Middle Adulthood
Physical Development: Key Highlights
I. MIDDLE AGE: A CULTURAL CONSTRUCT
When Is Middle Age?
No consensus on when it begins and ends.
Often defined as 40-65 years of age.
No specific biological or social events that mark its boundaries.
In the US, middle-age is increasingly a state of mind.
Many people in their sixties and seventies consider
themselves middle-aged.
Physical Development: Key Highlights
II. SEX AND HEALTH
Menopause: Cessation of menstruation and of the ability to
bear children, typically around age 50.
Symptoms:
Most common (among 50% of women)…hot flashes.
Other symptoms include…Vaginal dryness, burning, itching.
Sexual appetite remains.
Erectile Dysfunction: Inability of a man to achieve or maintain
an erect penis sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance.
Biological Causes:
Diabetes
High Blood Pressure or Cholesterol
Neurological Disorders
Kidney Failure
Other Causes:
Drugs/Alcohol
Unsatisfying Relationship
Psychological Factors
Stress
Physical Development: Key Highlights
III. STRESS AND HEALTH
“It’s not what happens, it’s how you take it.”
Allostasis: ability to adapt to stress.
Allostatic Load: damage that occurs when coping abilities
are inadequate.
Contributing Factors…
Positive or negative change
Illness
Death of spouse or divorce
Marriage
Unemployment
Occupational stress and ‘burnout’
Burnout: Emotional exhaustion and a sense that one
can no longer accomplish anything on the job.
Cognitive Development
Schaie: Middle-aged stages of Cognitive
Development
Responsible stage: Third of Schaie’s seven cognitive stages,
in which middle-aged people are concerned with long-range
goals and practical problems related to their responsibility for
others, such as family members or employees.
Executive stage: Fourth of Schaie’s seven cognitive stages,
in which middle-aged people responsible for societal systems
deal with complex relationships on several levels.
Reorganizational stage: Fifth of Schaie’s seven cognitive
stages, in which adults entering retirement reorganize their
lives around nonwork-related activities.
Schaie: The Seattle Longitudinal Study
The Flynn Effect: Every decade, raw scores in IQ tests have risen and test
makers have had to make the tests harder to keep the mean score at 100.
Likely due to…
(1) Improved health and nutrition, (2) Better education, (3) Increased opportunity
for visual-spatial stimulation (TV/Video games), (4) Improved test-taking skills
Horn and Cattell: Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence
Fluid intelligence: Type of intelligence which is applied to novel
problems and is relatively independent of educational and
cultural influences.
Crystallized intelligence: Type of intelligence involving the
ability to remember and use learned information; it is largely
dependent on education and cultural background.
Expertise
Mature adults show increasing competence solving problems in their field.
Encapsulation:
Information processing becomes dedicated to specific knowledge.
Captures fluid ability for expert problem solving.
Can help buffer age-related declines in cognitive ability.
Expert pattern recognition
Integrative Thought
Mature adults are better at integrating:
Logic with intuition and emotion
Conflicting facts and ideas
New and old information
Creativity
Creative potential: The talent for creativity that is present in
a person, such as a child, but not yet realized in fact.
Creative performance: What, and how much, a creative mind
produces.
Combination of forces:
Biological
Personal
Social and cultural
Specific contributions to creativity:
Highly organized knowledge of the subject
Intrinsic motivation to work
Strong emotional attachment to work
Willingness to take risks and tolerate rejection
Psychosocial Development
I. CHANGE AT MIDLIFE: CLASSIC
THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Proponents of Stability: Freud – Psychoanalytic theory
Trait models of personality
Proponents of Change: Humanistic theorists (Rogers & Maslow)
Self-actualization: a state of achieving one’s full potential.
Unconditional positive regard: the acceptance of the person as he or
she is.
Conditional positive regard: the person is only held in esteem when
they fulfill certain requirements set for them by the other person or
society.
Normative-Stage Models
Erik Erikson: Generativity versus Stagnation
Generativity versus stagnation: In Erikson’s theory, the
seventh critical stage of psychosocial development, in which
middle-aged adults develop a concern with establishing,
guiding, and influencing the next generation or else
experiences stagnation (a sense of inactivity or lifelessness).
Care: The virtue of the seventh crisis in Erikson’s theory, a widening
commitment to take care of the persons, the products, and the ideas
one has learned to care for.
Kotre’s Four Forms of Generativity:
Biological: Conceiving and bearing children.
Parental: Nurturing and raising children.
Technical: Teaching skills to apprentices.
Cultural: Transmitting cultural values and institutions.
Kotre’s Two Methods for Expressing Generativity:
Communal: the expression of generativity involving care and nurturance
of others.
Agentic: the expression of generativity involving personal contributions
to society.
Valliant, Levinson, & Neugarten
Interiority…
An introspective tendency at midlife.
A restructuring of life towards maintaining relationships.
II. THE SELF AT MIDLIFE: ISSUES AND
THEMES
Is There a Midlife Crisis?
Midlife crisis: In some normative-stage models, stressful life
period precipitated by the review and reevaluation of one’s
past, typically occurring in the early to middle forties.
Midlife review: Introspective examination that often occurs in
middle age, leading to reappraisal and revision of values and
priorities.
Developmental deadlines: Time constraints on one’s ability to
accomplish certain things, like having a baby.
Ego-resiliency: The ability to adapt flexibly and resourcefully to
potential sources of stress.
Occurrence is rare
Some experience turmoil
Others feel they are at their peak
Least likely among those with ‘ego resiliency’
Able to adapt to stress
Have a sense of mastery and control
Midlife is just one of many transitions.
