Alterations After Experience For Emerging Adulthood

Daniel Levinson depicts the late adulthood period as those years that encompass age 65 and beyond. Other developmental psychologists further divide later adulthood into young-old (ages 65–85) and old-old (ages 85 and beyond) stages. Today, 13 percent of the population is over the age of 65, compared with 3 percent at the beginning of this century. This dramatic increase in the demographics of older adulthood has given rise to the discipline of gerontology, or the study of old age and aging. Gerontologists are particularly interested in confronting ageism, or prejudice and discrimination against older adults.

Emerging adults have reached a step up from childhood but are not yet ready to fully take on adult responsibilities. This part of life is open to many new experiences which can be very good for the morality of this upcoming generation of adults. People find themselves changing majors in college or taking different classes to explore their interests and find out where they best belong in their future career field.

Being an adult is the number one thing that children want to be: The desire to get older to do things that you want when you want and having no one say otherwise. However, what is an adult? An ambiguous term that really falls into the hands of the individual, where at Sixteen you can drive, eighteen you can vote, and twenty-one you can drink, for those in the USA, all varying ages that individuals could use as indications of adulthood. Robin Heinig wrote and article “What is it about 20- somethings?” where she discusses Arnett’s proposal about a new developmental stage, “Emerging Adulthood”. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, an American professor in psychology, believes that we aren 't entering adulthood till the later portions of our twenties. For some, this may be true but for the general population including myself I find this hard to believe. Leo Hendry’s article, “How universal is emerging adulthood? An empirical example”, on emerging adulthood gives a deeper understanding to what this generation 's kids are going through. The late teens are a crucial part to the lives of a young adult. It 's the time that we spend trying to identify ourselves, escape the circumstance that we are put into at a younger age, or just had a better family income. Arnett is not wrong, but all other external factors need to be accounted for before we know, or even consider if emerging adulthood is a new developmental stage.

Whenever an individual is diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the individual and the family members often wonder what the future holds for them, and the diagnosed individual. Although there is no statistical evidence on the life expectancy for the community of people with ASD, most premature deaths that do occur are related to the lack of care in an institution, infection, and/or poor medical supervision (Van Hecke, 2010). Premature deaths can also be linked to suicide by individuals in the ASD community, often those with a less severe version of the disorder. Suicide can most commonly occur when the individual develops a mental illnesses, often as the cause of a disconnect from society. Common mental illnesses associated with ASD

As a college senior myself, this article is very relevant to my current life. In general terms, an adult is more responsible, has set plans, and is ready to face the real world. An emerging adult, however, is less responsible and more of a “free spirit” in layman terms. With less than 70 days till graduation, I can very clearly identify myself as an emerging adult. For future research upon this topic, I think it would be important to note how old the college student is. For example, a college freshman is much more likely to be classified as an emerging adult than a college

Emerging adulthood: A phase of young adulthood from about age 18 to 25 during which young adults are still developing and maturing.

There are many different cultural factors that have led to the emergence of emerging adulthood (the transition to adulthood has become so delayed and prolonged that it has spawned a new transitional period extending from late teens to the mid- to late-twenties). First, entry-level positions in many fields require more education than they did in the past, prompting young adults to seek higher education in record numbers and thus delaying financial independence and career commitment. Secondly, wealthy nations with longer-lived populations have no pressing need for young people’s labor, freeing those who are financially able for extended exploration.

Every individual is influenced, in some way, by the people and environment around them. I believe that experiences in one’s life, good or bad, are able to shape the individual into who they want to become. As we can see, emerging adulthood emphasizes these types of learning experiences of exploring and independently living. These times of exploration are available for individuals, who live in a developed and economic society, because these individuals “marry later, have children later, obtain more education, and have a greater range of occupational and recreational opportunities” (Arnett, 2004, p. 24), which is why I claim I am an emerging adult because this is the type of society I live in. Emerging adulthood is becoming the norm because societies advancements have granted young people the chance to extend their time of exploration and have allowed individuals like me to figure what I really want to do in life (Arnett, 2004, p. 24). The key features of emerging adulthood --identity of exploration, age of instability, self-focus, age of feeling in-between, and age of possibilities are qualities I have found that play or have played a part in my life.

7. How does life satisfaction change over adulthood (if at all)? What are examples of some factors that influence self-reported life satisfaction? What are some weaknesses of studies of life satisfaction?

There are a number of changes one experiences as one moves from adolescence to adulthood o midlife. For instance, as an adolescent, one behavior that was common to me, as it is to most adolescents, was the desire to "test the limits." This is the parental balance that comes with temperament and experience how to set limits and guidelines while, at the same time, allowing the teen to make their own mistakes and constructively learn from those errors in judgement. Then, as we grow into adulthood, there seems no adequate way to prepare for the role of parenting a teen the emotional storms require patience, listening, and unconditional acceptance of the need to grow and explore- and to become their own person. Upon reflection, this testing of limits seems to be more of a model of learning about views towards religion, spirituality, class structure, ethnicity, and sexuality. The teen cannot, nor is expected to make up their mind about lifelong views on these subjects, but may experiment and use the testing period to find a comfortable balance from what they have been told versus what they can experience for themselves. Without testing, I am less sure that many of my adulthood views would have taken place..

The five features proposed that make emerging adulthood distinct are the age of identity explorations, the age of instability, the self-focused age, the age of feeling in-between, and the age of possibilities. Emerging adulthood includes things that do not fit into adolescence or early adulthood, like puberty and living with their parents for adolescence and a stable job and marriage for early adulthood. It is too long and important of a time period to be called a transition, which refers to the transitional changes at the end or beginning of a developmental period. Many people now have agreed that growing up is not as easy as it used to be and that therefore adulthood is being pushed into later ages. Some people view moving straight from adolescence to adulthood as having negative effects and that the period of emerging adulthood brings on a new perspective which sets adulthood into a later age at which those development changes are more

Middle adulthood is an unpredictable time and age that requires a multidimensional viewpoint to see the majority of the processes and changes that are occurring. There are many changes during this process which impede an individual physical, psychological and socially. While there are a number of circumstances which usually create anxiety and stress in one’s life. Depending on the individual, they may feel great about their achievements regardless if they are not totally happy with themselves. During this period most people can not give an account of how their time was spent. It appears like yesterday you were graduating from high school, going off to college, while others were getting married and having children. Subsequently, your children

Some children are forced to have various responsibilities from a young age or even work full time. What kind of affect could this have on their transition to adulthood?

Jeffery Jenson Arnett’s theory of emerging adulthood states that once emerging adults leave the dependency of their childhood, they have not endured the responsibilities that are normal in adulthood which leads them to explore possible life directions within love, work, and even worldviews. This part of one’s life is when a multitude of directions are possible as it is when the future of the individual’s life is undecided leading to the person to explore their possibilities independently. Personally, I believe that this theory is to be agreed with. Once an individual is beginning to enter adulthood, they begin looking for different life experiences that have a possibility to change them on a great scale as they learn about the different aspects

From adolescence to late adulthood, our lives change drastically. Our goals, achievements and conceptions of life differentiate as we mature. As we grow older, we no longer concern ourselves with self-identity or the opinions of others, but instead we focus on our accomplishments and evaluate our life (if we lived a meaningful life). From adolescence to late adulthood, we experience different developmental tasks at a particular place in our life span.