DEVELOPMENTAL TASKS IN ADULTHOOD

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DEVELOPMENTAL TASKS IN ADULTHOOD

• Create the life you want to live.
• Become the person you want to be.

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ADULTHOOD

• Vocational Decisions
• Family Life Cycle
• Personality

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FAMILY LIFE CYCLE

• 1. Establishing marriage.
• 2. New parenthood.
• 3. Child-rearing family.
• 4. Empty nest.
• 5. Grandparenthood.

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FAMILY LIFE CYCLE

• Changing family forms.
• More women working full time.
• More divorce single parenting.
• More reconstituted families.
• Ethnic and cultural variations.
• Values, timing, and forms.
• Extended family involvement.

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FAMILY LIFE CYCLE

• Establishing the marriage.
• 1. Significant life transition.
• 2. Dips in marital satisfaction
• Honeymoon is over effect
• Seven-year itch
• 3. Predictors of long-term satisfaction
• Start out happy
• Establish communication and problem-solving
• Maintain sources of enjoyment and fun

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FAMILY LIFE CYCLE

• New parenthood.
• 1. Joyful and stressful.
• 2. Marital satisfaction declines
• More for women than men
• 3. Factors that influence adjustment
• The baby
• The parents
• The resources

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FAMILY LIFE CYCLE

• Child-rearing family. Challenges
• 1. Based on children.
• Birth of a second child.
• Adolescents.
• 2. Based on life events.
• Unemployment, illness.
• 3. Based on extended family.

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FAMILY LIFE CYCLE

• 4. EMPTY NEST
• When grown children leave home
• Myth women are unhappy.
• Data individual marital satisfaction goes up.
• Marriages seen as Fairer, more equal, less
  conflictual.
• More time together, more money.

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FAMILY LIFE CYCLE

• 4b. RE-FILLING the NEST
• When grown children return home
• Generally positive
• Depends on relationship
• Depends on behavior of parents and children

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FAMILY LIFE CYCLE

• 5. Grandparenthood.
• The family national guard
• Very gratifying
• Different forms
• Remote emotional and geographical
• Companionate most common
• Involved parent-like role

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CHANGING RELATIONSHIPS IN ADULTHOOD

• Marital relationships.
• Normative developments.
• Stable happiness or unhappiness.
• Ends with widowhood.
• Siblings longest relationships.
• Friendships important across the life-span

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CHANGING RELATIONSHIPS IN ADULTHOOD

• Parent-child relationships
• More mutual
• Modified extended family
• Caring for aging parents
• Middle-generation Squeeze caring for aging
  parents and adolescent children.
• Caregiver burden women.

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WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

• Temperament
• Psychometric theory

Psy 311 Adulthood
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ADULT PERSONALITYPsychometric Theory The Big
Five

• 1. Neuroticism emotional
  stability vs. instability
• 2. Extroversion sociability vs. introversion
• 3. Openness to experience curiosity interest
  in variety vs. preference for sameness

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ADULT PERSONALITY Psychometric Theory The Big
Five

• 4. Agreeableness compliance
  cooperativeness vs. suspiciousness
• 5. Conscientiousness discipline
  organization vs. lack of seriousness

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How Does Personality Change Across Adulthood?
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PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENTFrom Adolescence to
Middle Age

• LESS
• Neurotic
• Extraverted
• Open to new experiences
• MORE
• Agreeable
• Conscientious

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PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENTFrom Middle to Old Age

• Relatively stable
• Maybe less active
• Maybe more introverted and introspective

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PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENTIn Old Age

• STEREOTYPES OF AGING
• MORE
• anxious
• rigid, stubborn
• bossy, complaining

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Why So Little Development From Middle to Old Age?

• 1. Methodological reasons
• measures of traits
• self-report
• repeated assessment

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Why So Little Development From Middle to Old Age?

• 2. Really stable
• Genetic influences
• Long lasting effects of childhood experiences
• Identity achieved

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Why So Little Development From Middle to Old Age?

• 3. Active stability
• Gene-environment correlations
• people seek out experiences that fit with their
  personality
• experiences maintain personality

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Why So Little Development From Middle to Old Age?

• 4. Changes are not AGE graded
• Biological changes
• Stressful life events
• Poor fit with environment
• POTENTIAL for change

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AGING of PERSONALITY

• 1. Stability of personality self-concept with a
  stable life
• 2. Changes as a result of changing life events
  crises spouse loss, job change, relocation,
  health, money changes
• 3. Only normative change more introverted or
  introspective

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LAST NAME, first name

• 1. When are the low points for marital
  satisfaction?
• 2. Name 3 factors that predict how stressful
  adjusting to the birth of a new baby will be.
• 3. How does personality change from middle to
  old age?
• 4. Name two things that cause personality to
  change.

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END