Adulthood

Adulthood is the longest stage of the individual life, as in many Western societies legally begins at age 18 and ends at 65.Understand, therefore, a long period of time in which many variables intervene social, cultural and psychological condition the development of the adult in his youth and maturity. In order to reflect the way society organizes and structures the various age groups and giveseach of them specific functions, the social sciences to distinguish two stages to adulthood: young adults (19 to 25 years) and mature adult (26 to 65 years).

During this long period of time people perform many social, civic and legal responsibilities they assume, and go through very different experiences, all of which makes it one of the most complex stages of human existence. Despite thiscomplexity, adulthood, for most people, is a period full of opportunities to further grow and develop.It is considered a transitional stage and productive for the individual in which they mix youth and experience.

Adulthood is a stage of life they develop deeper skills to establish and maintain family ties and social relations. Symbolically at this stage marks the half-century or half life, thistime in both men and women often have existential crises, is a time of soul searching within, questioning and evaluation of achievements ; just went through half of his life and is essential to begin to live the other half.

It is difficult to define when children become adults, since the concept of adulthood varies by culture. In some cultures children from ten years begin to assumeresponsibilities of adulthood, while at the moment in Western culture, women and men fail to live independently of their parents until about thirty years. The scientific study of adult development and aging is relatively recent. One reason for this is that until the early twentieth century, people assumed that the adult stage was a period of stability. Another reason is that few people reached old age, so oldage was not a concern. Traditionally life cycle studies focused on childhood and adolescence, and not until the 50 and 60 when the first studies on the adult, specifically on the intellectual side. Until the 80, the conception of evolutionary change in people through the various life cycle stages rather negative connotations, as explained exclusively from the biological changes that occurred. Inthis view, the typical life story of a person had the following phases:

• The first, beginning at birth and is characterized by gains and growth in all body structures and functions.
• The intermediate, which has a beginning and an end poorly defined and characterized by stability and optimal functioning of the body.
• The final, ending with death and is characterized by accumulated losses inall structures and body functions.
  
According to this life cycle model, the first part of life is progress and the second is to decline until death. Childhood and adolescence would process optimization, and adulthood and old age, progressive degeneration.

This model was criticized by some European and American researchers, although it did not deny that biological age is a feature that candefine the evolution of the stages in the life cycle, they disagreed on the application of this model to psychological and social dimensions of people. Proposed and took another more optimistic approach to the evolutionary development of the adult. In this sense, the development could not be understood as a single process of growth characteristic of childhood and adolescence, but should integrateall the processes of change that occur throughout the life of the people. These processes are not necessarily fixed and predetermined patterns (progress in childhood and adolescence, decline in old age), but can occur at any point in the life cycle can be both positive and negative and may have a variable duration.

Change processes need not necessarily affect the way all human dimensions. Some...