The eight-stage theory of life cycle development of Erik Erikson suggests that human development continues throughout life and is greatly influenced by culture and social environment. Erikson propounded eight ages of man, which include infancy, early childhood years, preschool years, school years, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood. However, some scientists believe that there should be one more stage between adolescence and young adulthood.
American psychologist Jeffrey Arnett proposes a new stage of human development, “emerging adulthood”, that is empirically different from adolescence and young adulthood. The basis of such a point of view is the heterogeneity of this stage. While having left the dependency of childhood and adolescence, a person is still in the process of life exploration. The period between the ages of 18 and 25 is not marked by the great responsibilities that are normative in adulthood.
There is no point in merging the late teens, twenties, and thirties into one category and defining it as the period of young adulthood. Several factors unite young people aged 18–25 into one category of emerging adults. First, they do not consider themselves to be adults. Second, they are in the process of obtaining education for their future adult career. Third, most of them are unmarried and childless. The list of these factors is quite numerous. Thus, emerging adulthood should be considered as the independent stage between adolescence and young adulthood due to its heterogeneity.
The young adulthood stage is also known as the stage of intimacy vs. isolation. The most important thing for a person that enters this stage is love relationships. There are four key developmental events of young adulthood.
First, a person should change their adolescent “right or wrong” way of looking at life to a “multi plastic” view and learn to see everything from different perspectives. The ability to understand and accept the diversity of people, things, and phenomena provides a more flexible system of thought that allows for seeing a large number of right answers to various problems.
Second, at the young adulthood stage, a person should develop a solid sense of self-identity. Erikson defined identity as the awareness of the “style of one’s individuality” and made it a condition that this style coincides with the style of “significant others”. Without a sense of identity, a person will not be ready for the next developmental event.
Third, having established their self-identity, a person is able to build strong, intimate relationships that require commitment, self-sacrifice, and the ability to compromise. Berzoff states:
“Intimacy involves mutuality, which requires the ability to lose and to find oneself in another without losing one’s own identity”.
That is why the third developmental event cannot occur without the second one.
Fourth and last, the highest achievement of the young adulthood stage is the attainment of love. Love can be defined as the “strength of the ego to share identity” with the “opportunity to be a separate self”. If a person has a weak sense of identity, they will not be able to achieve the intimacy that is the necessary condition of love.