Guided Response: Review several of your colleagues’ posts and respond to at least two of your peers who altered different life events than you. See attachment for the original post. Respond to the classmates seperately.
Identify outcomes that were similar to and different from those in your initial post.
Apply the principles of equifinality and multifinality to compare the initial changes and outcomes in Mila’s life story between you and your classmates.
First Classmate:
Firstly, the area of Mila’s life I would like to modify is her education. Her family raised her and her siblings to value education and what it has to offer, and to take advantage of it while she could. I believe that if she would have pursued a higher education before getting married to Oliver, their lives together would have been more successful. Maybe it wouldn’t have, but seeing in the story that Oliver had to drop out of college to begin working and providing for his family turned him to bitterness and alcoholism which ultimately took his life in the form of liver-disease.
Erikson’s developmental theory shows a life-span of psychosocial development that suggests that humans need to “satisfy their basic biological needs”. (Berzonsky, 2004 ). The stage in which this change would have been made is stage 5: Identity and Diffusion. Identity and diffusion is considered to be the adolescence stage, where an adolescent should be able to utilize their life experiences to formulate a stable identity. (Berzonsky, 2004). I don’t necessarily think that Mila shouldn’t have married Oliver, I think that factor is irrelevant to the scenario. I believe Mila should have developed a sense of her own identity before considering marriage.
Lev Vygotsky’s theory of sociocultural on cognitive development is described as being able to best understand the mind and how it works as it experiences changes. (Burkitt, 2010). In addition to changing how Mila goes about life during her adolescence and part of her early adulthood by putting education first, it also changes her intimacy versus isolation (young adulthood), generativity versus stagnation (middle adulthood), and integrity versus despair (maturity) stages of life.
Young Adulthood
By Mila focusing on her education before settling down with her partner, she is able to have a higher education and able to support herself financially. In the real story, Mile works as a secretary for her fathers construction company, and has two young children and resorts to being a full time mom when her mother passes away to help take care of her father, her younger siblings as well as her own children. This causes Oliver to drop out of college to start working and supporting their family. By Mila focusing on her education, she has a higher paying and better job that allows Oliver to continue his studies in pediatrics before they get married and have children of her own.
Middle Adulthood
During Mila’s middle adulthood is when her mother passes away and she has to help take care of her younger siblings. With Mila’s higher education and being able to have a higher paying job, she is able to choose between working and if she would rather stay home with her kids and her younger siblings or to hire a nanny instead. But her and her husband Oliver would be in a comfortable financial position regardless of her choice.
Maturity
During Mila’s maturity stage of life is when her and Oliver’s marriage is strained and he starts to resent her for the life they ended up with. With her change in focusing on her education before settling down, they are able to live a better life possibly.
Reference:
Arnett, J. J., & Jensen, L. A. (2019). Human development: A cultural approach (3rd ed.) Pearson.
Berzonsky, M. D. (2004). Eriksonian developmental stagesLinks to an external site.. The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science. Wiley. https://library.ashford.edu/ezproxy.aspx?url=http%3A//search.credoreference.com/content/entry/wileypsych/eriksonian_developmental_stages/0Links to an external site.
Burkitt, E. (2010). Vygotsky’s sociocultural theoryLinks to an external site.. Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Psychology. Routledge. https://library.ashford.edu/ezproxy.aspx?url=http%3A//search.credoreference.com/content/entry/hodderdpsyc/vygotsky_s_sociocultural_theory/0
Second Classmate Post:
Mila lived an eventful life, and I would hope that my suggested change improved it. I would stop her and her family from moving back into her familial after her mother passed. At this stage in her life, Mila was 43 years old, placing her in middle adulthood. She would be in the generativity vs. stagnation stage of Erikson’s model. In this stage adults either turn to caring for others or becoming concerned with only their own well-being (Craighead & Nemeroff, 2004). This change may lead Mila towards stagnation in this stage, removing her from a caring role for her children and siblings. She could become self-absorbed about her own success at her father’s business. However, considering equifinality and multifinality, there may be no change in her outcomes of life from the pre-change value. Equifinality is the theory that an end state results can be achieved by differing starting states while multifinality is the theory that multiple end results can be reached from the same start state (Omli, 2015). So, it is possible that her life lived over may have had different results regardless of changes made to the path.
However, going back to the suggested change, a variety of post order effects are likely. Perhaps Oliver would not have had to drop out of school and would have been successful in pediatrics, allowing the family to live much more comfortably. Then he may not have begun drinking which may have saved him developing liver disease and dying. So, then Mila would not have moved to Atlanta or met new friends. In this timeline, she would not feel sad about the loss of her husband but may not feel satisfied in her final years without her friends and family so close.
Alternatively, nothing may have changed for her future results. If she found herself stagnating after her mother’s death and became increasingly self-concerned, she may not have wanted to move to Atlanta after the death of her husband due to her inability to drive. She may not have made new friends even if she did move to Atlanta.
A lack of change in her outcomes, such as suggested by equifinality, may be explained by Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. This theory posits that social interactions and context shape individuals’ development and that individuals inversely shape their environment (Burkitt & Burkitt, 2006). Mila’s upbringing would have shaped her significantly and may have led to her taking care of her siblings whether she lived with them or not. Her siblings need for care may have additionally caused her to take on the caregiver role despite her desires.
Perhaps these changes may not be for the best. I am not sure if it would be worth potentially forgoing her husband’s death at the cost of the time she was able to spend caring for the rest of her family. She may also not have developed such a close relationship with her son if she continued working, meaning that if life events happened as in the first scenario I presented, then Mila may not have wanted to move to Atlanta anyway and may have died alone. Changes in one stage of life affect the next. If Mila found stagnation in middle adulthood, she may have ended with despair in later adulthood rather than the integrity she found in her actual life. Or she may have found mostly integrity with her life but despair with the ending.
References:
Burkitt, D. E., & Burkitt, E. (2006). Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. In G. Davey, Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Psychology (1st ed.). Routledge. https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6MjUwNzc2NQ==?aid=100753Links to an external site.
Craighead, W. E., & Nemeroff, C. B. (2004). Eriksonian developmental stages. In The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science (3rd ed.). Wiley. https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6MTY2ODI4Ng==?aid=100753Links to an external site.
Omli, J. (2015, October 27). Multifinality, equifinality, and hockey fighting [Video]. YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxmtcV_9CCELinks to an external site.
