THE ADULT YEARS

• Major changes that occurred in the cognitive, moral, gender,

sexuality and social development in young adulthood.
• Adaptation issues in gender, career, choice marriage and
parenthood in young adulthood.
• Major changes that occurred in the cognitive, affective gender
sexual function social development and parent children
relationship in middle-aged.
• Cognitive affective gender sexuality and social development in late
life.
Majorchanges that occurred in the cognitive moral, gender, sexuality
and social development in young adulthood.
• The three stages of  adulthood, middle adulthood, and late
adulthood each have their own physical, cognitive, and social
challenges which occur during development.
• The early adulthood include ages between 20_25, middle adult
ranges between 45-65 these represents longer period of time.
• During early adult hood most substantial contributions are made to
society, by meeting two of Erik Erikson’s life challenges:
• Learning to give and receive love in a close, long-term
relationship, and developing an interest in guiding the
development of the next generation, through parenting.
• Parenting entails that
 babies need a conscientious mother who does not smoke, drink, or
use drugs during her pregnancy,
 infants need caretakers who are consistently available, loving, and
supportive to help them form a secure base.
 Adolescent mothers are more likely to use drugs and alcohol
during their pregnancies, to have poor parenting skills in
general,
 and to provide insufficient support for the child.
• Beyond Formal Operational Thought: Postformal Thought
• Young adults gain more experience, they think increasingly more
in the abstract, and are able to understand different perspectives
and complexities.
• Thinking abstractly is only one characteristic of adult thought, for
example:
• If you compare a 14-year-old with someone in their late 30s, you
would probably find that the later considers not only what is
possible, but also what is likely.
• Why the change?
• The young adult has gained experience and understands why
• possibilities do not always become realities. This difference in
adult and adolescent thought tend to provoke arguments between
the generations.
• For example:

