CHAPTER 16
Middle Adulthood: Social and
Emotional Development
Theories of Development in Middle
Adulthood
Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial
Development
• Believed major psychological challenge of the middle
years is generativity versus stagnation
• Generativity
– ability to generate or produce; based on instinctual drive toward
procreativity (bearing and rearing children)
– can consist of parenting one’s own children, helping others with
their children, being engaged in projects that will influence future
generations
• Stagnation
– rejection of generativity drive can result in a life stripped of
meaning and purpose
Daniel Levinson’s Seasons
• Midlife transition
– The years from 40 to 45
– Psychological shift into middle adulthood often accompanied by
a crisis during which people fear they have more to look back
upon than forward to
• Midlife crisis
– Time of dramatic self-doubt and anxiety during which people
sense the passing of their youth and become preoccupied with
concern about the imminence of their own mortality
– May be imposed from external factors such as downsizing
Entering Midlife: Crisis, Turning Point, or Prime
of Life?
• Midlife usually identified around age 35 for women and
age 40 for men; women reach it about five years earlier
mostly due to reproductive awareness
• Due to unrealized dreams and life losses,
psychotherapy during this time should not be
overlooked.
• Midlife can be prime of life if the person has continued
to develop in an area of expertise or interest
– Little if any fluid intelligence lost and crystallized intelligence
growing
Entering Midlife: Crisis, Turning Point, or Prime
of Life? (cont’d)
• Middle-aged adults, especially professionals, are often
earning more money than young adults.
– Tend to be geographically and vocationally settled
– Most have built systems of social support and may be involved
in endearing romantic and social relationships as well as have
children
• Flip side of middle adulthood
– The overwhelming responsibility of taking care of your own
family, helping with your aging parents, and remaining in the
workplace all at once
The Life-Events Approach
• Life-events approach
– Focuses on the particular challenges that are likely to face
people at this time of life rather than phases or stages
• Stressful life events in middle adulthood
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Death of a spouse, child, parent, or sibling
Changes in health
Caring for one’s parents
Financial difficulties
Concern about one’s appearance, weight, or aging
Moving
Change in employment; changes in relationships; changes in
responsibilities at work
The Life-Events Approach (cont’d)
• Many middle-aged women do not experience “empty
nest syndrome”.
– Instead, they take advantage of their new time by being in the
workplace and finding life satisfaction in other activities besides
childrearing and homemaking
• Supportive social network, positive attitude, and a sense
of control help to mitigate the effects of stress and foster
feelings of well-being among midlife adults.
Stability and Change in Middle Adulthood
Stability and Change in Middle Adulthood
• Personalities tend to mature rather than be shaped by
environmental conditions.
• Expression of personality traits is influenced by culture.
Are There Sudden Shifts in Personality?
• The “big five” personality traits tend to show stability
over time.
• Some trends of group personality changes over the
years, but introverted tend to remain introverted,
extroverted tend to remain extroverted
• Neuroticism declines over time; agreeableness and
conscientiousness increase over time; extraversion and
openness to new experience decline slightly over time
Table 16-1, p. 336
Personality Themes among College-Educated
Women
• Women in their 40’s scored higher on
personality scales than women in their 20’s.
• Higher for women in their 60’s in the areas of
identity certainty, confident power, and concern
about aging
• Personal distress toward aging decreases with
age, suggesting older women have become
more settled.
Work in Middle Adulthood
Job Satisfaction
• Only 45% of American workers are satisfied with their
jobs.
• Job satisfaction increases steadily throughout adulthood.
– Increased expertise and income
– Workers are more realistic in middle adulthood
• Blue collar workers
– Report feelings of alienation and dissatisfaction due to
supervisors treating them disrespectfully especially when
supervisor is younger than them
• Women balance work and home but still feel effects of
“glass ceiling”
Career Changes in Middle Adulthood
• Most changes in careers occur during young adulthood
due to responsibilities of middle adults’ life.
• Most career changes in middle adulthood are shifts into
related fields.
• Radical shifts in career can be successful.
• Crisis such as divorce, conflict with a coworker, or
getting fired may force the middle adult to take any job
he/she can find.
Unemployment
• Unemployed adults display lower physical and
psychological well-being than their employed
counterparts.
• Unemployed middle-aged adults have lower well-being
than unemployed young adults.
• Unemployed middle-aged adults for whom work was
more important, had fewer financial resources and
social supports, and blamed themselves for the
unemployment, fared the worst.
• Older women will take lower-paying jobs as long as they
like the work.
Relationships in Middle Adulthood
Evolving Parent-Child Relationships
• Parents are stressed when adolescents do not exert
self-control and they have to direct them in multiple
areas of their life.
• Children who are young adults may still be financially
reliant upon their parents.
– Some still live at home
• Parents balance between staying in touch with the
young adult and interfering with their life choices.
• Living at home as a young adult differs according to
culture as well as location.
• Married children present new family members (in-laws)
who may or may not enrich their parents’ lives.
Grandparenting
• Grandparents have to choose between reckless
interference or painful neglect.
• Having grandchildren is viewed as a positive life event.
• Grandparents spend a higher proportion of their time
with their grandchildren in recreational and educational
activities.
• Grandchildren tend to spend more time with their
grandmothers than with their grandfathers all the way
through adolescence.
• Grandchildren tend to be more involved with maternal
grandparents than paternal grandparents.
Grandparenting (cont’d)
• Grandparents tend to have resources such as trips
available for grandchildren, but parents do the
caretaking.
• Grandparents have less influence on their grandchildren
when they live with them.
– Conflicts between adult children and grandparents ensue over
parenting
• Some grandparents end up the custodial parent to their
grandchildren.
– Changes the lifestyle of the middle adult and introduces
emotional challenges as well as balancing issues
Middle-Aged Children with Aging Parents
• Most elderly parents live near one of their middle-aged
children.
• Most burden of taking care of the elderly parents falls on
the middle-aged daughter
• Sandwich generation refers to middle-aged daughter
taking care of her own children and/or grandchildren as
well as her aging parents
• Middle-aged female may also be working, causing more
stress; if lucky, she will have a sibling living nearby to
help out
Siblings
• Most people in middle adulthood have at least one living
sibling.
• Nature of sibling relationships reflect the childhood
relationship
• Some sibling relationships get better as they take care
of aging parents together.
• On the other hand, sibling relationship may suffer if only
one of the siblings is taking care of the elderly parent.
Friends
• Adults in middle adulthood tend to have fewer friends.
• Middle-aged adults place value on the friends they do
have.
• Their friends tend to mirror them in interests, activities,
and years of mutual experiences.
• Male friends tend to be more competitive and less likely
to be intimate than female friends.
• Loss of a friend is felt very deeply.