Development from Adolescence to Early Adulthood

A dynamic systemic approach to transitions and transformations

Marion Kloep, Leo Hendry, Rachel Taylor, Ian Stuart-Hamilton

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780415640091
• eBook ISBN: 9781317481393
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Traditionally, the subject of adolescent development has been explored using a stage based approach, often with an emphasis on the potential risks and problems of adolescence.

Taking a different approach, in this book the authors draw upon a wealth of research to examine the period of development from adolescence to adulthood from a dynamic systems perspective; investigating multi-facetted, multi-variable explanations surrounding the transitions and consequent transformations that occur in young peoples' lives, as they change from teenagers to young adults.

The book considers the social institutions, interactions, contexts and relationships that influence each other, and young people, during developmental transitions.

Topics covered include:

• dynamic systems theory in developmental and social psychology
• adolescents in social contexts
• compliments, lies and other social skills
• school, university and labour market transition
• adolescent health in a lifespan context
• family dynamics.

Development from Adolescence to Early Adulthood will be key reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the field of developmental psychology, as well as clinicians and policy makers working with young people.

Chapter 1

Looking at transitions

In this book, we set out to look at the processes and mechanisms of human change. We have chosen the period of transitions into adulthood to do this because it is a time of marked body changes, social and career decisions and the beginnings of identity formation, changes that all lead to diversifying the characteristics of young people in the process of transitions towards adulthood. This choice, however, does not imply that we believe that adolescence is the only or the most important time where such transitions and trajectories occur. Rather, we take the stance that human development begins with stem cell differentiation in the womb and ends with the breaking down of cells after death. In other words, it is a lifelong process. By illustrative examples from research findings, we will demonstrate how most of these processes have started already in childhood, and continue into adulthood and old age.

At the beginning of life, there is a conglomeration of unspecified cells that can differentiate into specialised cells that make up our body parts. It is not fully understood yet how this happens, but it seems as if the stem cells are influenced, among other things, by each other, temperature, oxygen, neighbouring differentiated cells and the physicochemical nature of the environment. They interact within an open system called the stem cell niche, and this determines whether, when, how and in what directions the stem cells divide, what they become and where they go. Once a cell has become a component of a body part, it loses its pluripotency, and so a body with all its specific functions is formed.

But this is only the beginning. Throughout the embryo and foetal state, after birth and until the end of our life and beyond, we are part of a system whose elements interact to form who and what we are and how we change. There is, for example, a strong genetic disposition as to which sex a foetus will develop. However, this will only happen if the configurations of the system allow it. If, for instance, another genetic disposition produces androgen insensitivity, or the mother ingests certain hormones at a crucial time, the outcome will be of ambiguous sex. But even those who are born with unmistakably male or female sex organs can still develop into transgendered individuals: a clear sign that there is no such thing as a single determining variable controlling our development.

However, similar to the cells that lose their ability to transform into any body-cell once they have been ‘assigned’, other developmental outcomes might be easier to change while they are emerging than when they have been established. Many of the characteristics of adults are based on developments during childhood and adolescence – attachment style, personality, interests, coping strategies and so on. That is the reason why psychologists previously have been particularly interested in these periods of the lifespan.

However, though foundations are formed early in life, very little is irreversible or static. It would be a pessimistic outlook indeed if we were to assume that human development stops somewhere around the conclusion of adolescence (whenever that is!), and that any further changes are impossible.

What we want to promote in this book are arguments for, and illustrations of, an up-to-date theoretical framework for studying and interpreting human change by integrating previous ideas about lifespan trajectories – even conflicting ones. By way of illustration: one of the most advertised ideas within the social sciences in the last decade or so has been Arnett’s (2001) arguments for the introduction of a new stage in human development – emerging adulthood – as a result of social change and extended education for more and more young people. His postulation has drawn the attention of many disciplines to a previously neglected area of research. In a climate of change and debate within the social sciences, Arnett’s proposed stage between adolescence and adulthood has not escaped its critics. Sociologists such as Heinz and Marshall (2003) and Côté (2000) have shown a closer affinity to systemic, ecological approaches in discussing this transition, and Bynner (2005) particularly has been a stern and constant opponent of Arnett’s claims.

In 2007 at an international conference in Tucson, Hendry was invited to engage in a public debate with Arnett over the relative merits of a stage or process interpretation of this period of transition. Their open debate led to a series of journal exchanges (Hendry and Kloep, 2007a and b; Arnett, 2007a and b) and culminated in a jointly published book (Arnett et al., 2011) providing friendly but vigorously opposing arguments about process or stage. Arnett and Tanner argued that as young people around the globe share demographic similarities, the years between 18 and 29 are best understood as entailing a new life stage. However, since these experiences vary according to cultural context and class background, many different (though never described!) emerging adulthoods may exist.