• A student in her late 30s relayed such an argument she was having
with her 14-year-old son. The son had saved a considerable amount
of money and wanted to buy an old car and store it in the garage
until he was old enough to drive.
• He could sit in it, pretend he was driving, clean it up, and show it
to his friends. It sounded like a perfect opportunity. The mother,
however, had practical objections.
• The car would just sit for several years while deteriorating. The son
would probably change his mind about the type of car he wanted
by the time he was old enough to drive and they would be stuck
with a car that would not run.
• She was also concerned that having a car nearby would be too
much temptation and the son might decide to sneak it out for a
quick ride before he had a permit or license.
• Piaget’s theory of cognitive development ended with formal
operations, but it is possible that other ways of thinking may
develop after (or “post”) formal operations in adulthood (even if
• this thinking does not constitute a separate “stage” of
development).
• Postformal thought is practical, realistic and more individualistic,
but also characterized by understanding the complexities of various
perspectives.
•Postformal thought is often described as more flexible, logical,
willing to accept moral and intellectual complexities, and dialectical
than previous stages in development.
•One of the first theories of cognitive development in early adulthood
originated with William Perry (1970) who studied undergraduate
students at Harvard University. 
•Perry noted that over the course of students’ college years, cognition
tended to shift from:
• dualism (absolute, black and white, right and wrong type of
thinking) to:
• multiplicity (recognizing that some problems are solvable and
some answers are not yet known) to:
•relativism (understanding the importance of the specific context of
knowledge, it’s all relative to other factors).
• Similar to Piaget’s formal operational thinking in adolescence, this
change in thinking in early adulthood is affected by educational
experiences.
•Dialectical thought
•In addition to moving toward more practical considerations, thinking
in early adulthood may also become more flexible and balanced.
• Abstract ideas that the adolescent believes in firmly may become
standards by which the individual evaluates reality.
• As Perry’s research pointed out, adolescents tend to think
in dichotomies or absolute terms; ideas are true or false; good or bad;
right or wrong and there is no middle ground.
•However, with education and experience, the young adult comes to
recognize that there is some right and some wrong in each position.
Such thinking is more realistic because very few positions, ideas,
situations, or people are completely right or wrong.
• Morality develops across a lifetime and is influenced by an
individual's experiences and their behaviour when faced
with moral issues through different periods' physical and
cognitive development.
Adaptation issues in gender, career, choice marriage and
parenthood in young adulthood.
• Completing school, moving into full-time employment, getting
married, and becoming a parent are key transitions in young
adulthood.
• The acquisition of new roles and statuses during the transition to
dulthood represents a salient and normative developmental task
expected to be completed during this life period.
• The of role transitions have lost their relevance in marking the entry
into adulthood and that more individualistic and personal factors,
such as a sense of independence, autonomy, and responsibility,
define a period of emerging adulthood.
• Many young adults marry and raise children, and it is likely that
moving into family roles indicates adult status to the self as well as
others.
• Despite generally greater gender equality in society, these
pathways continue to differ by gender. Research on the life course
indicates that men and women differ in the timing of transitions,
particularly to family roles such as:
 marriage and raising children,
 and in how they sequence and combine such roles
• Today’s young women still tend to have children earlier and marry
• earlier than men. As such there are also growing concerns about
young men’s ability to successfully move into adulthood.
• Yet knowledge about how pathways to adulthood vary by gender is
limited.
• The of role transitions have lost their relevance in marking the
entry into adulthood and that more individualistic and personal
factors, such as a sense of independence, autonomy, and
responsibility, define a period of emerging adulthood.
• Young adults who postpone family formation for a college
education or career advancement, many young adults marry and
• raise children, and it is likely that moving into family roles
indicates adult status to the self as well as others.
• Most young people take on marriage and raising children for the
first time during young adulthood, which makes such role
transitions distinct indicators of the new adult status.
• The role of transitions, particularly into a parenting role, continue
to be important markers of young adulthood for the young adults
themselves but that associated individualistic experiences are
relevant as well.
• The transitions in different domains, such as education and family,
are interdependent within and across time and form social
pathways of linked developmental paths of adaptations.
• The timing of one transition often has cascading consequences for
other transitions such as:
 postsecondary education often results in postponement of family
formation.
 Earlier parenting hinders not only completion of high school but
also continuation in postsecondary education.
 teenage parenting often occurs outside of marriage,
 as marriage happens earlier, it increases the probability of divorce
and separation during the transition to adulthood.
Major changes that occurred in the cognitive, affective gender sexual function social
development and parent children relationship in middle-aged.
• At about 30 years of age, is a period of reappraisal of one's life.
• The adult's role in society is defined, physical development peaks,
and the adult becomes independent.
• Responsibilities and relationships
• The development of an intimate (e.g., close, sexual) relationship
• with another person occurs.
• According to Erikson, this is the stage of intimacy versus isolation
that is by this stage of life, he or she suffers emotional isolation in
the future.
• By 30 years of age, for example, most Americans are married
and have children.
• During their middle thirties, many women alter their lifestyles
by returning to work or school or by resuming their careers.
• Middle Adulthood: 40-65 Years
• Characteristics: The person in middle adulthood possesses
more power than at other stages of life stages.
• Responsibilities: The individual either maintains a
continued sense of productivity or develops a sense of
emptiness (Erikson's stage of generativity versus stagnation).
• Relationships:

