Slide PSI 203 Pertemuan IX
Life-Span Development
Twelfth Edition
Chapter 16:
Socioemotional Development in Middle
Adulthood
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• Erikson’s Generativity vs. Stagnation:
• Generativity: adults’ desire to leave legacies of
themselves to the next generation
•
•
•
•
Biological generativity
Parental generativity
Work generativity
Cultural generativity
• Stagnation: develops when individuals sense that
they have done nothing for the next generation
• Research supports Erikson’s theory
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• Levinson’s Seasons of a Man’s Life:
• 20’s are a novice phase of adult development
• Exploring the possibilities for adult living; developing a
stable life structure
• 30’s are a time for focusing on family and career
development
• Becoming One’s Own Man (BOOM)
• By the 40’s, man has a stable career and now must
look forward to the kind of life he will lead as a
middle-aged adult
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• Levinson’s Seasons of a Man’s Life (continued):
• Transition to middle adulthood lasts about 5 years (ages 40
to 45) and requires that men come to grips with conflicts
existing since adolescence:
•
•
•
•
Being young vs. being old
Being destructive vs. being constructive
Being masculine vs. being feminine
Being attached to others vs. being separated from them
• According to Levinson, 70%–80% of men find the midlife
transition tumultuous and psychologically painful
• A successful transition rests on reducing the polarities and
accepting each as an integral part of one’s being
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
LEVINSON’S PERIODS OF ADULT
DEVELOPMENT
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• How pervasive are midlife crises?
• Vaillant’s “Grant Study”:
• The 40’s are a decade of reassessing and recording the
truth about the adolescent and adult years
• Only a minority of adults experience a midlife crisis
• Reports of general well-being and life satisfaction tend to
be high during mid-life
• Another study found that 26% of adults
experienced a midlife crisis
• Most attributed this to negative life events rather than
aging
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• Adults often experience a peak of personal control and
power during middle age
• Adults’ ability to master their environment, autonomy,
and personal relations improve during middle age
• Adult developmental experts generally agree that
midlife crises have been exaggerated
• In general, stage theories place too much emphasis on
crises in development
• There is often considerable individual variation in the way
people experience the stages
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• Individual Variations:
• Stage theories do not adequately address individual
variations in adult development
• Some individuals may experience a midlife crisis
in some contexts of their lives but not others
• In 1/3 of cases where individuals report
experiencing a midlife crisis, the crisis was
triggered by life events such as job loss, financial
problems, or illness
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
THE LIFE-EVENTS APPROACH
• The life-events approach is another major way to
conceptualize adult personality development
• Contemporary Life-Events Approach: how life
events influence the individual’s development depends
on:
•
•
•
•
•
The life event itself
Mediating factors
The individual’s adaptation to the life event
Life-stage context
Sociohistorical context
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
THE LIFE-EVENTS APPROACH
• Drawbacks:
• Life-events approach places too much emphasis on
change, not adequately recognizing stability
• It may not be life’s major events that are the
primary sources of stress, but our daily experiences
• Focus on daily hassles and uplifts rather than major
events
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
THE LIFE-EVENTS APPROACH
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STRESS AND PERSONAL CONTROL
• Overall, stress is highest in young and middleaged adults; declines in older adults
• Middle-aged adults experience more “overload”
stressors that involve juggling too many activities at
once
• Middle-aged adults are more reactive to interpersonal
stressors (but less reactive to work stressors) than
younger adults
• On average, a sense of personal control
decreases as adults become older
• Some aspects increase while others decrease
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STRESS AND PERSONAL CONTROL
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
CONTEXTS OF MIDLIFE
DEVELOPMENT
• Historical Contexts (cohort effects):
• Changing historical times and different social
expectations influence how cohorts move through the
life span
• Social clock: the timetable according to which
individuals are expected to accomplish life’s tasks
• Gender Contexts:
• Most stage theories are accused of male bias
• Women’s concerns and stressors are different from
those of men
• Cultural and social attitudes affect women’s roles
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
CONTEXTS OF MIDLIFE
DEVELOPMENT
• Gender Contexts (continued):
• Early fifties brought a new prime of life for many
women
•
•
•
•
More empty nests
Better health
Higher income
More concern for parents
• Stereotype that midlife is a negative age period for
women is largely false
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
CONTEXTS OF MIDLIFE
DEVELOPMENT
• Cultural Contexts:
• In many nonindustrialized societies, the concept of
middle age is unclear or absent
• Midlife often brings about great change for women
in nonindustrialized societies:
• Often freed from restrictions placed on younger women
• Right to exercise authority over specified younger kin
• Eligibility for special status and the possibility of
recognition beyond the household
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
CONTEXTS OF MIDLIFE
DEVELOPMENT
