Development in Adulthood Flashcards
Important societal changes
- important changes in Australian society and globally
- rise in the ages of entering marriage and parenthood driven by
o tolerance for premarital sex in the context of committed and loving relationship
o increase in the years devoted to pursuing education and training
o changing roles of women
o rise in earnings, but also in living costs
Emerging adulthood
- a distinctive developmental stage?
- Age range of 18-25 (29) years
- Intense identity explorations in the areas of work, love and worldviews
- Subjectively and demographically distinct developmental stage
- Might be a distinct phase in western, post-industrial societies, but not necessarily culturally universal
Developmental features of emerging adulthood
- The age of identity explorations
- The age of instability
- The self-focused age
- The age of feeling in-between
- The age of possibilities
Development in adulthood
- Characterised by variety of experiences
- Influenced significantly by cultural, social and personal factors
- Theories of adulthood focus on common elements in diverse experiences – two basic psychological needs, to love and to work
- Three important developmental transitions
o Couple relationships
o Parenthood
o Career - Social expectations about these create an internalised social timetable
- Social clock
o On time – following the social timetable
o Off time – out of phase with peers
Adult attachment
- Attachment style applicable across the lifespan
o Adult’s current view of early attachment relationships is a good predictor of current attachment style and relationship quality
o Distribution of attachment styles similar to infant attachment - Infant attachment predictive but not 100% determinant of adult attachment style
- Adult relationship experiences also influential
Model of self: Secure
Secure attachment history
Healthy balance of attachment and autonomy; freedom to explore
Model of self: Preoccupied
Resistant attachment history
Desperate for love to feel worthy as a person; worry about abandonment; express anxiety and danger openly
Model of self: Dismissing
Avoidant attachment history
Shut out emotions; defend against hurt by avoiding intimacy, dismissing the importance of relationships and being ‘compulsively self-reliant’
Model of self: Fearful
Disorganised-disoriented attachment history
Need relationships but doubt own worth and fear intimacy; lack a coherent strategy for meeting attachment needs
Changing family context
- Decrease in marriage rates
- Increase in cohabitation before marriage
- Increase in divorce rates
- Increase in lone parent families
- However, majority of children still live in ‘intact’ families
- Increase in average age of first parenting
- Decrease in number of children per woman
- Increase in number of children born outside marriage
- Increase in maternal employment
- Increase in average maternal employment level
Transition to parenthood
People choose to have children for a variety of reasons
- a major life transition – no other transition is as abrupt and complete
- but no or little preparation
- positive and negative changes
o disrupted routine – family, work, social
o fatigue
o roles become more traditional
o sexual relationship deteriorates
o conversation decreases
o fathers withdraw, spend more time at work
Family Life Cycle: Stage 1
Beginning families
Transition to parenthood families
Families with preschoolers
Family Life Cycle: Stage 2
Families with school-aged children
Families with adolescents
Family Life Cycle: Stage 3
Families as launch centres
Empty-nest families
Family Life Cycle: Stage 4
Retirement
Career development in adulthood
- Charlotte Buhler
- Organic, self-determination
- Intentions, goals and self-determination as driving adult development
- Intentionality as a developmental process of
o Choosing life goals
o Working towards them
o Evaluating goal achievement
o Selecting new goals - Lifespan psychological growth depends on
o Realistic initial goal setting
o Hard work through life to achieve these goals
o Skilled self-monitoring, assessment and redirection - Influences: super, Havinghurst, Levinson
What is old age?
- Young old (60-69) – as fit and forward-looking as 50 year olds were some generations ago
- Third age (70-79) – many of them function better physically and psychologically than their parents did at age of 55
- Fourth age (80 and over) – old old adults frail physical or mental health directly attributable to their advanced age
Cognitive ageing: Intelligence
- Piaget: formal operational thinking as the final stage of cognitive development
- Postformal thinking – lessened egocentrism of young adults and capacity to view world more relativistically
- Seattle Longitudinal Study (Schale) – ‘cohort absolescence’ needs to be considered when considering cross-sectional evidence about changes in cognitive abilities with age
- Fluid (cognitive ability does go down) and crystalilised (formal intelligence, doesn’t go down in age) intelligence
Successful cognitive aging
- Selective optimisation with compensation in order to balance gains and losses in cognitive functioning in old age
Wisdom
- Wisdom entails:
o Rich factual knowledge with exceptional scope, depth and balance
o Rich procedural knowledge about how to behave and seek meaning in lfe
o Tolerance, respect for context and values
o Awareness and skill coping with uncertainty and change - Wise solutions containing all these elements generally rare, but more common in older than in younger adult
- According to Erikson resolution of the development task of late adulthood (integrity vs despair) produces wisdom
Successful social ageing
- Disengagement theory and activity theory take opposing perspectives on adapting to the loss of roles or activities that occurs in late adulthood
Disengagement theory
- Older people have increased preoccupation with the self and decreased investment in society
- Decreased social interaction in old age comes from mutual withdrawal of both the individual and society
- Optimal ageing occurs when the ageing person establishes greater psychological distance from those around him or her
- Decreased social interaction should be expected
Activity Theory
- Older people have the same psychosocial needs middle-aged people do
- Decreased social interaction in old age comes from withdrawal by society from the ageing person
- Optimal ageing occurs when the person stays active
- Substitute activities should be found for those that are lost (e.g., for work at retirement)
Socio-emotional Selectivity Theory
- Changes in social motives due to people becoming more aware of the limited amount of time they have left
- Reshaping of one’s life in late adulthood to concentrate on what one finds to be important and meaningful in the face of physical decline and possible cognitive impairment
Defining Death
- Death – the irreversible cessation of vital life functions
- Dying – the end stage of life, in which bodily processes decline, leading to death
- Previously absence of respiration and heartbeat
- Now criteria focus on brain death
- Definition crucial for issues of organ transplant
Accepting one’s own death
- Death becomes more salient with age
o Young children see death as reversible or temporary and not necessarily inevitable
o Adolescents tend to deny their own mortality
o Young adults are often very angry when faced with their own death
o Middle-aged adults become more aware of their own mortality
o Late adulthood associated with increasing acceptance of death and increasing concern about the process of dying
The dying process
- Kubler-Ross’s (1969) classic work on the stages of dying
- Stages are not necessarily progressive and are not likely to overlap
- Since they are based on young and middle-aged adults dying of cancer, they do not represent the variability that exists in the course of dying
- Suggests that bereaved relatives go through the same stages, although not necessarily in synchrony with the dying person
Bereavement
o The experience of loss of a loved one through death
Bereavement has two components
- Bereavement has two components
o Grief – the emotional response to one’s loss
o Mourning – the social and cultural experience of grief
Grief
o Loss of primary relationships
o Relationships of attachment
o Relationships of community
Stages of grief
o Shock, disbelief, denial
o Intense mourning
o Period of restitution
Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle
1) Denial
- Avoidance
- Confusion
- Elation
- Shock
- Fear
- ‘not me’
Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle
2) Anger
- Frustration
- Irritation
- Anxiety
- ‘Why me?’
Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle
3) Depression
- Overwhelmed
- Helplessness
- Hostility
- Flight
- ‘Yes me.’ (begin to mourn)
Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle
4) Bargaining
-Struggling to find meaning
-Reaching out to others
-Telling one’s story
‘Yes me, but…’
Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle
5)Acceptance
- Exploring options
- New plan in place
- Moving on
- ‘My time is very close now, and it’s alright’
