How Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Social Class Influence on Early Adulthood (Essay Sample)

How gender, race, ethnicity and social class influence on early adulthood
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Introduction
Social norms influence the behavior of individuals in many ways throughout human growth and development period (Coley, Lombardi, Lynch, Mahalik & Sins, 2013). In the transitions life course, each stage of transition has its own challenges, however, some staged may be diffused into others due to deterred development as a result of fixation hence being termed as off- time. A normal growth and development according to societal standards is perceived as on time. Early adulthood is the transition life stage just after adolescent and the before the middle adulthood. A number of normative factors such as gender, race, social class and ethnicity among others influence early adulthood transition stage; hence, it could be possible that some people get into early adulthood at more tender age, making it an off-time life stage. In addition, some people may delay getting into early adulthood stage due to fixation at adolescent stage. It is an off-time life stage as well because it is delayed growth and development. This paper discusses the age norms at early adulthood based on gender, race, ethnicity and social economic status of individuals. It also looks at how biological, cognitive and psychological or emotional factors influence early adulthood transition stage, and suggests how the information can be helpful in practical life situations.
Gender, race, ethnicity and social class issues on early adulthood
Every age as a stage of life cycle has its own normative expectations and responsibilities ascribed to individuals within the society. Assigned norms depend on gender, race, ethnicity and social class (Coley et al., 2013). Gender wise for instance, women should behave differently from men towards certain practices and activities. However, the gender-based roles differ from one ethnic group to another as well as from one racial community to the next. An example is the taking a case in the typical African societies where it is the exclusive duty of women to carry out household chores whereas it contrasts that in the western world societies in which men and women share close roles like handling household chores. Different ethnic communities also behave differently thus presenting varying norms in the early adulthood life stage depending on the individual person’s ethnic affiliation (Warner, 2015). For instance, the African American individuals may experience different challenges at the early adulthood stage from their Caucasian counterparts. This is because of the fact that there are norms that are synonymous only to a given ethic group hence may not apply much to the others. For instance, when children perform poorly in academic, they are likely to get frustrated and even have low dream careers. The poor academically performing adolescents may then team up with their cadre peers and engage in early sexual practices leading to early adulthood (Coley et al., 2013). The challenges faced by such young adults would be obviously different from those faced by well-educated high achieving individuals. Another factor that influences early adulthood norms is the social economic status of an individual. Usually from low social class tend to get married to individuals with whom they share the social status. Poverty often leads to frustrations and negative behavior among individuals such as prostitution among young women and robbery among young men. However, young adults from high social economic status may engage in business entrepreneurship because they have the capital and can afford to travel to explore investment opportunities. Subjective social norms should be readdressed so that they do not compel young adults to negative practices due to pressure from the society to live up to certain fallacies expectations.
The implications for an off-timed early adulthood transition and its effect on later developmental opportunities
The implications of off-time adulthood have far-reaching negative impacts especially for rushed adolescent parenthood (Warner, 2015). Early adulthood parenting is costly to the society because the off-timed young adults have less likelihood to than older adults to live together as parents to their children, and are less capable of providing adequate economic and financial support to their families. In addition, research evidence reveals that adolescent parents give a poorer parenting environment and skills to their children than mature adults. Most of the hardships faced by off-timed adolescent parents are attributed to their poor timing of transition into parenthood as opposed to the societal set norms that govern the transition age roles.Off-time transitions may be early or late, bearing different consequences depending on the case in regard of role performance and subsequent transition timings (Blackwellpublishing.com, n.d). For example, adolescent parents who face difficulties in parenting duties may enhance school transition through dropping out. However, off-timed late parenthood has better parenting role consequences because of maturity especially men at mid or late thirties prove to be good fathers than adolescent parents. One major dire consequence of early off-time adulthood is that it can lead to a recurrent of the behavior among the children and later descendants of such parents. For instance, a case in New Zealand showed many men born to teenage mothers who also live with single parents led to serious school dropout disorder before the age of 16 years thereby increasing the likelihood of early adulthood to between ages 14 and 26 years. Early off-timed adulthood transition may be specifically risky to role performance since the individuals involved take the steps before they are developed and ready for the stage hence may further make poor judgment on later transition stages.
Biological issues related to early adulthood life-course transition
Early adulthood transition stage can be understood in terms of biological perspective. Since the associated development theory concepts such as life course and life cycle, which both refer to occurrences in human lives with lasting consequences are best understood biologically(Alwin, 2012). As much as the two concepts can be distinguished, it is seldom to explicitly articulate the differences hence the importance to view the terms from the perspective of life, which is the fundamental time concept in relation to the being of humanity. Biologically life encompasses generation, growth and form while the social perspective of life has more such as life time, life span, life stage and life cycle among others all of which refer to the common phenomenon of human life study.Early adulthood may affect a person in several ways affect the life pattern of an individual. Some of the factors to on a biological perspective of early adulthood include life span, human development, and aging and life cycle (Hutchison, 2001). Lifespan is the entire period an individual lives from birth to death and it can be shortened by the negative consequences of early of-timed adulthood such as increased stress and other antisocial behavior like abusing drug. Another biological aspect of early adulthood analysis is the aging and human development. While lifespan looks at all the occurrences between the time of an individual person’s birth to death, the concept of involved processes constitute human development and aging. Development may however, mean growth both physically and cognitively. In the development process, the person goes through transition stages such as infantry, child, adolescent and adulthood. These life stages constitute life cycle, which should be proportionate with physical growth and development.
Cognitive issues related to early adulthood life-course transition
Cognitive issues related to early adulthood revolve around the fact that human being develop wholesomely in brain and mind as well as physical form (Alwin, 2012). Cognitive development, which is the intellectual development and growth, occurs more during the adolescent stage but not fully to be able to enable a person handle complex mind boggling adult challenges of parenthood. The most challenging task among young adults is that they may not be ready to accept and or seek advice to help them tackle some of the more abstract matters they face because they too feel they have become better thinkers just like any other adult. It is also at this stage where many young people realize they can discover their talents and make great breakthroughs such as being music stars or footballers. This kind of cognitive growth and development may lead to some of the early adults’ engagement ...