Hendry and Kloep, on the other hand, asserted that stage theories in their present form – including emerging adulthood – at any phase of the lifespan are not particularly effective in explaining individual transitions. They stated that it would be better to focus attention on gaining an understanding of the many interacting forces and factors and the processes and mechanisms that drive human change.

In trying to extract a degree of compromise, Tanner attempted to integrate stage theories and systemic approaches, but nevertheless adhered to the idea of explaining development through the notion of stages:

We are pleased to have the opportunity to state our belief that the concept of ‘stage’ is the key to developmental science. . . . Our perspective represents an integration of stage and systems theory; we argue for the utility of this approach both in developmental science generally and with regard to emerging adulthood specifically. Rather than convincing us that ‘stage’ should be eliminated from developmental theory, this debate has strengthened our view that the concept of stages is integral to developmental theory.

(p. 148)

What we observe here is that other scientists, too, feel the need for an integration of different approaches; now that the phase of mutual opposition is over, we should perhaps unite and draw ideas from different approaches together to bring about a paradigm shift. This position would also entail a non-judgemental view of human beings, and young people in particular. Our basic stance is that variation and variety are the motors for human change, on both the individual and collective level, and there is no behaviour per se that can be viewed as problematic without considering the contextual forces driving it. Currently, the literature is over-biased in favour of a problem-based perspective with regard to young people, often with author-generated definitions as to what constitutes a problem (see Arnett et al., 2013). Here we claim that all changes have the potential to lead to growth and development. Some can be more adaptive than others in a given context, but that might change in a trice.

For example, take the discussion about ‘adolescent risk-taking behaviour’. As we have pointed out earlier (Kloep and Hendry, 1999), the notion of risk-taking is ill defined, and encompasses all kind of behaviours ranging from extreme sports to lack of exercise, from eating too much to eating too little, from staying at home behind a computer to hanging about with peers on the street corner, from substance abuse to serious crime. Many of these behaviours are only regarded as risks because they are engaged in by adolescents (having sex, smoking, imbibing alcohol), others are labelled as ‘adolescent’ risk-taking, though there are far more adults engaging in them (serious crime, unprotected sex, drink-driving – see Males, 2009, 2010), and yet another set of behaviours is more of an annoyance to adults than harmful for young people (wearing ‘hoodies’, skateboarding in pedestrian zones, partying on the street corner). By concentrating so much on investigating why some adolescents behave badly, we indeed create a picture of ‘dark adolescence’ (Ayman-Nolley and Taira, 2000). We also lose opportunities to gain knowledge concerning other important questions, such as: how can the potential of developing young people be enhanced? What contexts and circumstances instigate people of all ages to take risks? And what defines a risk?

The last question seems to be trivial. Some behaviours belong so obviously to the category of undesired behaviours that it seems redundant to question the classification (and most authors don’t). However, to our knowledge, there is not one category of behaviour that could not be regarded as potentially both advantageous and harmful, depending on the context and consequences. For example, the use of an opium-based drug while driving or trying to execute a responsible job is obviously different from ingesting the same amount of the same drug while trying to cope with excessive pain after an operation in hospital. Downing one or two beers on the beach on a hot afternoon seems to be completely unremarkable, unless you do it in a country where drinking alcohol is seen as a serious crime. Jogging every day and eating five pieces of fruit is entirely desirable, unless you have a heart or joint condition or are allergic to fruit. Whether it is desirable to have the skill to kill another person effectively depends on whether the person in question is a member of a violent gang or a British Army sniper in Iraq. However, some Iraqis might disagree with that viewpoint – as would the gang member who would have been killed a long time ago if he had not acquired this skill early. Even showing psychopathological traits seems to be advantageous in certain circumstances, such as in the world of capitalist business (Ronson, 2012).

To sum up: it is impossible to compartmentalise behaviours into ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or developmental trajectories into ‘desirable’ or ‘problematic’, without analysing individual contexts and various short- and long-term outcomes. Hence, we advocate a non-judgemental stance in describing and investigating developmental change.

We also differ from traditional accounts of adolescent transitions in another way. For too long the social sciences have been content with general findings based on averages; single-variable explanations and low-probability predictions. Cause and effect do not progress along a one-way route. Relationships between variables are nearly always bidirectional, seldom linear; predictor variables are hardly ever completely unrelated to each other; and researchers tend to treat variation (potentially the most interesting finding) as error variance.

