Emerging and Early Adulthood

Emerging and Early Adulthood
©Tinnie Cruz, RPm
San Beda College Alabang
1st Trimester AY 2021-2022

EMERGING ADULTHOOD
 The transition from
adolescence to adulthood at
approximately ages 18 to 25.
 This period of development
was proposed by Jeffrey
Arnett.

KEY FEATURES OF
EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Identity Explorations
 Emerging adults have become more
independent of their parents than they
were as adolescents and most of them
have left home, but they have not yet
entered the stable, enduring
commitments typical of adult life, such as
a long-term job, marriage, and
parenthood.
 Erikson also commented on the
“prolonged adolescence” typical of
industrialized societies, and the
psychosocial moratorium granted to
young people in such societies “during
which the young adult through free role
experimentation may find a niche in some
section of his society”

KEY FEATURES OF
EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Instability
 The identity explorations of emerging
adults and their shifting choices in
love and work make this life stage not
only exceptionally full and intense but
also exceptionally unstable.
 Emerging adults know they are
supposed to have a “Plan”, that is,
some kind of idea about the route
they will be taking from adolescence
to adulthood
 However, for almost all of them, their
Plan is subject to numerous revisions
during the emerging adult years.
 These revisions are a natural
consequence of their explorations.

KEY FEATURES OF
EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Self-focus
 To be self-focused is notnecessarily to
be selfish.
 There is nothing wrong about being
self-focused during emerging
adulthood; it is normal,healthy, and
temporary.
 By focusing on themselves, emerging
adults develop skills at daily living,
gain a better understanding of who
they are and what they want from life,
and begin to build a foundation for
their adult lives.
 The goal of their self-focusing is to
learn to stand alone as a self-sufficient
person

KEY FEATURES OF
EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Feeling in-between
 The exploration and instability of
emerging adulthood give it the quality
of an in-between period.
 Criteria for Adulthood:
1. Accepting responsibility for yourself
2. Making independent decisions
3. Becoming financially independent

KEY FEATURES OF
EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Possibilities/Optimism
 Emerging adults look to the future
and envision a well-paying,
satisfying job, a loving, lifelong
marriage to their “soul mate,” and
happy children who are above
average
 It offers the potential for changing
dramatically the direction of one’s
life.

THE FOUR REVOLUTIONSTHAT LED
TO EMERGING ADULTHOOD
 Technology Revolution
 the technologies that transformed the economy led to many to
pursue college brought by the demands of other jobs.
 Sexual Revolution
 With the invention of “the Pill”, young people can now have sex
without marrying
 Women’s Movement
 Young women’s options have expanded than it was before
 Youth Movement
 Marriage, home, and children are seen not as achievements to
be pursued but as perils to be avoided

HELPING ADOLESCENTSTO BECOME
MATURE ADULTS
 Provide them opportunities
to become contributors
 Give candid, quality
feedback to adolescents
 Create positive adult
connections
 Challenge them to become
more competent

PHYSICAL PERFORMANCE AND
DEVELOPMENT
 Most of us reach out our peak levels of physical
performance before the age of 30, often between ages
19 and 26.
 It is also during this age period that we begin to decline
in physical performance.
 Muscle tone and strength usually begin to show signs of
decline around the age of 30
 The lessening of physical abilities is a common
complaint among the just-turned thirties.

HEALTH
 Emerging adults have more than twice the mortality rate
of adolescents.
 Males are mainly responsible for the higher mortality
rates of emerging adults.
 Emerging adults engage in more health-compromising
behaviors, have more chronic disorders, are more likely
to be obese, and more likely to have a mental disorder.

HEALTH
 In emerging and early adulthood, few individuals
consider how their personal lifestyles will affect their
health later in their adult lives.
 As emerging adults, many of us develop a pattern of not
eating breakfast, not eating regular meals, and relying
on snacks as our main food source during the day,
overeating to the point where we exceed the normal
weight for our age, smoking moderately or excessively,
drinking moderately or excessively, failing to exercise,
getting by with only a few hours of sleep at night, and
engaging in risky sexual behavior.

