to a career or vocation. While young boys have been expected to develop their identities primarily through attachment to a career, young girls have been expected to establish their identities by attachment to a man, and to the roles of wife and mother.
Yet for both boys and girls, these are inadequate sources of identity. While Erikson's definition seems to demand that children adapt to social roles ("with the opportunities offered by social roles") in this developmental phase, this does not seem to represent true identity formation. Instead, what he seems to be talking about is a kind of conformity that enables the child to fit in to the society most smoothly.
That kind of identity formation cannot really contribute to intimacy, which is Erikson's next major stage. Intimacy demands that the individual be able to share who he or she is in a vulnerable and honest way. If, however, identity has been formed by fitting into the available social opportunities, intimacy is only the meeting of two false identiti
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