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
• The Baltimore Study used the big five factors of
personality to study 1,000 college-educated
persons aged 20 to 96 starting from the 1950s
and continuing today:
• Considerable stability in the five personality factors
• Agreeableness and conscientiousness increased in
early and middle adulthood
• Neuroticism decreased in early adulthood
• Openness to experience increased in adolescence/early
adulthood and then decreased in late adulthood
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
• Berkeley Longitudinal Studies: more than 500
children and parents studied in the 1920s
through midlife:
• No support that personality is characterized by
changes or stability from adolescence to midlife
• Intellectual orientation, self-confidence, and
openness to experience were the more stable traits
• Ability to nurture and self-control changed most
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
• Helson’s Mills College Study: studied 152
women from the 1950s through their 30’s, 40’s,
and 50’s
• Three main groups:
• Family-oriented
• Career-oriented
• Neither path
• Between age 27 and early 40’s, women shifted toward
less traditional feminine attitudes
• Midlife crisis was really midlife consciousness
• Similarities in concerns found between women in early
their early 40s and Levinson’s findings
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
• Vaillant’s Studies: conducted three longitudinal
studies from the 1920s through today:
• Alcohol abuse and smoking at age 50 was the best
predictor of death between ages 75 and 80
• Factors at age 50 which are best predictors of
“happy-well” between ages 75 and 80:
•
•
•
•
•
Regular exercise and avoiding being overweight
Well-educated and future oriented
Having a stable marriage and good coping skills
Being thankful, forgiving, and empathetic
Being active with other people
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
• Conclusions:
• Evidence does not support the view that personality
traits become completely fixed at a certain age
• Change is typically small and limited; stability peaks
in the 50’s and 60’s
• Cumulative personality model: with time and age,
people become more adept at interacting with their
environment in ways that promote the stability of
personality
• Some change still characterizes personality in middle
age and late adulthood
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
• Romantic love is typically strong in early adulthood
• Affectionate love increases during middle adulthood
• Most married individuals are satisfied with their
marriages during midlife
• Divorce in midlife can be less intense due to increased
resources and lessened child-rearing responsibilities
• However, emotional and time commitment to a long-lasting
marriage is typically not given up easily
• Staying married because of the children is a common
reason for waiting to get a divorce
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
THE EMPTY NEST
• Empty Nest Syndrome: a decline in marital
satisfaction after the children leave the home
• For most parents, marital satisfaction actually
increases during the years after child rearing
• Refilling of empty nest is becoming a common
occurrence
• Adult children are returning to live at home for
financial reasons
• Loss of privacy is a common complaint for both
parents and adult children
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
SIBLING RELATIONSHIPS AND
FRIENDSHIPS
• Sibling relationships continue over the entire
life span
• The majority of sibling relationships in adulthood
are close
• Friendships continue to be important in
middle adulthood
• Friendships that have endured over the adult years
tend to be deeper than those that have just been
formed in middle adulthood
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
GRANDPARENTING
• Many adults become grandparents during middle
age
• Grandmothers have more contact with grandchildren
than grandfathers
• Three prominent meanings:
• Source of biological reward and continuity
• Source of emotional self-fulfillment
• Remote role
• The grandparent role and its functions vary
among families, ethnic groups, and cultures
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
GRANDPARENTING
• Three Grandparenting Styles:
• Fun-seeking style
• Distant-figure style
• Formal style
• An increasing number of U.S. grandchildren live with
their grandparents
• 2.3 million in 1980; 6.1 million in 2005
• Most common reasons are divorce, adolescent pregnancies,
and parental drug use
• Tends to be more stressful for younger grandparents, when
grandchildren have physical and psychological problems,
and when there is low family cohesion
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
GRANDPARENTING
• Grandparents who take in grandchildren are
in better health, are better educated, are more
likely to be working outside the home, and
are younger than grandparents who move in
with their children
• Concern over grandparent visitation of
children has become more common
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
• Middle-aged and older adults typically express a
strong feeling of responsibility between
generations in their family
• They share their experiences and transmit values to the
younger generation
• Family members typically maintain considerable
contact across generations
• When conflicts arise, parents most often cite
habits and lifestyle choices, while adult children
cite communication and interaction styles
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
• Differences in gender:
• Mothers and daughters have closer relationships
during their adult years than mothers and sons,
fathers and daughters, and fathers and sons
• Married men are more involved with their wives’
families than with their own
• Maternal aunts and grandmothers are cited as the
most important or loved relative twice as often as
their paternal counterparts
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Twelfth Edition
Chapter 16:
Socioemotional Development in Middle
Adulthood
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• Erikson’s Generativity vs. Stagnation:
• Generativity: adults’ desire to leave legacies of
themselves to the next generation
•
•
•
•
Biological generativity
Parental generativity
Work generativity
Cultural generativity
• Stagnation: develops when individuals sense that
they have done nothing for the next generation
• Research supports Erikson’s theory
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• Levinson’s Seasons of a Man’s Life:
• 20’s are a novice phase of adult development
• Exploring the possibilities for adult living; developing a
stable life structure
• 30’s are a time for focusing on family and career
development
• Becoming One’s Own Man (BOOM)
• By the 40’s, man has a stable career and now must
look forward to the kind of life he will lead as a
middle-aged adult
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• Levinson’s Seasons of a Man’s Life (continued):
• Transition to middle adulthood lasts about 5 years (ages 40
to 45) and requires that men come to grips with conflicts
existing since adolescence:
•
•
•
•
Being young vs. being old
Being destructive vs. being constructive
Being masculine vs. being feminine
Being attached to others vs. being separated from them
• According to Levinson, 70%–80% of men find the midlife
transition tumultuous and psychologically painful
• A successful transition rests on reducing the polarities and
accepting each as an integral part of one’s being
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
LEVINSON’S PERIODS OF ADULT
DEVELOPMENT
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• How pervasive are midlife crises?
• Vaillant’s “Grant Study”:
• The 40’s are a decade of reassessing and recording the
truth about the adolescent and adult years
• Only a minority of adults experience a midlife crisis
• Reports of general well-being and life satisfaction tend to
be high during mid-life
• Another study found that 26% of adults
experienced a midlife crisis
• Most attributed this to negative life events rather than
aging
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• Adults often experience a peak of personal control and
power during middle age
• Adults’ ability to master their environment, autonomy,
and personal relations improve during middle age
• Adult developmental experts generally agree that
midlife crises have been exaggerated
• In general, stage theories place too much emphasis on
crises in development
• There is often considerable individual variation in the way
people experience the stages
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STAGES OF ADULTHOOD
• Individual Variations:
• Stage theories do not adequately address individual
variations in adult development
• Some individuals may experience a midlife crisis
in some contexts of their lives but not others
• In 1/3 of cases where individuals report
experiencing a midlife crisis, the crisis was
triggered by life events such as job loss, financial
problems, or illness
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
THE LIFE-EVENTS APPROACH
• The life-events approach is another major way to
conceptualize adult personality development
• Contemporary Life-Events Approach: how life
events influence the individual’s development depends
on:
•
•
•
•
•
The life event itself
Mediating factors
The individual’s adaptation to the life event
Life-stage context
Sociohistorical context
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
THE LIFE-EVENTS APPROACH
• Drawbacks:
• Life-events approach places too much emphasis on
change, not adequately recognizing stability
• It may not be life’s major events that are the
primary sources of stress, but our daily experiences
• Focus on daily hassles and uplifts rather than major
events
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
THE LIFE-EVENTS APPROACH
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STRESS AND PERSONAL CONTROL
• Overall, stress is highest in young and middleaged adults; declines in older adults
• Middle-aged adults experience more “overload”
stressors that involve juggling too many activities at
once
• Middle-aged adults are more reactive to interpersonal
stressors (but less reactive to work stressors) than
younger adults
• On average, a sense of personal control
decreases as adults become older
• Some aspects increase while others decrease
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STRESS AND PERSONAL CONTROL
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
CONTEXTS OF MIDLIFE
DEVELOPMENT
• Historical Contexts (cohort effects):
• Changing historical times and different social
expectations influence how cohorts move through the
life span
• Social clock: the timetable according to which
individuals are expected to accomplish life’s tasks
• Gender Contexts:
• Most stage theories are accused of male bias
• Women’s concerns and stressors are different from
those of men
• Cultural and social attitudes affect women’s roles
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
CONTEXTS OF MIDLIFE
DEVELOPMENT
• Gender Contexts (continued):
• Early fifties brought a new prime of life for many
women
•
•
•
•
More empty nests
Better health
Higher income
More concern for parents
• Stereotype that midlife is a negative age period for
women is largely false
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
CONTEXTS OF MIDLIFE
DEVELOPMENT
• Cultural Contexts:
• In many nonindustrialized societies, the concept of
middle age is unclear or absent
• Midlife often brings about great change for women
in nonindustrialized societies:
• Often freed from restrictions placed on younger women
• Right to exercise authority over specified younger kin
• Eligibility for special status and the possibility of
recognition beyond the household
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
CONTEXTS OF MIDLIFE
DEVELOPMENT
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