In any move towards better explanations, we may need to change our usual ways of thinking. To offer some examples: if we ever attempted to average the colours of a rainbow, the result would be a dull grey (von Eye and Schuster, 2000), a colour that is actually not evident when we see a rainbow in nature. Sometimes we have the same issue when interpreting statistical averages regarding human behaviour. For instance, time-use surveys show that Britons aged 16 and over spend on average about 8.18 hours sleeping, 2.61 hours watching TV and only 2.83 hours working per day (Office for National Statistics, 2006). Though one might be tempted to draw some conclusions about the state of the British economy from these figures, an average value like this is not informative because it does not reflect the fact that there are many people who do not work at all, which changes the overall mean considerably. If we want to understand developmental processes, we also need to move away from variable-centred approaches and statistics that measure variation between subjects to person-centred methods and variation within subjects (Gayles and Molenaar, 2013).

We can find similar examples of the inadequacy of static one-variable explanations. Consider one that stems from evolutionary psychology: for decades, we have been taught that the reason males prefer beautiful, young and not necessarily intelligent mates, while females choose rich, powerful, older but not necessarily handsome partners, was due to a hardwired, genetically predetermined trait, stemming from prehistoric times, when females needed a protector for their offspring and males required a healthy and young breeding partner. Recently, hard wires have loosened. The latest research shows that this principle is no longer true in countries with a high degree of gender equality, as economically independent women have started to become more interested in how prospective partners look, and men prefer a smart companion to share their life (Zentner and Mitura, 2012). Such simplistic attempts to explain the complexities of human behaviour and change need to be modified.

Given our brief comments on evolutionary psychology, we now take a closer look at ecological and systemic views of human development, how they have evolved in developmental theories from earlier times to today and what methodological implications stem from these approaches.

Early voices

In many undergraduate courses, the main focus is placed on the differences between developmental theories. In an attempt to outline the strengths and weaknesses of individual theories, it is sometimes overlooked that some early scholars already perceived the dynamics of human change, whereas modern student textbooks usually concentrate on describing different stages of development, leaving little or no space for examining – or having no intention to describe – the actual ways social scientists discuss how developmental changes are initiated. As Hendry and Kloep (2002) pointed out, if past theories are examined with congruity in mind, there are surprising similarities to be found among theorists as dissimilar as Piaget, Erikson, Freud and Skinner.

In summary, most theorists indicate that developmental change always includes the presence of a crisis, a challenge or a problem needing to be solved, there is always a degree of anxiety involved, and overcoming the challenge is an interactional, dialectical process that leads to changes either in the environment, the individual or both. Here, we briefly describe some of these views.

One of the first developmental psychologists to be interested in the nature of human change was Piaget. He presented the principle of equilibration, which is an active attempt to bring a system of cognitive schemata back into equilibrium after it has been disturbed by an experience that does not fit the individual’s existing schemata. The person either assimilates the new information by adapting it into the already existing set of knowledge, or accommodates the existing schemata to the new information. Thus, Piaget pointed out that developmental change is a dynamic process, stemming from a continuous switching between equilibrium, perturbations and disequilibrium.

This idea appears in the work of other researchers as well. For example, Riegel (1979) proposed a dialectical interpretation of development, emphasising times of crisis, when coordination and synchrony are lacking, as the drivers of development and change.

Coming from a different perspective, Vygotski (1929) saw the developmental process as an open system, in which social interactions, individual life experiences, and cultural inheritance interact to form ever-changing and more complex relationships between mental functions. Moreover, such a view implies that the boundaries between the individual and the environment become permeable:

The mind is no longer to be located entirely inside the head; higher psychological functions are transactions that include the biological individual, the cultural mediational artifacts, and the culturally structured social and natural environments of which persons are a part.

(Cole and Wertsch, 1996)

This ecological view of development was further elaborated by Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979), who concentrated on the interdependent social systems of which the individual is a part. At around the same time, the sociologist Glen Elder (1974) and psychologist Paul Baltes (Goulet and Baltes, 1970) developed lifespan approaches to human development, incorporating many ecological principles, such as multi-finality and multi-causality. Later, another of Vygotski’s disciples, Valsiner (1997), advocated the study of processes of human change by observing the micro-genesis of new behaviour or interaction patterns. Furthermore, other branches within the social sciences have embraced ecological approaches in their research. We already mentioned sociology, and a dynamic systems approach to social psychology is pre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Looking at transitions
• 2 Social contexts of development
• 3 Adolescents’ social engagements
• 4 Compliments, lies and other social skills
• 5 Health in adolescence: A lifespan perspective
• 6 Transitions to the world of work
• 7 Family dynamics and transitions towards adult independence
• 8 Dynamic systems theory: Changing the paradigm?
• Index