The five Cs as a model of positive human development: Extending a model of positive youth development to young and middle-aged adults

Although widely known as an approach to positive youth development, Lerner and Lerner’s Five Cs model characterizes thriving in ways that reflect an age-general relational developmental systems perspective. A narrow focus on youth tethers the Five Cs model to a period of the life span often described as an ontogenetic laboratory—a period marked by relatively high plasticity during which malleability can be observed readily. As such, research on the five Cs largely overlooks the model’s utility across other stages of the life span. We argue that it is past time to take the Five Cs model outside this ontogenetic laboratory, and we illustrate how such work may be done by evaluating a measure of the five Cs in a sample of 2,704 adults spanning well into midlife (M Age = 44.49 years, SD = 7.81, range = 24–66). Our results show that the five Cs exhibit a meaningful factor structure and appropriately correlate with key criterion variables in adults. We close by discussing implications and future directions for work that explores the Five Cs as a lifelong model of positive human development.