HEALTH
 The health profile of emerging and young adults can be
improved by reducing the incidence of certain health-
impairing lifestyles, such as overeating, and by engaging
in health-improving behaviors that include good eating
habits, regular exercise, abstaining from drugs, and
getting adequate sleep.
 Regularly engaging in moderate or vigorous physical
activity was linked to adequate daily fruit and vegetable
consumption, healthy body mass index, not smoking,
being less depressed, having lower incidence of binge
drinking, being less likely to have multiple sex partners,
and getting adequate sleep.

HEALTH
 Chronic sleep deprivation may contribute to
cardiovascular disease and a shortened life-span, and
also result in cognitive and motor impairment that
increases the risk of motor vehicle crashes and work-
related accidents.

EATINGAND WEIGHT
 Some individuals inherit a tendency to be overweight.
 Being overweight/obese is linked to increased risk of
hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
 Overweight and obesity are also associated with mental
health problems, especially depression.
 Greater availability of food, greater reliance on energy-
saving devices, and declining physical activity can be
accounted for the statistics of becoming overweight

EATINGAND WEIGHT
 The long-term outcomes of calorie-restricting diets
revealed that 1/3 to 2/3 of dieters regain more weight
than they lost on their diets. However, some do maintain
the losses.

REGULAR EXERCISE
 Most experts recommend raising your heart rate to at
least 60% of your maximum heart rate.
 Exercise is associated with a higher self-concept, as well
as lower anxiety and depression.
 Individuals with higher levels of physical activity and
cardiovascular fitness were less likely to have depressive
symptoms.

SUBSTANCEABUSE
 Chronic binge drinking is more common among college
men, especially those who live in fraternity houses.
 Extreme binge drinking describes those who had 10 or
more drinks in a row in the last 2 weeks.
 Binge drinking peaks at 21 to 22 years of age
 1 in 9 who drink will become an alcoholic.
 There is a high frequency of alcoholism on first-degree
relatives of alcoholics
 About 1/3 recovers from alcoholism whether they’re in a
treatment program or not

SUBSTANCEABUSE
 Smoking is linked to 30# of cancer deaths, 21% of heart disease
deaths, and 82% of chronic pulmonary disease deaths.
 Secondhand smoke is implicated in as many as 9,000 lung cancer
deaths a year.
 Children of smokers are at risk for a number of problems, including
asthma,
 Marijuana and alcohol use were risk factors for using e-cigarettes in
emerging adulthood.
 Emerging adults who used e-cigarettes were more likely to view
emerging adulthood as a time of experimentation and were likely
to experience loss of a job, dating someone new, and experiencing
romantic breakup
 Addiction to nicotine is difficult to quit

SEXUAL ACTIVITY
 A sexual double standard continues to exist with stricter
norms for females and granting sexual freedom for
males
 Casual sex is more common in emerging adulthood than
in the late 20s
 Hooking-up: involves non-relationship sex from kissing
to intercourse
 Friends with Benefits: involves a relationship formed by
the integration of friendship and sexual intimacy without
explicit commitment

SEXUAL ORIENTATIONAND
BEHAVIOR
 Sexual orientation is a continuum ranging exclusive from
male-female relations to exclusive same-sex relations
 Women are more likely to change their sexual patterns
and desires
 All people regardless of their sexual orientation, have
similar physiological responses during sexual arousal and
seem to be aroused by the same type of tactile
stimulation

SEXUALLYTRANSMITTED
INFECTIONS
STI Description/cause Treatment
Gonorrhea Commonly called the “drip” or “clap.” Caused
by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae.
Spread by contact between infected moist
membranes (genital, oral-genital, or anal-
genital) of two individuals. Characterized by
discharge from penis or vagina and painful
urination. Can lead to infertility.
Penicillin, other antibiotics
Syphilis Caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum.
Characterized by the appearance of a sore
where syphilis entered the body. The sore can
be on the external genitals, vagina, or anus.
Later, a skin rash breaks out on palms of hands
and bottom of feet. If not treated, can
eventually lead to paralysis or even death.
Penicillin

