Analyzing Erik Erickson's Eight Stages Of Development

The Development of Generativity The world-renowned psychologist Erik Erikson is best known for his theory of the eight stages of development. As you may recall the first five stages correspond to early childhood and adolescent development and the final three stages called intimacy vs isolation, generativity vs stagnation, and integrity vs despair, are all relate to adult development. Years after introducing the eight stages of development theory Erikson realized that people can go through the process/stage of acquiring their identity over the course of a lifetime and not just during adolescence, so he changed his theory, specifically stage number five/ identity vs role confusion to be included as adolescent development and adult development

The sheer existence of a child affects the parent’s development as well as their unique personalities and their individual needs (Berger,2014). Adults who do not have children are often unaware of the sacrifices and life- long commitment that it takes to be a parent and they tend to underestimate how difficult parenting is until they themselves become a parent (Berger, 2014). Parenting is a difficult, stressful, and constantly evolving process that parents learn through trial and error and just when they believe that they have caught on the child develops to the next stage and the learning curve continues. Now days it’s not unusual for adults to be caring for their children, grandchildren and their parents at the same time, which adds to the stress and financial burden of the family but provides the family with the much-needed hard earned generativity (Berger,2014). The text explained a scenario that makes parenting very difficult because the developing adults primary focus in life is intimacy from their significant other rather than generativity. In this scenario, the adult had not fully fulfilled their need for intimacy from stage six and their need for intimacy must take a back seat for the child’s care, which causes many relationship issues (Berger,2014). This is also a problem for adolescents and teen parents who are in earlier stages of development such as the identity vs role confusion stage, when the child is trying to establish their identity. This is what Erikson calls reordering of the adult’s perspective, in order to meet the needs of the child and to become generative, however, doing so negatively affects the adult’s development or progression from the earlier