Brad Sachs, respected author and family psychologist, presented “Pulling Anchor, Setting Sail: Redefining Identity and Independence During Early Adulthood” at Mount Saint Mary College in October.
There’s more to becoming an adult than just getting a job, noted family psychologist and best-selling author, Brad Sachs, during his recent talk at Mount Saint Mary College.
His timely keynote presentation, “Pulling Anchor, Setting Sail: Redefining Identity and Independence During Early Adulthood,” was part of a conference hosted by the college’s Center for Adolescent Research and Development (CARD) earlier this month.
Sachs, who brings more than four decades of clinical experience to his work, addressed a complicated set of factors, including familial, societal, global, geopolitical, economic, and technological, that are currently shaping this transitional phase.
Family is one of the most important factors on that list, Sachs said. He explained how he categorizes families into three types, each presenting distinct challenges to development: centripetal, centrifugal, and mission impossible.
In a centripetal family, he said, the focus is on maintaining the “cocoon,” where the idea of children differentiating or leaving the family is viewed as a betrayal.
Conversely, centrifugal families pressure young adults to accelerate their independence, pushing them out “perhaps before they’ve got a full tank of gas,” he said.
In the “mission impossible” family structure, priorities are askew. This forces the young adult to attempt to satisfy conditions that often cannot exist simultaneously.
“All of these forces, the ‘hurries,’ and the ‘waits,’ they’re kind of misaligned, and the child has to fulfill all of these impossible to reconcile missions,” Sachs explained. “It’s like they have to be a good soldier, and fulfill the marching orders that their parents are giving them... The child is somehow beholden to a complicated matrix of expectations, and wishes, and dreams that the parent has for the child.”
This complexity, Sachs concluded, makes the transition feel like a “minefield” for the young adult, where finding one’s own pathway is discouraged in favor of “narrow, very restricted, constricted boulevards.”
The keynote was followed by a panel discussion featuring local professionals, delving further into the topic of the sometimes-difficult transition from adolescence to young adulthood.
The Mount’s CARD is a clearinghouse for research initiatives. These include the psychological, social, cultural, educational, and health-related issues endemic to contemporary adolescents and young adults. It’s overseen by beloved Psychology Professor Paul Schwartz.