question 22.20

    Women are more often kinkeepers and caregivers than are men. How is these roles both a blessing and a burden?

    The role of being the kinkeeper (a caregiver who takes responsibility for maintaining communication) may be burdensome, but caregiving provides both satisfaction and power. Kinkeepers may share the work; shared kinkeeping is an example of generativity.
  21. Question 22.21

    Why are middle-aged adults sometimes called the “sandwich generation”? Why might this metaphor create a false impression?

    Middle-aged adults are sometimes called the “sandwich generation” because they are expected to help both the older and younger generations. This metaphor may give a false impression because caregiving is beneficial; people feel useful when they help one another. In addition, it implies that the middle generation is the generation that gives aid to the other generations, when in fact the aid tends to run from the older generations to the younger generations at all levels.
  22. Question 22.22

    What are some extrinsic and intrinsic rewards of work?

    Extrinsic rewards of work include tangible benefits such as salary, health insurance, and a pension or retirement savings. Intrinsic rewards of work are related to generativity; satisfaction, relationships with coworkers, and a sense of participation in meaningful activity.
  23. Question 22.23

    What are the advantages of greater ethnic diversity at work?

    Greater ethnic diversity is a benefit to those people who would not have been hired in previous decades. The greater diversity also requires employers to be sensitive to differences they might not have noticed previously. Employees benefit from working with a variety of coworkers and supervisors.
  24. Question 22.24

    List four reasons why changing jobs is stressful.

    1) Seniority brings higher salaries, more respect, and greater expertise; workers who leave a job they have had for years lose these advantages. 2) Many skills required for employment were not taught decades ago, so older job seekers are less likely to be hired. 3) Age discrimination is illegal, but workers believe it is widespread. Even if it does not exist, stereotype threat undercuts successful job searching. 4) Relocation reduces long-standing intimacy and generativity.
  25. Question 22.25

    What innovations in work scheduling have helped families? What innovations have hurt families?

    Flextime, telecommuting, part-time work, and self-employment may help adults balance work and family. Weekend work, mandatory overtime, night work, and other nonstandard schedules, especially when combined with overwork, correlate with personal, relational, and child-rearing difficulties.
  26. Question 22.26

    Why might men and women be happier with current employment patterns than earlier ones?

    Non-standard work schedules allow for great flexibility, which is useful in many stages of adult life. When adults are the parents of young children, for example, flexibility in schedules allows one parent to be home while the other is at work. Today parents (often mothers, but not exclusively so) are likely to rearrange meal and sleeping schedules so that they spend time with their children.
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