Introduction
People develop psychologically throughout the life cycle, including the three stages of adulthood identified by Erik Erikson: early adulthood, middle adulthood, and later adulthood. Each stage is initiated by situationally new challenges and results in the growth of a new psychological capacity. Family life can provide the love and support needed to adapt to the changing demands of each phase in the life cycle.
Adults, unlike children, have membership in two families: the family of origin and the family they form as adults. Although both are influential, for healthy adults it is the family they create that will exert the most significant impact on their adult psychological development.
The Family in Early Adulthood
A new family begins when a couple agrees to support each other’s physical, social, emotional, and spiritual well-being. In contrast to the experimental nature of adolescent relationships, an adult partnership requires a deep sense of commitment, an open-ended investment of oneself in a shared history. This committed relationship provides the context for the development of intimacy, the key requisite for psychosocial development in early adulthood. Intimacy is being authentically available for reciprocal, boundless connecting with an other in mutuality.
Intimacy means being in one’s own space while also in a shared space. It is not a loss of oneself but a sharing that transforms one’s own self. The two members of an intimate couple do not merge into each other. Such submergence is a sign of a dependent relationship and the loss of oneself. In contrast, healthy intimacy affords a quality of emergence, as the members become more fully themselves. One can be as unconstrained in the presence of the other as when one is by oneself. When intimacy is successfully achieved, the result is the development of a new psychological strength. The unique new strength of this stage is what Erikson calls simply “love.”
Such openness and commitment entail many risks, not only of committing oneself inappropriately but also of being misunderstood or rejected. However, if adults do not develop intimacy, they will, over time, feel an increasing sense of isolation: cut off from deep human connection, lonely, without anyone with whom to share their deepest selves, even if married. They will retreat psychologically to a regressive reliving of earlier conflicts and to using others in self-centered ways.
The birth of a child marks the second milestone in the family life cycle, as the couple adds the role of parent into their lives. Parents
must set aside many of their own needs to take care of a very dependent baby. Certain aspects of self will be neglected as this new role becomes central for the development of the parental self. New parents sacrifice sleep, free time, and time alone as a couple. They may also experience increased financial pressure. Moreover, caring for a baby is a significant responsibility, and new parents are often insecure about their parenting skills. If the couple, or one spouse, have difficulty adapting to their role as parents, their relationship as a couple may become strained. On the other hand, sharing in the care of children offers a profound context for deepening the sense of mutuality between the couple.
Children’s early years are characterized by intense caregiving by the parents, who play a formative role as ideal prototypes internalized by the child’s emerging sense of itself as an independent ego. When children reach the latency stage (around age six) and start school, yet another milestone in the parent-child relation emerges. Children now spend much of their time away from home, and the parents must adapt to this change. Their children will now be taught by others—teachers, coaches, friends—beyond the family circle. Increasingly, parents have the opportunity to become the joyful “witnesses” of their children becoming their own persons with their own networks of world relations and burgeoning interests and competencies.
The beginning of school can also prompt a change in the parents’ schedule. If one parent had stayed at home to raise the child, that parent now typically enters or reenters the workforce beyond the home or attends college. While such a change brings added income, it also decreases homemaking time and can introduce new stresses on family life, especially if these changes are not anticipated and agreed on by both parents.
The Family in Middle Adulthood
The family undergoes another major reorganization when the child reaches adolescence, the transition between dependent child and independent adult. Parents need to allow their adolescent gradually increasing independence and responsibility, so the child can increasingly rely on his or her own internal resources for emotional support and authority. What the adolescent seeks now is a different form of the parental relation: what psychologist Terri Apter characterizes as validation rather than interference.
This step is not usually smooth; parents and adolescents often experience confusing power struggles as they negotiate their new roles. Adolescents may behave angrily and rebelliously or withdraw into their world of friends. This behavior can be stressful for the whole family, but it serves a function. Emotional and physical distance from their parents allows adolescents an opportunity to begin to see themselves for who they are apart from their family and allows them to develop their own support system independent of the family. That all this takes place while adolescents are still under the care of their parents makes it psychologically difficult but provides a valuable buffering for adolescents’ forays beyond the family.