• Seventy to eighty percent of men in their middle forties or early

fifties exhibit a midlife crisis. This may lead to:
 A change in profession or lifestyle
 Infidelity, separation, or divorce
 Increased use of alcohol or drugs
 Depression
• Midlife crisis is associated with an awareness of one's own aging
and death and severe or unexpected lifestyle changes such as:
death of a spouse, loss of a job, serious illness.
• Climacterium is the change in physiologic function that occurs
during midlife.
• In males, although hormone levels do not change significantly, a
decrease in muscle strength, endurance, and sexual performance
occurs in midlife.
• In females, menopause occurs:
 The ovaries stop functioning, and menstruation stops in the late
forties or early fifties.
 Absence of menstruation for one year defines the end of
menopause.
• To avoid unwanted pregnancy, contraceptive measures should be
used until at least one year following the last missed menstrual
period.
• Most women experience menopause with relatively few physical
or psychological problems.
• Vasomotor instability, called hot flashes or flushes, is a common
physical problem seen in women in all countries and cultural
groups.
• Vasomotor may continue for years and can be relieved by estrogen
replacement therapy.
 Cognitive affective gender sexuality and social development in
late life.
• The late-adult transition marks the close of the middle years and the
start of late adulthood.
• In this transition, transition, individuals come to terms with their
impending retirement and the major life changes it will bring.
• Women from more highly educated families were less likely to be
among on the pathways of “Unmarried Early Mothers” and the
“Married Mothers” than the “Postsecondary-Educated Women Without
Children.”
• Men with more highly educated parents were less likely to be on the
“Married Fathers” than on the “Postsecondary-Educated Men Without
Children” pathway.
• Cognitive abilities depend on biological processes such as events
occurring within our brains.
• As such there are some declines in cognitive functioning with age.
• Information being processed in short term memory as one tries to
solve word puzzles, sometimes in older adults it is performed
poorly than younger ones.
• If older adults must perform several short-term memory tasks in a
row, with young ones, older persons often show a greater decline
on later tasks than young persons
• The ability of short term memory has effects of proactive
interference.
• Proactive interference entails Interference with the learning or
storage of current information by information previously entered
into memory.
• In long term memory, the ability to bring previously memorized
information to mind tend to decline and the ability simply to tell
whether or not information being presented has been presented
before also decline in performance with increasing age.
• In late adult life, Social partners that are meaningful and important
are preserved, more peripheral social ties are discarded, and anger
and distress are experienced less frequently. Positive affect remains
highly stable, only decreasing in some studies among the oldest old.
• Levinson’s Stages of Adult Life: The concept he calls the life
structure.
• The life structure term was referred to the underlying patterns of a
person’s life at a particular time such as:
 an evolving cognitive framework reflecting an individual’s views
about the nature and meaning of his or her life.
• According to Levinson, individuals have different life structures at
different times during their adult years and move from one to
another through transition periods lasting about five years.
• Levinson divides our adult years into four major eras, each with its
characteristic life structure, and each separated from the next by a
transition period.
• The first transition occurs between 17 to 22 years the preadult era,
the time before we are adults, and early adulthood.
• The preadult era transition involves establishing one’s
independence, both financial and emotional wellbeing.
• The preadult era is characterized with activities such as passing
through college, gaining first employment or entering military
service and learning to live independently.
• Early adulthood transition comes after completing preadult era,
there two key components of life structure at this time, Levinson
terms the dream and the mentor.
• The dream is a vision of future accomplishments entails what a
person hopes to achieve in the years ahead.
• The Mentors are older and more experienced individuals who help
to guide young adults.
• At the of age thirty, Levinson suggests, many people experience
what he terms the age thirty transition.
• At this time, individuals realize that they are nearing the point of
no return as such if they remain in their present life course, they
will soon have too much invested to change.
• After early adult hood is the transition of midlife transition which
is the Middle adulthood a time when many people come to terms
for the first time with their own mortality; many change either
careers, divorce etc.
• The late adult transition marks the close of the middle years and the
start of late adulthood.
• In the adulthood transition, individuals come to terms with their
impending retirement and the major life changes it will bring.
• In this period of readjustment, their life structure shifts to include
these changes. Their careers come to end or almost over and pursue
other hobbies and interests.
• Women in many societies face a different set of issues and
problems as they age. Such as:
 women, more than men, have the responsibility of caring for their
 elderly parents,
 women, if they have remained at home during at least a portion of
child rearing, may find a larger hole in their lives when the
youngest child depart.
• Levinson’s theory is a stage theory it suggests that all persons pass
through a series of eras and transitions.
• Major crises of adult life which have been a focused by other
researchers as major events are:
 Divorce, caring for elderly parents and unemployment.
REFERENCE
• Baron. R.A (2002). Psychology. Prentice-Hall.
• Buchmann M. (1989) The script of life in modern society: Entry
into adulthood in a changing world. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press
• Cohen P, Kasen S, Chen H, Hartmark C, Gordon K.(2003).
Variations in patterns of developmental transitions in the
emerging adulthood period. Developmental Psychology.;39:657–
669.
• Coon, D. and Mitter. J. O.(2010). Introduction to Psychology:
Gateways to mind and behaviour with concerpt maps. Belmont,
CA: Wadsorth.