Knowing Me, Knowing You: Changes in Parental Representations Among Established Adults Going Through Progressive Identity Development

Abstract

Developing and revising one’s identity is a lifelong task, one that influences and is influenced by close relationships in the individual’s social context. For emerging adults, different approaches to identity formation have been associated with different ways of relating to their parents; however, little is known about how identity development and views on one’s parents interact beyond the emerging adult years. In the present study, we addressed this gap by examining changes in how established adults describe and relate to internal representations of their parents as they develop from identity foreclosure to identity achievement, an identity status transition that is considered progressive and has been related to shifts in parental representations in younger samples. From a longitudinal study using the Identity Status Interview (Marcia et al., Ego identity: A handbook for psychosocial research, Springer, 1993), we selected participants coded as foreclosed at age 29 and identity achieved at age 33 (N = 18). A case study approach was used to analyze individual changes in parental representations, and a thematic analysis was conducted to identify themes across cases. The findings show that progressive identity development in established adulthood may involve making more reflective comparisons between oneself and one’s parents, describing one’s parents more as whole persons, and relating to parental influence with greater independence and agency. The results highlight the continued importance of parents for adult identity development, and that progressive identity development in established adulthood may involve increased complexity in representations of both oneself and one’s parents.