Adult life‐styles and their precursors in the social behaviour of children and adolescents

Abstract

165 males and 155 females (87 per cent of the sample, N = 369, first studied at age 8) were retrieved after 18 years, at the age of 26, in the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Social Development. A mailed questionnaire, personality inventories, and criminal records were used in the analysis of adult life‐styles. Continuity in social behaviour from the age of 8 to 20 was studied earlier (Pulkkinen, 1982) within a two‐dimensional model of impulse control defined by Social Activity vs. Passivity and Strength vs. Weakness of Self‐control. The present results showed that developmental trajectories for weak and strong self‐control obtained at the earlier stages were continued in young adulthood. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the dimensions of young adults' life‐styles were formed both by the timing of entry into family roles and by differences in activities and opinions independent of it. For the latter, two dimensions of adult life‐styles were extracted in the confirmatory analysis for the two‐dimensional structure of uncontrolled activity vs. controlled passivity and controlled activity vs. uncontrolled passivity: Relapse vs. Restraint and Resilience vs. Resentment. Their strongest predictors were the Reveller vs. Loner and the Striver vs. Loser life‐styles, in the respective order, obtained in late adolescence.