Emerging Adulthood – Colleen P. Arnold, Ph.D, LMFT

Remember the example I gave last time of the classmate who was way too bothered by the way I ate my bagel? That would be an example of overly-permeable boundaries. Not having strong enough boundaries means that your behavior is overly dictated by others.

When parents have a baby, there’s a symbiotic relationship between them and the baby. If they’re functional, the parents are very attuned to the baby’s needs, and their world pretty much revolves around the baby. I woke up twice a night with my sons for (what seemed like) forever, nursed them, rocked them and got them back to sleep. That would be a very permeable boundary – I was letting their needs dictate my behavior, which was appropriate and necessary for healthy infant development.

Now, they’re 10 and 12 years old, and I do not automatically wake up when they do. In fact, if they’re up before me, I have them trained to be pretty quiet and get their own breakfast if I’m sleeping. That boundary has gotten more rigid as they’ve gotten older. Healthy child development means that the boundaries between us become stronger – both they and I have more privacy in our relationship, and they gradually are becoming more independent from me.

Sometimes it’s hard for parents to tolerate the growing boundaries between them and their children. I see unhealthy boundaries between parents and children all the time in my office – parents who expect their child to keep fulfilling them even after the child is grown, or who expect to be able to control their child’s lives well after the child should have control of their own lives. It should be the parent who helps the child develop healthy boundaries, but in these cases the adult child has to, unfortunately, fight against their parent to create healthy boundaries for themselves.

young couple — photo credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simões Used by permission via Creative Commons License

In intimate relationships, it’s also confusing. Boundaries that are too rigid prevent intimacy, but boundaries that are
overly permeable mean that the individuals lose their individuality and become merged. I’m sure we’ve all known at least one couple that seems like they’ve become one entity instead of two separate people. Psychologists tend to think that a healthy relationship lies somewhere in the middle, but what ends up happening in reality is that it’s a dynamic that keeps shifting. Sometimes you’re closer, sometimes you’re a little more distant. Sometimes one partner wants boundaries in one place, and the other partner wants them to be somewhere else. Staying in one extreme for too long is not healthy, because couples need a balance between intimacy and individuality.

Boundaries are also culturally based – cultures can influence what partners share with each other and what remains separate. In the US and Western Europe, we tend to value individuality within a partnership, and individuation from one’s family of origin, more than some other cultures might.

Ultimately, boundaries are very complex, and vary according to situation and history. Trying to find the balance between having intimate relationships, but not being overtaken by someone else’s needs and emotions, is the work of a lifetime.

My boys and I have been watching “Downton Abbey,” a Masterpiece Theater series on PBS. The lord’s valet, Mr. Bates, and the daughter’s maid, Anna, had what we might think of as a crush on each other until Anna blurted out “I love you!” on an outdoor walk. I remember thinking, “How on earth does she know she loves him?” He proposed to her in the same breath that he asked her to call him by his first name. In another storyline, one of the lord’s daughters has been visiting with another aristocrat, and although they don’t know each other that well, hopes he’ll ask her to marry him at their outdoor party.

Since I’ve been researching the time of life between 18-30 years recently, I’m struck by how differently the individuals think of their futures. Of course, back in the early 20^th century, even until fairly recently, women had few options available to them except to get married and raise a family. Young men often knew exactly what profession they’d be going into before graduating high school. Going to college was more unusual than it is today, and was seen as a means to pursue a particular career path where higher education was necessary, such as law or medicine.

It’s such a different landscape now. Now about 2/3 of all high school graduates attend college, and most entering freshman don’t know what career path they want to pursue. Even when I attended college back in the 1980’s, most students had decided by their junior year what career they wanted. Now, it’s not uncommon for college students to graduate and still be undecided. Many switch between jobs in various fields and don’t settle on a career until their late 20’s. They are marrying later, having children later, and using the decade of the 20’s to explore more relationship and career options than most of us even imagined.

What is adulthood? Sociological research, in general, defines adulthood as a time of financial independence and responsibility, marriage and parenthood. What we used to think of as the transition to adulthood, the late teens, is really now more of an extended adolescence.

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, at Clark University in Massachusetts, has proposed that we start thinking of the time of the 20’s as a distinctive developmental period which he terms, “emerging adulthood.” He says this is a time that bridges adolescence and young adulthood, usually between 19-25, although it can reach until 29. He doesn’t like the term “young adults,” because emerging adults have usually not completed the tasks of adulthood. Also, the term “young adults” has been used so much to refer to teenagers (such as in the “young adult” section of bookstores) that it isn’t descriptive anymore. He also rejects “transitioning into adulthood,” because that term focuses on the stage afterward, and not on the developmental tasks right in the moment.

While this time of life can be exhilarating and full of possibilities, it is also charged with instability and uncertainty. Emerging adults are more concerned with fulfillment and satisfaction than the generations before them, and tend to be more self-focused than any other age of post-childhood development. On the other hand, so many possibilities can be overwhelming, and relationship upheaval can be discouraging. Choices can be much harder to make when you’ve got too many options. Many people aren’t sure anymore when to call themselves an adult, and find the difficulty of breaking into financial independence very frustrating.

Also, the mental health challenges that this new phase brings us can’t be ignored. According to NIMH, the suicide rate among 20-24 year olds is higher than the national average. This time of life can be wonderful, but it can also be a time of debilitating anxiety, self-doubt and alcohol and drug abuse.

As therapists, we need to acknowledge the difference in this stage of life, help our clients embrace it for all of its possibilities, but also help them not get weighed down by indecision and lack of direction.

Note: If you’re between the ages of 20-30, and live in San Mateo or Foster City, CA, there’s a resource to help you pay for private counseling. See The Ben Fund for details. I’m happy to have signed on to be a therapist for them.

Beginner’s Guide to Boundaries, Part II: Let it All In, or Overly-Permeable Boundaries

The New 20’s – Young Adulthood or Extended Adolescence?