Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

M O D U L E 3 9
Adulthood
I thought I got better as I got older. I found out that wasn’t the case in a real hurry last 
year. After going twelve years in professional football and twelve years before that in 
amateur football without ever having surgery performed on me, the last two seasons of 
my career I went under the knife three times. It happened very quickly and without 
warning, and I began to ask myself, “Is this age? Is this what’s happening?” Because up 
until that moment, I’d never realized that I was getting older. (Kotre & Hall, 1990, 
pp. 257, 259–260) 
As a former professional football player, Brian Sipes intensely felt the changes in his 
body brought about by aging. But the challenges he experienced are part of a normal 
process that affects all people as they move through adulthood. 
Psychologists generally agree that early adulthood begins around age 20 and 
lasts until about age 40 to 45 when middle adulthood begins and continues until 
around age 65. Despite the enormous importance of these periods of life in terms 
of both the accomplishments that occur in them and their overall length (together 
they span some 44 years), they have been studied less than has any other stage. 
For one reason, the physical changes that occur during these periods are less 
apparent and more gradual than those at other times during the life span. In 
addition, the diverse social changes that arise during this period defy simple 
categorization. 
The variety of changes that occur in early adulthood have led many develop-
mental psychologists to view the start of the period as a transitional phase called 
emerging adulthood.  Emerging adulthood  is the period beginning in the late teen-
age years and extending into the mid-20s. During emerging adulthood, people are 
no longer adolescents, but they haven’t fully taken on the responsibilities of adult-
hood. Instead, they are still engaged in determining who they are and what their 
life and career paths should be (Schwartz, Côté, & Arnett, 2005; Bukobza, 2009; 
Lamborn & Groh, 2009).
The view that adulthood is preceded by an extended period of emerging 
adulthood refl ects the reality that the economies of industrialized countries have 
shifted away from manufacturing to an economy that focuses on technology and 
information and thus requires increases in time spent in educational training. Fur-
thermore, the age at which most people marry and have children has risen sig-
nifi cantly (Arnett, 2007). 
There’s also an increasing ambivalence about reaching adulthood. When people 
in their late teens and early 20s are asked if they feel they have reached adulthood, 
most say “yes and no” (see Figure 1). In short, emerging adulthood is an age of 
identity exploration in which individuals are more self-focused and uncertain than 
they will be later in early adulthood (Arnett, 2000, 2006). 
As we discuss the changes that occur through emerging adulthood, early adult-
hood, middle adulthood, and ultimately late adulthood, keep in mind the demarca-
tions between the periods are fuzzy. However, the changes are certainly no less 
profound than they were in earlier periods of development.