Erikson’s Young Adulthood and Emerging Adulthood Today

In the 60-plus years since Erikson presented his lifespan stage theory in Childhood and Society, not much has changed in the social and cultural context of the early stages. Infants still need to establish trust with someone who will love them and take care of them, incapable as they are of providing for their own needs. Children in early childhood still learn to walk and talk and do some things for themselves. Children in middle childhood still begin to learn to use the tools of their culture, usually by going to school. Adolescence is still a time when identity issues begin to move to the forefront. Building upon successes with these developmental tasks, Erikson saw young adults' psychosocial challenge as "intimacy versus isolation" Today Erikson's ideas about this stage are incomplete. Erikson did not specify ages for his stages, but adolescence presumably comprised then, as it does now, the years between reaching puberty to attaining physical and sexual maturity, that is, most of the second decade of life. Then comes young adulthood; and after that, middle adulthood. This means that, in its original formulation, Erikson's "young adulthood" comprised a long stretch of the lifespan, at least a 20 year period, from about age 20-40. Today, it seems that achieving intimacy is only one of the psychosocial challenges that these decades bring.