Middle age may be stressful
But no more than other stages of life
Turning Points: Psychological transitions that involve significant change
in the person’s life… happen throughout the lifespan.
Identity Development: Current Theoretical
Approaches
Susan Krauss Whitbourne: Identity as a Process
Identity process model: Whitbourne’s model of identity
development based on processes of assimilation and
accommodation.
Identity: Schema that individuals use to interpret their experiences.
Identity assimilation: effort to fit new experience into an existing
self-concept.
Identity accommodation: adjusting the self-concept to fit new experience.
Identity style: characteristic ways of confronting, interpreting, and
responding to experience.
Assimilative identity style: A person who uses assimilation more than
accommodation in adapting a self-concept.
Accommodative identity style: A person who uses accommodation
more than assimilation in adapting a self-concept.
Balanced identity style: Healthiest style, in which identity is flexible
enough to change when warranted but not unstructured to the point
that every new experience causes the person to question fundamental
assumptions about the self.
Narrative Psychology: Identity as a Life Story
Narrative psychology: Field that views the development of
the self as a continuous process of constructing one’s own
life story.
Goals…
Exploratory
Goals aimed at a mature understanding of self
Intrinsic
Goals aimed at well-being and/or happiness
Generativity script: Life story in which generativity plays a key role,
and which gives the life story a happy ending.
Gender Identity
Men’s Gender Identity
In middle age many men become more interested in:
Expression of feelings
Intimate relationships
Nurturing
(Traits traditionally labeled as feminine)
Women’s Gender Identity
In middle age many women become more:
Assertive
Self-confident
Achievement-oriented
(Characteristics traditionally labeled as masculine)
Gender Crossover
Once active parenting is over, there is a reversal of roles
Men explore their ‘feminine’ side
Women become more dominant and independent
Psychological Well-Being and Positive
Mental Health
Emotionality
Decline of negative emotions
Anger
Fear
In middle to late adulthood, both men and women see a surge in positive
emotions.
Although women are slightly more negative at all ages.
Life Satisfaction: Coping and Adapting
Most people report being satisfied with life, regardless of age.
Positive emotions from pleasant memories tend to persist.
Negative emotions from unpleasant memories tend to fade.
Ethnic conservatism: Tendency to resist accommodation and
cling to familiar values and practices that give meaning to life.
Other factors…
III. RELATIONSHIPS AT MIDLIFE
Theories of Social Contact
Social convoy theory: Theory of aging which holds that people move
through life surrounded by concentric circles of intimate relationships or
varying degrees of closeness, such as close friends and family members,
on which people rely for assistance, well-being, and social support.
Socioemotional selectivity theory: Theory that people select social
contacts throughout life on the basis of the changing relative importance of
social interaction as a source of information, as an aid in developing and
maintaining a self-concept, and as a source of emotional well-being.
Cohabitation and Mental Health
Men: More depressed than married counterparts
Women: No differences in mental health from married counterparts
Why the gender difference?
Women may want intimacy without obligation of caring for a husband
Men may benefit from the kind of care wives traditionally provide
Midlife Divorce
Marital capital: Financial and emotional benefits built up
during a long-standing marriage, which tend to hold a
couple together.
IV. RELATIONSHIPS WITH MATURING
CHILDREN
Adolescent Children: Issues for Parents
When Children Leave: The Empty Nest
Empty nest: Transitional phase of parenting following the last child’s
leaving the parents’ home.
Women heavily invested in mothering find this transition difficult.
Most women find the transition liberating…
A relief from the “chronic emergencies” of parenthood.
Parenting Grown Children
Tight-knit: Intergenerational families in which the members live physically
close and are emotionally close.
Sociable: Intergenerational families in which there is less emotional affinity
or commitment, although the members live physically close to one another
and will occasionally engage in social activities together.
Obligatory: Intergenerational families in which there is a lot of interaction
but little emotional attachment.
Estranged: Intergenerational families in which there is little to no interaction
despite living physically close.
Detached: Intergenerational families in which members are geographically
and emotionally far away from each other.
Intimate but distant: Intergenerational families in which members live far
away from each other or spend little time with each other, but retain warm
feelings.
Prolonged Parenting: The “Cluttered Nest”
Revolving door syndrome: Tendency for young adults to return to their
parent’s home (sometimes more than once) while getting on their feet or in
times of financial, marital, or other trouble.
V. OTHER KINSHIP TIES
Relationships with Aging Parents
Filial maturity: Stage of life in which middle-aged children, as the outcome
of a filial crisis, learn to accept and meet their parents’ need to depend on
them.
Sandwich generation: Middle-aged adults squeezed by competing needs
to raise or launch children and to care for elderly parents.
Caregiver burnout: Condition of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion
affecting adults who care for aged persons.
Caring for aging parents can bring siblings closer or cause resentment.
Grandparenthood
Grandparenting often begins before the end of active parenting
Average grandparent:
Starts at age 48, Has 6 grandchildren, Still has living parents
The Grandparent’s Role
68% see at least 1 grandchild every 2 weeks
Grandmothers tend to be ‘kinkeepers’
Keep in touch with the grandchildren
Have warmer relationships than grandfathers
Grandparents are the nation’s primary childcare providers
Many spend money on educational needs of children
Grandparenting after Divorce and Remarriage
After grandchildren’s parents divorce:
Maternal grandparents: tend to have more contact with grandchildren
than paternal grandparents.
Paternal grandparents: Remarriage of mother further decreases chances
for contact.