MODULE 7
Middle Adulthood
Human Behavior and the Social Environment
Lisa Balinski, Trying to Balance It All at 50
They grew up in a neighborhood where social life revolved around the Polish-
speaking Catholic church, where they met and married. Lisa was an only child, and her
parents worked hard in the small Polish restaurant they opened soon after marrying. Her
parents were proud when she graduated from college and got a job teaching at the
neighborhood high school. The day after her college graduation, Lisa married Adam, her high
school sweetheart.
Adam had been working in the neighborhood hardware store since he graduated from
high school and had been patiently waiting for Lisa to finish college. Adam, on the other
hand, seemed to be a natural and was an enormous help with the baby. Lisa’s parents. The
house was a bit crowded, but Lisa was happy to have her mother’s help in the mornings
before she went to the restaurant, and her mother loved having a chance to spend more time
with Rachel.
When Rachel was 18 months old, Adam got a promotion at work, and with what they
had saved over the past year, Lisa and Adam were able to move into an apartment of their
own. When Rachel was 2½ years old, Lisa gave birth to another baby girl, Kristi. She was
pleasantly surprised to find that she was more relaxed than she had been with Rachel, and for
the first time since college, Lisa began to feel competent. Finances were still tight, and when
Kristi was 2 years old, Lisa began to do some substitute teaching.
They were both enjoying their work, Lisa was becoming a respected teacher, and they
enjoyed fixing up the house and participating in their daughters’ varied activities. With two
sets of grandparents close by, Rachel and Kristi reveled in having a loving multigenerational
family. When Lisa and Adam were 40 years old, Adam was seriously injured in an
automobile accident. This was a very difficult time for the family.
Lisa and her daughters realized how much they had depended on Adam to keep the
family functioning, and Lisa worried that she was giving too much responsibility to Rachel
and Kristi. Her family became much closer emotionally and she learned that she was stronger
than she thought.
Adam recovered well from his accident and returned to work to find that He received
another good promotion, which was welcomed at a time when the daughters were beginning
college. Now, at age 50, Lisa says she has an overfull life. Adam. Lisa is growing
increasingly concerned that her mother is immobilized with depression.
Rachel recently became engaged and wants help with planning the wedding, and
Kristi is struggling to find direction since leaving college. Adam continues to be a major
support to Lisa, but he has needed to work longer hours in recent months. Lisa thinks she
needs to talk with a mental health worker about her mother and how to be helpful to Kristi.
Currently, she and Adam are helping Kristi pay her rent, but they are wondering if they
should recommend that Kristi come home to live with them, instead.
Changing Age Demographics
At the time of the 2010 national census, those in the middle-adult years constituted
over one quarter of the U. From a life course perspective, it is important to note that most of
what we «know» about middle adulthood is based on research on the cohort known as the
baby boom generation, a group born from 1946 to 1964 and spanning the ages of 54 to 72 in
2018. In 1900, the median age of the U. By 1950, the median age was 30.2 years and average
life expectancy was 68.2 years, and by 2000, the median age was 35.3 and the average life
expectancy was 76.8. In 2015, the estimated median age was 37.8 years and the estimated
average life expectancy at birth was 78.8 years. These data do not mean that no one lived past
what we now consider middle age in 1900.
The average life expectancy in 1900 was deflated by high rates of infant mortality.
This trend has an enormous impact on our understanding of the adult life course. In that same
year, the average life expectancy was less than 55 years in 12 countries. Social workers who
work in the international arena or with immigrant families will need to develop appropriate
understanding of how the life course varies across world populations.
A Definition of Middle Adulthood
Beyond that, we do not have generally agreed-on ages to include in middle adulthood.
The most frequently used definition of middle adulthood includes those persons ages 40 to
64, and that is the definition I use in this chapter, but some scholars use a lower limit as
young as age 30 and an upper limit as late as age 70. Dittmann-Kohli suggests that middle
adulthood is «a friendly expression for not being young anymore but not really very old yet».
Some authors argue that middle adulthood should not be thought of in terms of chronological
age but instead in terms of achieving certain developmental tasks.