SEXUALLYTRANSMITTED
INFECTIONS
Chlamydia A common STI named for the bacterium
Chlamydia trachomatis, an organism that
spreads by sexual contact and infects the
genital organs of both sexes. A special
concern is that females with chlamydia
may become infertile. It is recommended
that adolescent and young adult females
have an annual screening for this STI.
Antibiotics
Genital herpes Caused by a family of viruses with
different strains. Involves an eruption of
sores and blisters. Spread by sexual
contact.
No known cure, but antiviral
medications can shorten
outbreaks.

SEXUALLYTRANSMITTED
INFECTIONS
AIDS Caused by a virus, the human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which destroys
the body’s immune system. Semen and blood
are the main vehicles of transmission.
Common symptoms include fevers, night
sweats, weight loss, chronic fatigue, and
swollen lymph nodes.
New treatments have slowed
the progression from HIV to
AIDS; no cure.
Genital warts Caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV),
which does not always produce symptoms.
Usually appear as small, hard painless bumps
in the vaginal area, or around the anus. Very
contagious. Certain high-risk types of this
virus cause cervical cancer and other genital
cancers. May recur despite treatment. A new
HPV preventive vaccine, Gardasil, has been
approved for girls and women 9 to 26 years of
age.
A topical drug, freezing, or
surgery

FORCIBLESEXUAL BEHAVIOR
 Although most victims of rape are women, rape of men
does occur
 Men in prisons are vulnerable to rape usually by
heterosexual males who use rape as means of
establishing their dominance and power.
 Most likely to occur when both individuals drink alcohol
 What are the characteristics of male rapists?
 Angry at women in general
 Aggression increases their sense of power/masculinity
 They want to hurt/humiliate victims

VIEWOF PIAGET
 Piaget stressed that adults are more quantitatively
advanced in their thinking in the sense that they have
more knowledge.
 Adults increase their knowledge in a specific area
 Formal operational thought is the final stage

POSTFORMAL THOUGHT
 Reflective, relativistic, and contextual – thinking deeply
 The correct solution to a problem requires reflective
thinking and may vary from one situation to another
 Provisional – becoming more skeptical about the truth
and unwillingness to accept an answer as final
 Realistic – thinking cannot always be abstract
 Recognized as being influenced by emotion

STAGES OF ADULT THINKING
 Schaie believes cognitive abilities develop as Piaget
described, but become more goal directed during
adulthood.
 Acquisitive Stage: Schaie’s term for all four of Piaget’s
stages, during which the child or adolescent builds basic
skills and abilities that precede Schaie’s stages of adult
thinking.
 Achieving Stage: young adults direct their intelligence
toward specific goals rather than following every inclination
as might adolescents who have not yet formulated clear
personal choices.

 Responsible Stage: middle adults also consider their
responsibility to others—mates, children, aging parents,
and community—when making decisions.
 Executive Stage: applies to some middle adults who have
powerful positions that bring broader and more complex
responsibilities and require a new type of cognition,
applying postformal thinking about systems to practical
problems, as they work to understand and meet the needs
of competing groups in a large organization that affects
many people beyond self and family.

 Reintegrative Stage: late adults focus again on their
personal interests and value
 Legacy-creating Stage: individuals make end-of-life
decisions and arrangements for after their dea

CREATIVITY
 Most creative products were generated during the 30s,
which would then be followed by a decline
 There is an extensive variation in the lifetime output of
creative individuals

CAREERS AND WORK
 Work defines people in fundamental ways. It influences their
financial standing, housing, the way they spend their time,
where they live, their friendships, and their health. Some
people define their identity through their work
 Maintaining a high aspiration and certainty over career goals
insulated individuals against unemployment in the severe
economic recession in 2007
 Stress caused by unemployment comes not only from a loss
of income and the resulting financial hardships but also
decreased self-esteem
 Support of understanding, adaptable family members also
helps individuals cope with unemployment
 Gender inequalities at work still persist

