Picture a family on the Sea Point promenade on a Sunday afternoon. The toddler wobbles on a scooter, the teenager trails behind with earphones in, and the parents walk in the middle. We assume the children are the ones developing. The parents are "done".
Erik Erikson, who mapped childhood in Childhood and Society (1950), believed otherwise. He argued that growing up never stops, and that adults face turning points too. Think of Table Mountain. You can see the flat top from the car, but only when you start walking do you discover it has several ledges, each with its own view and its own climb. Adult life has three of them.
Stage 6. Young adulthood (roughly 18 to 40): "Can I truly be close to someone?"
Erikson called this the tension between intimacy and isolation. After the teenage fitting room, you finally have a rough idea of who you are. Now comes a harder question: can you let someone else see it?
Intimacy is like tending a braai fire together. One person cannot do it alone for long, and if either walks away or hogs the tongs, the coals die. It means sharing the real you, including the bad Mondays, with a partner, a close friend, or a family you choose.
The opposite is isolation. It can happen even in a crowded life: a flat in Century City full of notifications, a hundred WhatsApp groups and nobody to call at 2am. Done well, this stage grows love, meaning deep and lasting bonds.
Pause and reflect:
Who in my life knows the unedited version of me?
Am I so busy being a "good parent" that I have stopped being a friend or a partner?
Stage 7. Middle adulthood (roughly 40 to 65): "Am I contributing to something beyond myself?"
This is Erikson's most famous adult stage, and most parents are standing on it right now. The tension is between generativity and stagnation:
Generativity is the gardener who plants an oak she will never sit under. It is the coach who stays late for the under-12s, the neighbour who mentors a young apprentice, the parent who raises a child well. You are producing something that outlasts you.
Stagnation is the vlei in late summer. Nothing flows in, nothing flows out, and the water goes still and slightly sour. It feels like repeating the same year thirty times, like, "What is it all for?" Many people hit this around forty-five and call it a mid-life crisis. In Erikson's view, it is simply the question showing up for an answer.
The strength that grows here is care: a concern for others and for the world that extends past your own front gate.
Pause and reflect:
What am I building that will still be standing when I am gone?
Where have I gone "still", and what would it take to get the water moving again?
Stage 8. Late adulthood (65 and beyond): "Was it worth it?"
Imagine sitting at Kalk Bay harbour as the fishing boats come in. An old skipper looks back at the wake behind his boat. Erikson called the final tension integrity versus despair.
Integrity is the quiet "yes, I sailed it honestly, storms included".
Despair is the nagging "if only", a list of regrets with no time left to fix them.
In The Life Cycle Completed (1982), Erikson, writing with his wife Joan, suggested the reward here is wisdom: a calm acceptance that this is the only life you had. The good news for parents is that how we handle the earlier stages shapes how this last view looks.
Pause and reflect:
If my life were a logbook, what entries would I be proud of today?
Which old regret could I repair or forgive now, rather than carry for decades?
Why this matters to your child
Your children aren't just listening to you. They are studying you. Every day they watch an adult answer, or dodge, these three questions. The parent who nurtures friendships teaches intimacy. The parent who mentors, volunteers and keeps learning teaches generativity. The parent who makes peace with their own story teaches integrity.
You cannot hand your child a strength you have stopped growing. A child's development is a river fed from the adult streams upstream. At Rudder4Life, we often remind adults that the water downstream takes its colour from what flows in above.
Three things to carry with you:
Adults have turning points too. Needing support at forty is not weakness.
Ages are approximate. Life, loss and migration can shuffle the order.
It is never too late. A stagnant vlei can be dug open again.
So tonight, once the children are asleep, ask yourself the question you have been asking them to answer. Who am I close to? What am I building? Will I be at peace with the wake behind me?
Then go and live the answer where they can see it.
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