DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

Phase 1 – Early Crisis: Constriction
In this cluster, the constrictive force characteristic of Phase 1 is the bind of a
sense of duty and obligation to wife and child, and the growing passivity they
experience in this situation.
Trapped by a Sense of Duty
Leon’s reason for marrying in his early twenties was, he recalls, a sense of
moral duty to the girl concerned. He had doubts about their suitability having been
together for several years, but felt obligated to marry her after her father’s death. He
said:
“It just seemed the thing to do, this is obviously the next stage, we’d get married…I
felt a kind of, it sounds awful to say it, but a kind of moral duty almost, to repay the
kind of support that she had given me through that final year [of his studies], and I
wanted to look after her and that became something that absolutely sealed the idea
that this marriage would take place, and we married a few months later.” (p.2)
Leon explained how this sense of duty came from his working class moral code,
which he defines as built on moral imperatives of duty to support one other. He uses
the phrase often used in Phase 1 of crisis that of feeling trapped, for with his focus on
duty, he could see no way out of the marriage:
“So I had to do it, and the fact that I was married and I had given this undertaking, so
there was a feeling of being trapped, which carried on through right until the end of
that phase.” (p.10)
Vern also ends up “trapped” (p.5) in a relationship out of his sense of duty,
rather than out of desire or want. After a number of failed relationships, he is seven
weeks into a relationship with a girl when he finds out that she is pregnant. The initial
emotional reaction was one of panic. The affluent, carefree lifestyle to which he had
been accustomed was inconsistent with the prospect of a family. As with Leon, it was
Vern’s sense of duty that kept him in the relationship, and obligated him to marry her.
Vern uses a powerful analogy of being hanged by a rope to describe the constriction
which this sense of duty brings:
“And I suspect there is a mixture of societal imposition, family expectations and what
you as an individual have actually thought out for yourself. Which is the driver, I
don’t know, but the three twisted together is a very strong rope and I almost hanged
myself with it. When you have that sense of duty it’s incredibly difficult to tease it
apart and go ‘hang on a minute, why am I doing this?’ It got to the situation where I
thought I am doing no good to anybody.” (p.7)
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