• The Baltimore Study used the big five factors of
personality to study 1,000 college-educated
persons aged 20 to 96 starting from the 1950s
and continuing today:
• Considerable stability in the five personality factors
• Agreeableness and conscientiousness increased in
early and middle adulthood
• Neuroticism decreased in early adulthood
• Openness to experience increased in adolescence/early
adulthood and then decreased in late adulthood
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
• Berkeley Longitudinal Studies: more than 500
children and parents studied in the 1920s
through midlife:
• No support that personality is characterized by
changes or stability from adolescence to midlife
• Intellectual orientation, self-confidence, and
openness to experience were the more stable traits
• Ability to nurture and self-control changed most
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
• Helson’s Mills College Study: studied 152
women from the 1950s through their 30’s, 40’s,
and 50’s
• Three main groups:
• Family-oriented
• Career-oriented
• Neither path
• Between age 27 and early 40’s, women shifted toward
less traditional feminine attitudes
• Midlife crisis was really midlife consciousness
• Similarities in concerns found between women in early
their early 40s and Levinson’s findings
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
• Vaillant’s Studies: conducted three longitudinal
studies from the 1920s through today:
• Alcohol abuse and smoking at age 50 was the best
predictor of death between ages 75 and 80
• Factors at age 50 which are best predictors of
“happy-well” between ages 75 and 80:
•
•
•
•
•
Regular exercise and avoiding being overweight
Well-educated and future oriented
Having a stable marriage and good coping skills
Being thankful, forgiving, and empathetic
Being active with other people
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
• Conclusions:
• Evidence does not support the view that personality
traits become completely fixed at a certain age
• Change is typically small and limited; stability peaks
in the 50’s and 60’s
• Cumulative personality model: with time and age,
people become more adept at interacting with their
environment in ways that promote the stability of
personality
• Some change still characterizes personality in middle
age and late adulthood
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
STABILITY AND CHANGE
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
• Romantic love is typically strong in early adulthood
• Affectionate love increases during middle adulthood
• Most married individuals are satisfied with their
marriages during midlife
• Divorce in midlife can be less intense due to increased
resources and lessened child-rearing responsibilities
• However, emotional and time commitment to a long-lasting
marriage is typically not given up easily
• Staying married because of the children is a common
reason for waiting to get a divorce
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
THE EMPTY NEST
• Empty Nest Syndrome: a decline in marital
satisfaction after the children leave the home
• For most parents, marital satisfaction actually
increases during the years after child rearing
• Refilling of empty nest is becoming a common
occurrence
• Adult children are returning to live at home for
financial reasons
• Loss of privacy is a common complaint for both
parents and adult children
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
SIBLING RELATIONSHIPS AND
FRIENDSHIPS
• Sibling relationships continue over the entire
life span
• The majority of sibling relationships in adulthood
are close
• Friendships continue to be important in
middle adulthood
• Friendships that have endured over the adult years
tend to be deeper than those that have just been
formed in middle adulthood
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
GRANDPARENTING
• Many adults become grandparents during middle
age
• Grandmothers have more contact with grandchildren
than grandfathers
• Three prominent meanings:
• Source of biological reward and continuity
• Source of emotional self-fulfillment
• Remote role
• The grandparent role and its functions vary
among families, ethnic groups, and cultures
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
GRANDPARENTING
• Three Grandparenting Styles:
• Fun-seeking style
• Distant-figure style
• Formal style
• An increasing number of U.S. grandchildren live with
their grandparents
• 2.3 million in 1980; 6.1 million in 2005
• Most common reasons are divorce, adolescent pregnancies,
and parental drug use
• Tends to be more stressful for younger grandparents, when
grandchildren have physical and psychological problems,
and when there is low family cohesion
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
GRANDPARENTING
• Grandparents who take in grandchildren are
in better health, are better educated, are more
likely to be working outside the home, and
are younger than grandparents who move in
with their children
• Concern over grandparent visitation of
children has become more common
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
• Middle-aged and older adults typically express a
strong feeling of responsibility between
generations in their family
• They share their experiences and transmit values to the
younger generation
• Family members typically maintain considerable
contact across generations
• When conflicts arise, parents most often cite
habits and lifestyle choices, while adult children
cite communication and interaction styles
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
• Differences in gender:
• Mothers and daughters have closer relationships
during their adult years than mothers and sons,
fathers and daughters, and fathers and sons
• Married men are more involved with their wives’
families than with their own
• Maternal aunts and grandmothers are cited as the
most important or loved relative twice as often as
their paternal counterparts
©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.