A particularly exemplary context for this change is adolescents’ sexual maturation. Adolescents attain adult sexual capacity before attaining the social status of adults, introducing a disjuncture between these two dimensions of their development. On one hand, they are already adults (sexually speaking), but on the other hand they are not yet adults (societally speaking). Adolescents need to understand their sexuality and learn to socialize with the other gender while postponing fully adult enactment of their sexual capacities.
A successful resolution of this phase results in a mutual liking and respect between parents and their adolescent children, and the readiness of both for the adolescent to leave home, on internal and external levels. For parents, the experience of their adolescents’ leaving home must be integrated and a changed relationship with them established. Next, without children at home, the parents must reconfigure who they are for each other, now that their long-standing role as mutual caretakers of children will no longer define their lives together. Issues that had been embedded within the parenting roles may make this adjustment extremely difficult. For those, male or female, who derived their identity from parenting, the ending of this role can result in a disorienting loss of self. For those parents who have been extremely involved in their children’s lives as a way of avoiding marital problems, these issues will now become more obtrusive and may lead to divorce.
Rediscovering themselves as a couple apart from children can be distressing or joyful, but it will be a time for major modifications, not only of the couple’s relation with each other but also of their entire life structure. New interests, jointly and individually, can now emerge, as their creativity is no longer tied to procreation. Previously neglected aspects of self now need to be balanced within a larger self-understanding. A more encompassing form of generativity becomes available as adult caring now transcends taking care of one’s children and can extend to one’s community, to one’s profession, and to the next generation. Otherwise, adults risk becoming self-absorbed, treating themselves as their “one and only baby.” With that comes stagnation, as life appears to be ever more disillusioning and boring.
The Family in Later Adulthood
Another milestone for both husband and wife is retirement. Retirees may experience a loss of their sense of purpose, self-esteem, and contact with a broader group of adults. Those who worked primarily taking care of the home may experience an intrusion on their responsibilities and sense of privacy when the now-retired spouse has no particular place to go each morning. A successful adjustment to retirement is marked by taking pleasure in the increased company of the other, a discovery of mutually pleasing activities, and sufficient time alone to pursue individual interests and friendships.
Becoming a grandparent is another major development of older adulthood. When their children have children, parents usually experience a sense of pride and completion. First, their own child has grown into a responsible adult and become a parent, and another generation of their family has begun. Second, spending time with grandchildren may be a renewing experience for grandparents, especially if they primarily spend their time with older people. Third, grandparenting evokes memories of one’s own parenting that can lead to making peace with one’s own children regarding residual resentments and regrets from their parent-child relationship.
An aging adult’s relationship with his or her child also changes in other ways at this time. It often becomes a relationship between equals, rather than between parent and child. A new dimension of friendship develops in their relationship, as one’s adult children now become sources of authority and support.
A major concern of older adults is the loss of physical or cognitive functioning, requiring greater dependence. When one spouse can no longer do some of the things her or she used to, a healthy adjustment would include the ill spouse coming to accept this new dependence and the partner accommodating to these new responsibilities. Such optimal development will result in a heightened sense of intimacy, trust, and commitment. Disability in older adulthood may also transform parent-child relationships, with the children now assuming the role of caretaker.
The next phase of family life, widowhood (or, less commonly, widowerhood), is characterized by completing the mourning process, assuming roles formerly assumed by the other, and a renewed interest in people and activities. This process entails absorbing the shock of the other no longer being present and the accompanying feelings, which typically include anger, sadness, fear, relief, or guilt. When one’s partner dies, it is a time to review the marriage and to acknowledge what was and what was not. Husbands or wives may find themselves unable to accept the other’s death. If so, they may become embittered or depressed. This happens especially if there was some major unresolved conflict in the marriage or if there was a personal dysfunction that interfered with functioning emotionally, physically, or financially on one’s own.
Old age is not only about loss. A life well lived now nearing its end affords a momentous positive growth opportunity as well: a uniquely insightful perspective from which to see one’s life as one’s own. As author Betty Friedan has pointed out, to “own” one’s life, and so take full responsibility for it, enables the person to embrace it as a whole, in which every thread fits perfectly within an unbroken tapestry that admits of no substitutes. This vantage point opens a profound gratitude for one’s family and for one’s place in the family of life itself. This final growth is what Erikson meant by the term “integrity” and what is now more often referred to as “personality integration.” With this sense of completion comes true wisdom and deep spiritual joy.
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