Final Chapter 16: Socioemotional Development in Middle Adulthood

Personality theories and adult development: Stages in adulthood

• Erikson’s generativity vs stagnation

• Levinson’s seasons of life

Generativity

Adults’ desire to leave legacies of themselves to the next generation

• Adults achieve a kind of immortality

• Commit themselves to the continuation and improvement of society as a whole through their connection to the next generation.

• Through biological, parental, work, cultural generativity

Stagnation or self absorption

Develops when individuals sense that they have done nothing for the next generation

Research supporting erikson

• Generativity grows from the 30s to 50s

• Respect from grandchildren boosts life satisfaction

• Intergenerational programs strengthen generativity

• Greater midlife generativity leads to more wisdom later

• Meaningful work increases generativity

• Sharing life lessons reduces loneliness and improves support

Levinson’s seasons of life

Daniel Levinson reported extensive interviews with 40 middle aged men

• Stages and transitions during the period from 17 to 65 years of age

4 Major Conflicts in the transition

• Being young vs. being old

• Being destructive vs. being constructive

• Being masculine vs. being feminine

• Being attached to others vs. being separated from them

End of teens

20s

Transition from dependence to independence 

• Marked for the formation of a dream: kind of life youth wants to have especially in career and marriage

• Novice phase of adult development 

• Reasonably free experimentation and testing dream in world 

1. Explore possibilities for adult living

2. Developing stable life structure

Age 30 transition

28 to 33 years old

Face more serious question of determining goals 

• Focus on family and career development 

• Phase: becoming one’s own man (BOOM)

Culminating life structure for early adulthood

40

reach stable point in career, outgrown attempts at learning to be an adult,, look forward to the kind of life lead as a middle aged adult

Caveats of levinson

• Data about middle adulthood is more valid than their data on young adulthood

  • Participants may distort and forget things about earlier experiences

• No women included in the participants

• No statistical analysis involved

How Pervasive Are Midlife Crises?

Personal control changes when individuals age through their adult years

• Middle age is a time when a person’s sense of control is frequently challenged by many demands and responsibilities, as well as physical and cognitive aging

Grant Study

Only a minority of adults experience a midlife crisis

Midlife is not a crisis

Cognitive skills and Career peak

E.g. Vocab, verbal memory, inductive reasoning

Happiness & positive affect

Upward trajectory from early adulthood to late adulthood

Midlife crises have been exaggerated

• The stage theories place too much emphasis on crises in development, especially midlife crises

• There often is considerable individual variation in the way people experience the stages.

Stress and women

More vulnerable to social stressors

• E.g., Higher level of stress for when things go wrong in Romantic & marital relationships, more depressed than men in Divorce & death of a friend

• Seek psychotherapy, talk to friends about stress, self help book, take prescription medication, engage in comfort eating

Tend and befriend

Seek social alliances with others

• Oxytocin is released when stressed

Stress and men

Attend a support group meeting, have sex, use porn, try to fix the problem themselves, not admit to having problems

Fight or flight

Type of behavior men engage in when they experience stress

• Become aggressive, socially withdraw, or drink alcohol

Context of midlife development

The demands of balancing career and family are usually not experienced as intensely by men as it is by women

• Gender contexts

• Cultural contexts

Gender context

Midlife is a diversified and heterogenous period for women and men

• Some it is a negative period

  • For some it is a New prime of life, a time of renewal, shed preoccupations on youthful appearance & body, seeking new challenges, valuing maturity, enjoying change

Cultural contexts

The concept of middle age is not very clear, or in some cases is absent.

• Nonindustrialized societies to describe individuals as young or old but not as middle-aged

• Some cultures have no words for “adolescent,” “young adult,” or “middle-aged adult.

Gusii culture in kenya

Course status is based on life events not age

Gusii culture females

1. Infant

2. Uncircumcised girl

3. Circumcised girl

4. Married woman

5. Female elder

Gusii culture males

1. Infant

2. Uncircumcised boy

3. Circumcised boy warrior

4. Male elder

Love and marriage

Security, loyalty, and mutual emotional interest are more important in middle adulthood

Two major forms of love

Companionate/ Affectionate love: increases during middle adulthood

Romantic love: strong in early adulthood

Marriage

Most married individuals are satisfied with their marriages during midlife

Some marriages that were difficult & rocky improved in middle adulthood

Effects of happy marriage

• Better health 

• Lower likelihood of work-related health limitations

Divorce

• Gray divorce: the rise in divorce among adults 50+

• Takes long because of the children

• Women initiate divorce in the US

Top reasons for divorce in women

verbal, physical, emotional abuse; alcohol, drug abuse, cheating

Top reasons for divorce in men

fell out of love no obvious problems, cheating, different value, lifestyles

Empty nest syndrome

Decline in marital satisfaction after children leave the home

• But for most, marital satisfaction does not decline after children have left home but rather increases during the years after child rearing

Refilling of empty nest

• Many stay due to financial struggles, delaying independence into their late twenties

• Middle-generation parents often give financial, emotional, and practical support to adult children

• Both generations benefit emotionally but face privacy and independence issues

B2B/ Back to bedroom/ boomerang kids

Economic uncertainty causes more adult children to return home after college, job loss, or divorce

Complaints when kids come back

Parents complain about noise, disrupted routines, and added responsibilities; children feel restricted and treated like kids

• Returning home creates family disequilibrium that needs mutual adaptation

Grandparenting

May become first time grandparents during middle age

• Provide childcare – mothers & fathers can work, OFW parents, separation, parent illness

Grandfathers

Perceive it as voluntary

Grandmothers

Perceive it is their responsibility to maintain ties across generations

Three prominent meanings of being a grandparent 

1. Biological reward and continuity

2. Source of emotional self fulfillment (companionship and satisfaction)  

3. Remote role

Intergenerational relationships

• Middle aged adults are happiest when they have harmonious relationships with their parents & grown children

• Some studies have found that relationships between aging parents & grown children are characterized by ambivalence

  • E.g, Love, reciprocal help, shared values: family conflict, caregiver stress 

  • Netherlands: affection & solidarity than ambivalence

• Middle aged adults develop more positive perceptions of their parents

Summary of possible experiences

• Launching children

• Experiencing empty nest

• Adjusting to children coming back

• Becoming grandparents (common role in older Filipinos)1

• Giving or receiving financial assistance to/ from children

• Caring for a sick/widowed parent or parents-in-law

• Adapting to being the oldest generation (if both parents pass away)

Sandwiched, Squeeze, or Overload generation

Middle adulthood because responsibilities for both grown children & aging parents

Gender

Women play an important role in maintaining family relationships across generations

• Mothers and daughters have closer relationships during their adult years than mothers-sons, fathers-daughters, or fathers –son

• Married men are more involved with their wives’ families than with their own

• Grandparent-grandchild relationships

• Mothers’ intergenerational ties were more influential