TEMPERAMENT
 Children who had an easy temperament at 3 to 5 years
of age were likely to be well adjusted as young adults
 Individuals who had an inhibited temperament in
childhood are less likely than other adults to be assertive
or experience social support, and more likely to delay
entering a stable job track
 When 3-year old children showed good control of their
emotions and were resilient in the face of stress, they
were likely to continue to handle emotions effectively as
adults

ATTACHMENT
 Attachment appears during infancy and plays an important
part in socioemotional development
 Although relationships with romantic partners differ from
those with parents, romantic partners fulfill some of the same
needs for adults as parents do for their children.
 Adults may count on their romantic partners to be a secure
base to which they can return and obtain comfort and
security in stressful times.
 Attachment security in infancy does not always by itself
produce long-term positive outcomes, but rather is linked to
later outcomes through connections with the way children,
adolescents, and adults subsequently experience various
social contexts as they develop

ATTRACTION
 Immediate impressions can be accurate
 Individuals who encountered others with attractive faces
were more likely to overestimate their intelligence.
 Our friends are much more like us in terms of attitudes,
values, lifestyles, and physical attractiveness
 Consensual Validation: when our own attitudes and
values are supported when someone else is similar to us.

ATTRACTION
 Women tend to rate as most important such traits as
considerateness, honesty, dependability, kindness,
understanding, and earning prospects
 Men prefer good looks, cooking skills, and frugality
 Partner physical attractiveness played a larger role in
predicting husbands’ marital satisfaction than in
predicting wives’ marital satisfaction

LOVE
 Love refers to a vast and complex territory of human
behavior, spanning a range of relationships that includes
friendship, romantic love, affectionate love, and
consummate love.
 Self-disclosure and the sharing of private thoughts are
the hallmarks of intimacy
 Juggling the competing demands of intimacy, identity,
and independence also becomes a central task of
adulthood.

LOVE
 According to Erikson, after individuals have established
stable and successful identities, they enter the intimacy
vs. isolation stage.
 Erikson described intimacy as finding oneself while
losing oneself in another person, and it requires a
commitment to another person

LOVE
 Robert Sternberg developed a triangular theory of love
to explain the similarities and differences among love
relationships.
 According to Sternberg, love has three essential
components:
 Intimacy: feelings in a relationship that promote closeness,
bondedness, and connectedness.
 Passion: the expression of desires and needs for self-
esteem, nurturance, affiliation, dominance, submission,
and sexual fulfillment
 Commitment: can be short-term or long-term

LOVE
 7Types of Love (Sternberg):
 Liking: intimacy without passion or commitment
 This describes many friendships.
 Infatuation: Passion without intimacy or commitment. Can be long-
lasting if unrequited.
 “Love at first sight”
 Empty Love: Commitment without intimacy or passion.
 Ex.: Arranged Marriages
 Romantic Love: Intimacy and passion without commitment.
 Companionate Love: Intimacy and commitment without passion.
 Fatuous Love: Passion and commitment without intimacy.
 “whirlwind romance”
 Consummate Love: a balance of all the essential components in
equal measure. It is hard to attain and, once you have it, takes work
to maintain.

FALLINGOUT OF LOVE
 Our happiness and personal development may benefit
from ending a close relationship.
 Being in love when love is not returned can lead to
depression, obsessive thoughts, sexual dysfunction, health
problems, inability to work effectively, difficulty in making
new friends and self-condemnation

SINGLE ADULTS
 Stereotypes associated with being single range from
“swinging single” to the “desperately lonely, suicidal” single
 Common challenges faced by single adults may include
forming intimate relationships with other adults, confronting
loneliness, and finding a niche in a society that is marriage
oriented
 Advantages of being single include having time to make
decisions about one’s life course, time to develop personal
resources to meet goals, freedom to make autonomous
decisions and pursue one’s own schedule and interests,
opportunities to explore new places and try out new things,
and privacy

COHABITINGADULTS
 Some couples view their cohabitation not as a precursor to
marriage, but as an ongoing lifestyle.
 Young adults’ main reasons for cohabiting are to spend time
together, share expenses, and evaluate compatibility.
 Disapproval by parents and other family members can place
emotional strain on the cohabiting couple.
 Some cohabiting couples have difficulty purchasing and
owning property jointly.
 The less traditional lifestyle of cohabitation may attract less
conventional individuals who do not believe in marriage
 The experience of cohabiting changes people’s attitudes and
habits in ways that increase their likelihood of divorce.

