Emerging adulthood is a critical developmental phase for planning future adult roles, such as the professional and familial role. Current research concerning plans to combine work and family roles in emerging adults enrolled in higher education has focused mainly on gender differences with few studies devoted to cross-cultural comparisons. This study aims to explore plans to combine work and family roles with a sample of 239 Portuguese and Polish emerging adults enrolled in higher education. Country comparisons revealed that Polish emerging adults present a more clear perspective on how to combine work and family in the future. Further, findings suggested that working students perceptions of being able to successfully manage work and family roles are higher when compared with those who were only students. No evidence was found for gender differences in future plans to combine work and family roles.

Within recent years the percentage of students in relation to the total population of young adults has been increasing in Poland. In search of the psychological consequences of this situation a study has been conducted on the relation between the level of activity of students and both the objective and subjective indicators of their effectiveness and the level of autotelism/calculation of the initiated activities. The study in question has been performed among a group of 473 students of the University of Silesia, and the results thereof indicate differences between the non-active, averagely active and above-averagely active students in the scope of grade point averages, the amount of granted scholarships, subjectively perceived attractiveness for colleagues as well as for the potential employer, the level of identity integration and the position in group hierarchy. The theoretical concept for analyses is constituted by the concept of emerging adulthood, the evolutionary approach and the concept of career capital.

The sense of identity of academic youth from the socio-ecological perspective

The article is aimed at analyzing the identifications of academic youth, with pedagogy students as an example, on the basis of the assumptions of Uri Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. Particular importance was given to the socioecological and contextual determinants in which the sense of identity of emerging adults is formed. The aim of the research was to analyse the development of the sense of identity resulting from participation in the socio-cultural conditions surrounding the individual. The surveyed emerging adults (140 individuals) aged 20–25 answered the question “Who am I?” using the TST (Twenty Statement Test) by M.H. Kuhn and T.S. McPartland (1954). The research was a pilot study. The collected research material was developed using a holistic content analysis of self-definitions. On the basis of the research results, it can be concluded that the surveyed emerging adults most often use identifications related to the individual with respect to gender, possessed personality traits or to the defining oneself as a human being. In addition, there were categories of sense of identity resulting from social roles in the microsystem (a family member, a student or an employee). Less frequently, respondents identified themselves with their nation or religion, which are the result of macrosystem participation. In relation to this, educational and preventive premises were formulated.

The process of identity formation during the transition from adolescence into adulthood and its determinants are currently a central issue in the social sciences. On the one hand, the huge variety of possibilities presents the opportunity to expand the fields of exploration and to tailor commitments to individual aspirations and preferences. On the other hand, increasing instability and Bauman’s liquidity of the social environment of development may create threats that impede the making of decisions, engaging in their realization, and identifying with the choices made. James Marcia’s two-stage model of identity formation no longer adequately describes and accounts for paths of identity development. The dynamic dual-cycle model of identity formation developed by Koen Luyckx and collaborators is much more accurate. Although identity continues to develop throughout course of life, childhood, and adolescence in particular, seems to be pivotal from the point of view of which developmental trajectory the individual is on at the moment of his/her entry into adulthood. From this point of view, the factors which we regard as crucial for identity formation are shame proneness and shame regulation strategies on the one hand, and the system of personal beliefs about one’s life and related key social experiences which define the quality of social participation of adolescents on the other hand.