The life course perspective would suggest that any definition of middle adulthood
must include biological aging processes, subjective perceptions, and social roles as well as
historical and generational contexts. Some authors have been critical of any approach to
defining middle adulthood that includes an age range as wide as 40 to 64. You may recall a
similar concern about the boundaries of young adulthood noted in Chapter 7. Late adulthood,
which is divided into late adulthood and very late adulthood in this book, encompasses an
even larger age span, potentially from 65 to 100-plus.
Culture and the Construction of Middle
With the identification of a middle hood, societies must construct roles for, and make
meaning of, middle adulthood. Wahl and Kruse argue that middle adulthood was created by
the increase of life expectancy in modern society. Middle Ages. Age! Richard Schweder
suggests that middle age is a «cultural fiction,» and the fiction does not play out the same
way in all cultures.
He does not use fiction to mean false but to mean, instead, that ideas about middle age
are culturally created. In some parts of the world today, middle adulthood is not defined as a
separate stage of life, but to the extent it is recognized, it is thought of as «maturity» and seen
in relation to transitions in family roles. In other cultures, aging is associated with power and
creativity, and middle adulthood is seen as the «prime of life, » a time of fullness, activity,
and spiritual growth. In the United States, since middle adulthood was first identified as a
separate life stage in the latter part of the 19th century, two cultural views of this life stage
have competed.
Theories of Middle Adulthood
Erikson’s Theory of Generativity, Erikson saw generativity as an instinct that works to
perpetuate society. As he enters middle adulthood, Mark Roslin strives to become generative.
Lisa Balinski expresses generativity in her teaching, mentoring of student teachers, and care
of her mother and adult children. Throughout middle adulthood, Maha Ahmed provided care
and support to her children and her husband and long-distance emotional care of her mother.
Now, as she approaches late adulthood, she has a strong desire to be an active part of
her adult children’s lives and is not sure how to create purpose and meaning without an active
caregiving role. As a social worker, you will most likely encounter people like Maha who
struggle with a sense of stagnation in middle adulthood. Aubin see generativity coming from
both the person and the social and cultural environment. Even though Erikson outlined
midlife generativity in 1950, generativity was not a subject of empirical investigation until
the 1980s.
Most of the cross-sectional research on generativity reports greater generativity during
middle adulthood than in young adulthood or late adulthood, but other researchers have found
that generativity continues to grow past middle adulthood, and there is growing interest in
generativity in older adults. Researchers have also found some evidence of generative
concern and motivation in late adolescence and young adulthood, while also finding that
middle-aged adults have a greater sense of capacity for generativity than these younger
groups.
Balance
Jung sees middle adulthood as a time when we discover and reclaim parts of the self
that were repressed in the search for conformity in the first half of life. He emphasizes the
importance of gender identity in middle adulthood. Adults are thought to begin to move from
the stereotyped gender role behavior of young adulthood to a more androgynous behavioral
repertoire at this age. Longitudinal research that followed adults from their 30s to their 80s
had a similar finding.
A great deal of research demonstrates that androgyny is associated with high self-
esteem and life satisfaction in middle adulthood. He suggested that the challenges of
establishing family and work roles demand extroversion in young adulthood, but in middle
adulthood individuals tend to turn inward and explore their own subjective experience.
Changes do occur within eras, but these changes are small and do not involve major revision
of the life structure. Adult life is composed of alternating periods of relative stability and
periods of transition.
A key concept of Levinson’s theory is life structure, by which he means «the
underlying pattern or design of a person’s life at a given time». In most cases, family and
occupation are the central components in the life structure, but people vary widely in how
much weight they assign to each. During the transition to middle adulthood, individuals often
try to give greater attention to previously neglected components. Recent research has focused
on how midlife adults attempt to balance the multiple roles of paid worker, parent, spouse,
and caregiver of older adults.
