ESSENTIALS OF LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENT JOHN W. SANTROCK

1. 3e ESSENTIALS OF LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENTJOHN W. SANTROCK 14 SOCIOEMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE ADULTHOOD

2. Chapter Outline • Personality theories and adult development • Stability and change • Close relationships

3. Personality Theories and Development • Adult stage theories • The life-events approach • Stress and personal control in midlife • Contexts of midlife development

4. Personality Theories and Development • Adult stage theories • Erikson’s stage of generativity versus stagnation • Generativity: Adults’ desire to leave legacies of themselves to the next generation • Stagnation: Develops when individuals sense that they have done nothing for the next generation • Generativity can be developed in a number of ways • Biological generativity • Parental generativity • Work generativity • Cultural generativity

5. Figure 14.1 - Levinson’s Periods of Adult Development

6. Personality Theories and Development • Adult stage theories • Levinson’s seasons of a man’s life • Teens – Transition from dependence to independence • 20s are a novice phase of adult development • 30s are a time for focusing on family and career development • By the 40s, man has a stable career and now must look forward to the kind of life he will lead as a middle-aged adult

7. Personality Theories and Development • Transition to middle adulthood lasts - Conflicts • Being young versus being old • Being destructive versus being constructive • Being masculine versus being feminine • Being attached to others versus being separated from them

8. Personality Theories and Development • How pervasive are midlife crises? • The 40s are a decade of reassessing and recording the truth about the adolescent and adult years • Only a minority of adults experience a midlife crisis

9. Personality Theories and Development • The life-events approach • Contemporary life-events approach: How life events influence the individual’s development depends on: • Life event itself • Mediating factors • Individual’s adaptation to the life event • Life-stage context • Sociohistorical context

10. Figure 14.2 - A Contemporary Life-Events Framework for Interpreting Adult Developmental Change

11. Personality Theories and Development • The life-events approach • Drawbacks • Life-events approach places too much emphasis on change • It may not be life’s major events that are the primary sources of stress • Daily experiences

12. Personality Theories and Development • Stress and personal control in midlife • Middle-aged adults experience more “overload” stressors that involve juggling too many activities at once • Developmental changes in perceived personal control • Some aspects of personal control increase with age while others decrease

13. Personality Theories and Development • Stress and gender • Fight-or-flight: When men experience stress: • Become aggressive, socially withdraw, or drink alcohol • Tend-and-befriend: When women experience stress: • Seek social alliances with others, especially female friends • Contexts of midlife development • Historical contexts (Cohort effects) • Social clock: Timetable according to which individuals are expected to accomplish life’s tasks

14. Personality Theories and Development • Cultural contexts • The concept of middle age is unclear or absent in many cultures • Middle age like for women - Depends on the modernity of the culture and the culture’s view of gender roles • Middle-aged women in nonindustrialized societies experience certain advantages

15. Stability and Change • Longitudinal studies • Conclusions

16. Stability and Change • Longitudinal studies • Costa and McCrae’s Baltimore Study - Focused on the big five factors of personality

17. Figure 14.3 - The Big Five Factors of Personality

18. Stability and Change • Berkeley Longitudinal Studies • Intellectual orientation, self-confidence, and openness to new experience were the more stable traits • Characteristics that changed the most • Extent to which individuals were nurturant or hostile • Whether or not they had good self-control

19. Stability and Change • George Vaillant’s studies • Conducted: • Sample of 268 socially advantaged Harvard graduates born about 1920 • Sample of 456 socially disadvantaged inner-city men born about 1930 • Sample of 90 middle-SES, intellectually gifted women born about 1910

20. Figure 14.4 - Links Between Characteristics at Age 50 and Health and Happiness at Age 75 to 80

21. Stability and Change • Conclusions • Personality traits continue to change during the adult years, vinto late adulthood • Cumulative personality model: With time and age, people: • Become more adept at interacting with their environment in ways that: • Promote the stability of personality

22. Close Relationships • Love and marriage at midlife • The empty nest and its refilling • Sibling relationships and friendships • Grandparenting • Intergenerational relationships

23. Close Relationships • Love and marriage at midlife • Security, loyalty, and mutual emotional interest are more important in middle adulthood • Most married individuals are satisfied with their marriages during midlife • Divorce in middle adulthood may be more positive in some ways, more negative in others

24. Close Relationships • The empty nest and its refilling • Empty nest syndrome: Decrease in marital satisfaction after children leave the home • Parents derive considerable satisfaction from their children • Refilling of empty nest is a common occurrence • Loss of privacy

25. Close Relationships • Sibling relationships and friendships • Sibling relationships may be extremely close, apathetic, or highly rivalrous • Friendships that have endured over the adult years tend to be deeper

26. Close Relationships • Grandparenting • Grandparent roles and styles • Three prominent meanings • Source of biological reward and continuity • Source of emotional self-fulfillment • Remote role • The changing profile of grandparents • Most common reasons are divorce, adolescent pregnancies, and parental drug use • Full-time grandparenting has been linked to health problems, depression, and stress

27. Close Relationships • Intergenerational relationships • Middle-aged adults express responsibility between generations • Midlife adults play important roles in the lives of the young and the old • Relationships between aging parents and their children: • Characterized by ambivalence

28. Close Relationships • Gender differences characterize intergenerational relationships • Mothers and daughters have closer relationships during their adult years • Married men are more involved with their wives’ families than with their own • Grandparent-grandchild relationships more influential than fathers’