1. Socioemotional Development in Middle Adulthood
Chapter 17
Socioemotional Development in Middle Adulthood

2. Black Hawk College Chapter 17

3. Black Hawk College Chapter 17

4. Adult Stage Theories Generativity Versus Stagnation
Seasons of a Man’s Life
How Pervasive Are Midlife Crises?
Individual Variations
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5. Generativity vs. Stagnation
Erikson believes generativity encompasses adults’ desire to leave a legacy to the next generation.
Through generativity, adults achieve a kind of immortality by leaving their legacy.
Stagnation or self-absorption develops when individuals sense that they have done nothing for the next generation.
Through generativity, adults promote and guide those who follow by parenting, teaching, leading, doing things to benefit the community.
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6. How to Develop Generativity
Biological Generativity
Parental Generativity
Work Generativity
Cultural Generativity
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7. Generativity and Identity
One study showed that middle-aged adults especially were concerned about generativity and guiding younger adults.
Another showed that having a positive identity was linked with generativity in middle age.
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8. Generativity and Identity
A modification of Erikson’s theory proposed that his three adult stages—intimacy, generativity, and integrity—are best viewed as developmental phases within identity.
Thus identity remains the central core of the self’s development across all of the adult years.
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9. Season’s of a Man’s Life
Daniel Levinson extensively interviewed 40 middle-aged men and compiled information from the biographies of famous men.
His major interest and focus centered around midlife change, however, he described a number of stages and transitions in the life span.
Levinson emphasizes that development tasks must be mastered at each of these stages.
Although his original data included no females, Levinson claimed his theory also held for women.
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10. Levinson’s Stages of Change
The 20s are a novice phase of adult development.
Around age 28 to 33 the man goes through a transition in which he must determine his goals.
During the 30s he usually focuses on family and career development.
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11. Levinson’s Stages of Change
In the later years of this period, he enters a phase of Becoming One’s Own Man (BOOM).
By age 40 he has reached a stable location in his career and must look forward to middle adulthood.
Ages encompass the change to middle adulthood.
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12. The Four Major Conflicts
Levinson claimed that middle adulthood is the time for men to come to grips with four conflicts that have existed since adolescence:
Being young versus being old
Being destructive versus being constructive
Being masculine versus being feminine
Being attached to others versus being separated from them
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13. How Pervasive Are Midlife Crises?
Levinson views midlife as a crisis—a time when the adult is suspended between the past and the future, trying to cope with this gap that threatens life’s continuity.
A recent study has indicated that the idea of midlife crises have been exaggerated.
Many studies have shown that middle-aged adults have a greater sense of control in their work, greater sense of environmental mastery, more autonomy, more power, and greater financial security.
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14. Individual Variations
The stage theories focus on the universals of adult personality development and do not address individual variations.
An extensive study of 500 men at midlife showed that a tremendous amount of individual variation characterized the men.
George Vaillant’s Grant Study also yielded findings that showed variations in individual functioning.
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15. Life-Events Approach
The contemporary life-events approach emphasizes that how life events influence the individual’s development depends not only on the life event, but also on mediating factors, the life-stage context, and the sociohistorical context.
Drawbacks of the approach include its overemphasis on change and its failure to recognize that the primary sources of stress may not be major life events but rather our daily experiences.
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16. Contexts of Midlife Development
Historical Contexts
Gender Contexts
Cultural Contexts
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17. Historical Contexts
Some believe that changing historical times and different social expectations influence how different cohorts move through the life span.
Our values, attitudes, expectations, and behaviors are influenced by the period in which we live.
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18. Historical Contexts
Trying to tease out universal truths and patterns about adult development from one cohort to another is complicated.
Neugarten believes that the social environment of a particular age group can alter its social clock.
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19. The Social Clock
The timetable according to which individuals are expected to accomplish life’s tasks—marrying, having children, establishing themselves in a career.
Social clocks provide guides for our lives.
Individuals whose lives are not synchronized with these social clocks find life to be more stressful than those who are on schedule.
There is much less agreement today on the right age or sequence for the occurrence of major life events.
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20. Gender Contexts
As the roles of women have become more complex and varied, defining a normative sequence of development for them has become difficult, if not impossible.
Basic changes in social attitudes regarding labor force participation, families, and gender roles have begun to broaden the opportunities available for women in middle adulthood.
Midlife is a diversified, heterogeneous period for women, just as it is for men.
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21. Cultural Contexts
In many cultures, particularly nonindustrialized cultures, the concept of middle age is not very clear, or in some cases is absent.
Nonindustrialized cultures tend to describe individuals as young or old, but not middle-aged.
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22. Cultural Contexts
Movement from one status to the next in these cultures is due primarily to life events, not age.
Middle age tends to be more advantageous to women in many nonindustrialized societies.
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23. Black Hawk College Chapter 17