MARRIED ADULTS
 The changing norm of male-female equality in marriage
and increasingly high expectations for what a marital
relationship should be has produced marital
relationships that are more fragile and intense than they
were for earlier generations.
 While marriage rates are declining and the average age
of marriage is going up, recent research indicates that
marriage is a very important life pursuit.
 Individuals who are married lived longer, healthier lives
than those who are single, cohabiting, or divorced.

DIVORCEDADULTS
 Youthful marriages, low educational level, low income, not having a
religious affiliation, having parents who are divorced, and having a
baby before marriage are factors that are associated with increases
in divorce.
 Divorced adults have higher rates of depression, anxiety physical
illnesses, suicide, motor vehicle accidents, alcoholism, and
mortality.
 Women are more likely to sense that something is wrong with the
marriage and are more likely to seek a divorce than are men
 Women also show better emotional adjustment and are more likely
to perceive divorce as a second chance to increase their happiness,
improve their social lives, and pursue better work opportunities.
However, it has a more negative economic impact on women

DIVORCEDADULTS
 Enhancers: competent in multiple areas of life and has the
ability to bounce back.
 Good-enough: solves a problem, but not good at planning
and less persistent
 Seekers: motivated to find new mates as soon as possible
 Libertines: spends more time in bars and had more casual
sex
 Competent Loners: well-adjusted self-sufficient, and socially
skilled.
 Defeated: the problems prior to divorce becomes increased

REMARRIED ADULTS
 Men are more likely to remarry
 Many people remarry not for love but for financial
reasons, help in rearing children, and reduce loneliness

GAY AND LESBIAN ADULTS
 Lesbian couples place a high priority on equality in their
relationships.
 Only a small segment of the gay population has a large
number of sexual partners and is uncommon among
lesbians.

MAKING MARRIAGEWORK
 Establish love maps
 Nurture fondness and admiration
 Turn toward each other
 Let your partner influence you
 Solve solvable conflicts
 Overcome gridlock
 Create shared meaning

BECOMINGA PARENT
 Most parents learn parenting practices from their own
parents, accepting some and discarding others.
 Undesirable practices may be passed on

GENDER
 Women enjoy rapport talk, while men enjoys report talk.
 Women place a high value on relationships and focus on
nurturing their connections.
 Males roles are contradictory and inconsistent
 Men die 8 to 10 years earlier than women due to high rates
of stress-related disorders, alcoholism, car accidents,
homicide and suicide.
 “real men” definitions of masculinity looks at women in
terms of their bodies
 Nurturing and being sensitive to others are considered to
be aspects of female role

GENDER
 Women have more close friends and such friendships
involve more self-disclosure and exchange of mutual
support.
 Adult male pattern of friendship often involves keeping
one’s distance while sharing useful information.
 Men seek practical solutions to their problems rather
than sympathy and are more competitive.
 Transgenders prefers neutral labels “they” or “ze”
 Transgender individuals can be straight, gay, lesbian, or
bisexual.

REFERENCES
Arnett, J. J. (2015). Emerging adulthood:The winding road
from the late teens through the twenties (2nd ed.). Oxford
University Press
Kraynok, M. C., Seifert, K. L., Hoffnung, R. J., &
Hoffnung, M. (2017). Lifespan development (3rd ed.).
Academic Media Solutions.
Santrock, J.W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed).
McGraw-Hill

Emerging and Early Adulthood

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Emerging and Early Adulthood

Similar to Emerging and Early Adulthood (20)

More from Martin Vince Cruz, RPm

More from Martin Vince Cruz, RPm (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Emerging and Early Adulthood