Ethnic background and Theories of James Marcia

Tiffany Hildebrand

Baker College

Human Development II

Ethnic background and Theories of James Marcia
Growing up, my family consisted of my mother, father, one older sister and one younger brother. My father and mother where both full blooded Germans but were American citizens. Before I was born my parents lived in Germany for three years when they were about to conceive my older sister that’s when they decided to move back to the United States. So that being said I have German in me but I’m also American since I was born and raised in America. We all have the pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes look from what the myths say that’s the German look. My mother and father can speak some German but are not fluent in it since it’s been a long time since they had to speak it. I know nothing about the German culture just stories that I hear from my family and research. My grandparents both sides were also German I don’t know to much on where my ancestors came from or much on my family tree. I just know that there is a think bloodline of German in our family. Our religious beliefs are all different my grandma and grandpa are all Lutheran, but my mom and I wouldn’t say we have a religion we are just very spiritual same with my mom’s mom. My dad is Baptist so I guess we don’t have a firm one religion in our family we all believe in different things. Even though we are all family but each and every one of us are all very different. We all may have a bloodline of German but I would say are decent background is American and for my future children I will be telling them that their ethnic background and roots is from America.
James Marcia is another influential theorist who expanded upon Erikson's concept of identity crisis and identity confusion. His initial work was published during the 1960's but his theory continues to be refined in accordance with recent research findings. Although Marcia's theory originally conceptualized identity development in terms of a progressive developmental trend, his theory has subsequently become more descriptive and categorical, defining and identifying particular configurations of identity exploration and commitment. (Oswalt, A) James Marcia explains four identity statuses. He differentiated these statuses by classifying individuals based on the extent of their crisis/exploration or commitment. These four statuses of identity are: identity diffusion, identity foreclosure, identity moratorium, and identity achievement.
What distinguishes one status from another is how each status is described. Identity diffusion is a status of a person who has not yet experienced a crisis or made any commitment. They are undecided about occupational and ideological choices and they're not very interested about making any decisions about it. Diffusion is different from the others because they haven't experienced crisis or commitments and have no interest in deciding their occupations or ideological choices. Identity foreclosure is the status of the person who's made a commitment but have not yet experienced a crisis. People in this status usually have parents who hand down the commitment to them in usually an authoritarian way. Because of this adolescents don't have the chance to