24. Longitudinal Studies Neugarten’s Kansas City Study
Costa and McCrae’s Baltimore Study
Berkeley Longitudinal Studies
Helson’s Mills College Study
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25. Neugarten’s Kansas City Study
This study looked at individuals 40 to 80 years of age over a 10-year period.
Subjects were given personality tests, questionnaires, and were interviewed.
Neugarten concluded that both stability and change characterized adults as they aged.
The most stable were: styles of coping, being satisfied with life, and being goal-directed.
As individuals aged, they were found to become more passive and were more likely to be threatened by the environment.
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26. The Baltimore Study
Costa and McCrae focused on the big five factors of personality:
emotional stability
openness to experience
extraversion
agreeableness
conscientiousness
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27. The Baltimore Study
The study followed approximately 1000 college-educated men and women aged over many years
They concluded that considerable stability occurs in the five personality factors
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28. Berkeley Longitudinal Studies
This series of studies is by far the longest-running longitudinal inquiry, and initially included more than 500 children and their parents.
The most stable characteristics were found to be the degree to which individuals were intellectually oriented, self-confident, or open to new experiences.
The characteristics that changed the most included the extent the individuals were nurturant or hostile and whether they had good self-control or not.
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29. Helson’s Mills College Study
This study distinguished three main groups among the women studied:
family oriented
career-oriented
those who followed neither path
Despite these differences, women in all three groups experienced some similar psychological changes over their adult years.
Those in the third group changed less than the others.
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30. Other Findings of the Mills Study
Between age 27 and the early forties, there was a shift toward less traditionally feminine attitudes.
Researchers in the Mills study concluded that rather than being in a midlife crisis, women were experiencing a midlife consciousness.
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31. Other Findings of the Mills Study
They found that commitment to a career or family helped women learn to control their impulses, develop interpersonal skills, become independent, and work hard to achieve goals.
Women who didn’t commit to either of these did not develop as fully as the other women.
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32. Conclusions Humans are adaptive beings.
We are resilient throughout our adult lives.
We do not develop entirely new personalities.
Amid change is some underlying coherence and stability.
Some people change more than others.
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34. Love and Marriage at Midlife
Affectionate Love
Marriage and Divorce
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35. Affectionate Love
Affectionate or companionate love increases during middle adulthood.
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36. Affectionate Love
Security, loyalty, and mutual emotional interest become more important as relationships mature.
A relationship is believed to mature when partners:
share knowledge with one another.
assume responsibility for each other’s satisfaction.
share private information that governs their relationship.
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37. Marriage and Divorce
For married individuals in midlife, most voiced considerable satisfaction with being married.
A recent large scale study found that 72% of married midlife individuals reported that their marriage was either “excellent” or “very good.”
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38. Marriage and Divorce
Getting married in midlife lowered men’s anxiety, depression, and feelings of vulnerability.
Women who married in midlife felt more positive emotions than they had previously.
Couples who divorce in midlife tend to be cool, distant, and have suppressed emotions.
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39. Consequences of Divorce in Midlife
Many individuals perceive divorce in midlife as failing in the best years of their lives.
Men who divorced in their 40s became more depressed and had lower achievement goals.
Women who divorced in middle age showed a surge in positive emotions.
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40. Consequences of Divorce in Midlife
The perils of divorce in midlife may be fewer and less intense than for younger individuals.
They have more resources and can simplify their lives.
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41. The Empty Nest and Its Refilling
Characterized by a decrease in marital satisfaction due to the children’s departure which leaves parents with an empty feeling.
Parents who live vicariously through their children are more likely to experience the empty nest syndrome.
Most parents do not experience less marital satisfaction, in fact for many it increases after their children have left home.
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42. Coming Home
More adult children are returning to live at home after an unsuccessful career or divorce.
One study showed that 42% of middle-aged parents had serious conflicts with their resident adult children.
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43. Coming Home
One of the most common complaints voiced by both parents and adult children is a loss of privacy.
When adult children return home to live, a disequilibrium in family life is created, requiring considerable adaptation on both parties’ parts.
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44. Parenting Conceptions
Middle-aged parents felt as their children became adults they gained a new sense of appreciation for their commitment and influence as parents.
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45. Parenting Conceptions
Many parents of adult children regret not having had more involvement and better relationships with their children.
Research findings suggest that during middle adulthood we restructure our perceptions of our own parents, viewing them more as unique individuals.
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46. Siblings and Friends
The majority of sibling relationships in adulthood have been found to be close.
Siblings who are close to each other in adulthood tended to be that way as children.
It is rare for sibling closeness to develop for the first time in adulthood.
Friendships continue to be as important in midlife as they were in early adulthood.
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47. Intergenerational Relationships
For the most part, family members maintain considerable contact across generations.
A consistent finding is that parents and their young adult children differ in the way they describe their relationship.
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48. Intergenerational Relationships
Gender differences exist, as mothers and daughters tend to have closer relationships.
Middle-aged adults are often described as the “sandwich” generation, caught between aging parents and their young adult children.
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