Week Six Blog Post by Miles O'Brien


Week 6 Blog Post
Chapters 9 and 10 dove into early and middle adulthood. The chapter describes how transitioning into adulthood in the United States is becoming more and more complicated. This is because of the demand for skills and education is increasing. Table 9.2 explains how early adulthood the point in life is at which we see a slowdown of the physical changes that occur in the body. We also study how the organs are used in the body. Organ reserve as described on page 210 is the total capacity our organs are able to sustain. Our organs are meant to be able to do a lot more than they are asked on a daily basis but as we age that capacity slowly lessens. This is also connected to our physical health and the choices that we make. The effects of lifestyle on health is very important to maintain that standard of nutrition. Healthy eating habits are very important to develop during this stage in your life that one will be able to carry out through the rest of their life. It is also at this point in most early adults’ lives that they experiment with alcohol or tobacco.
            Piagets position on early adulthood theorizes the idea of postformal thoughts from a cognitive perspective. This theory takes into account the relativistic nature of problems and acknowledges that some of the answers may never be found. From a behavioral standpoint, gender roles and sexual identity become more personalized as we begin to think of oneself. Levinson’s theory on individualization during this time outlined stages that the human begins changing how they think of things internally through different ages of their lives. I agree with this concept because throughout my life, I have developed different forms of how I appreciate or explore my individuality.
            The middle stage of adulthood is categorized by physical development, social development, family relationships, and patterns of work. Physical development is marked by the visible signs of aging of the body. Overall health becomes an overwhelming factor as many middle aged adults reach a crisis of trying to turn their lives around by breaking habits they’ve had for the last few decades of their lives. Cardiovascular health is of the upmost importance when it comes to overall health because of how important your heart is to live. Cholesterol becomes the looming darkness over a middle-aged adult as they must check every label to see if they are exceeding their daily amount of cholesterol or sodium.  From a cognitive perspective, crystallized intelligence is still growing and fluid intelligence is in decline when studying intellectual development in figure 10.5.
            Socially, Levinson’s approach to development can be categorized in 5 stages. It is at this point in humans lives where they deal with the strong sense of polarities that battle within themselves daily.  Erikson took a different approach to this point in life with the difference between stagnation and generativity. These are constant decisions that needed to be made within the mind to either be constructive and useful ones self or be stagnant and stay the same. This can be connected to the life in the workplace with advancing age and health while trying to still set attainable goals. This lifestyle, if set out of balance can cause friction between other aspects of life including at home or in the workplace.

Comments

  1. Todd FitzpatrickOctober 2, 2018 at 11:51 AM

    Nice read, Miles. I personally your breakdown of Erikson's approach to social development. It is interesting to read it while comparing it to my parents, specifically my father. Currently on the back end of Middle Adulthood, he is constantly communicating with me his reluctant acceptance of the fact the he "can no longer do what he used to do." It is a struggle for him, causing much stress and does, indeed, sometimes cause him struggles, externally at work, mostly, but more so internally. In reading your overview I can picture his struggle of acceptance, and know it is just a part of his continuous development, which we all will eventually go through one day.

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  2. KRiddleOctober 3, 2018 at 11:35 AM

    Great summary of chapters 9 and 10. Something that really stood out to me was the organs going to to preserve mode. Do you think if we contained the same amount of organ function in our middle ages as we have in the stage of adolescence it would speed up death?

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