Emerging adulthood in israeli familie: Individual-social tasks and emotional-relational challenges

The present study explores the developmental tasks of emerging adulthood within both the practical-individual and the emotional parentyouth relationship context, relying on developmental and systemic approaches to the family. Content analysis of data collected in 11 in-depth interviews in a preliminary qualitative phase led to the development of the Emerging Adulthood Questionnaire (EAQ), which was then used to collect quantitative data from 300 respondents, members of 100 families. The content analysis revealed two specific domains: individual-social tasks and emotional-relational tasks, the latter containing two related factors of youth-parent connectedness and youth-parent orientation. The analyses of the quantitative data, on both individual and family levels, reveal a rich and complicated picture. Results show that while loose connectedness with rejective orientation was clearly related to the poorest level of accomplishment of individual-social tasks, high accomplishment of these tasks was related to the combination of tight or close connectedness with dependent or autonomous orientation. Comparisons between fathers, mothers, and youths show marked similarities, but also some significant differences. These and additional results are discussed in light of a proposed model for family emotional launching style in the context of the family system theory.