Relate to Middle Adulthood
We focus here particularly on the proposition that midlife development is based on
both gains and losses. Several economist researchers have presented data that indicate a u-
bend in average psychological well-being over the life course, with the low point occurring in
middle adulthood. Swiss research team found that midlife adults reported higher levels of
self-acceptance, autonomy, mastery over the environment, purpose in life, and positive
relations with others than young adults. Psychologist Margie Lachman suggests that midlife
is pivotal in the life course because it is a period at the intersection of growth and decline.
Cohen argues that although there are many psychological and spiritual gains in middle
adulthood, in our current cultural focus on the physiological aspects of middle adulthood «a
successful midlife has become equated with an imitation of youth». One might wonder how
Mark Roslin, Lisa Balinski, and Maha Ahmed see the gain-loss balance in their phase of
middle adulthood. Research on middle adulthood is quite new, and there are no long-term
longitudinal studies available of earlier cohorts of midlife adults. Among the factors to keep
in mind as you read research results is that the baby boomers represent a very large cohort
and have, throughout their adulthood, faced more competition for jobs and other resources
than earlier cohorts.
Also keep in mind that there are many individual variations on the journey to midlife
and beyond, and both advantage and disadvantage accumulate over time. There have been
dramatic changes in the last few decades in the number of adults who enjoy healthy and
active lives in the years from 45 to 65 and beyond. However, some physical and mental
decline does begin to occur. Most biological systems reach their peak performance in the
mid-20s. In the chapter on adolescence, we emphasized the importance of psychological
reactions to biological changes, and recent research indicates that late midlife is another
period of the life course when this issue becomes important.
Sexuality
Perhaps the most often noted biological change in middle adulthood is the lost or
diminished reproductive capacity. Although both men and women experience reproductive
changes during adulthood, changes in women have received much more attention from
researchers and the popular media than changes in men. In middle adulthood, women’s
capacity to conceive and bear children gradually declines until menopause, when the capacity
for conceiving children ends. Menopause is the permanent cessation of menstruation and for
research purposes is usually defined as 12 consecutive months with absence of menstruation.
Although female menopause is often described as a less gradual process than occurs
in men, it is a more gradual process than often recognized. The menopause process begins
when the woman is in her 30s and begins to have occasional menstrual cycles without
ovulation, or the production of eggs. Perimenopause is defined as the period that begins
immediately prior to menopause, when there are biological and clinical indicators that
reproductive capacity is reaching exhaustion, and continues through the first year after the
last menstrual period.
Middle Adulthood
Menopause is big business in the United States, but perhaps not as big as it once was.
Starting in the 1940s, menopause was constructed as a deficiency disease, a disease that could
be treated pharmaceutically with hormone replacement therapy. The purpose of the treatment
was not to prolong reproductive capacity but rather to treat the symptoms thought to be
associated with menopause. The popularity of HRT has waxed and waned since the 1970s as
new research, often with contradictory findings, has indicated both benefits and risks
associated with its use.
At the time this chapter is being written, the current state of evidence suggests that a
combination of estrogen and progestin therapy has beneficial effects on osteoporosis and on
such menopausal symptoms as hot flashes and vaginal dryness. Unlike women, men do not
experience a major rapid change in fertility as they age. Changes in the male reproductive
system occur mostly in the testes, with testicular tissue decreasing. Although the findings are
inconsistent, research has begun to show that advanced paternal age may be associated with
pregnancy complications and miscarriage as well as increased incidence of disorders like
autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorders in the offspring.
Although little research has been done on the topic, there has been some speculation
that, in some men, the decline in testosterone is associated with low energy, muscle and bone
loss, sleep disturbance, and decreases in motivation and self-confidence. This condition is
called male menopause, climacteric, or andropause. Just as hormone replacement for women
became a lucrative business for pharmaceutical companies in the last decades of the 20th
century, testosterone replacement has been an expanding business for them in the past 3
decades. You probably have noticed that several of the suggested symptoms of testosterone
deficiency are very similar to the symptoms often proposed for female menopause.
The evidence for the association between these symptoms and testosterone deficiency
is even sparser than the evidence for symptoms of female menopause, however. Given the
still unfolding history of the benefits and risks of HRT for women, it seems wise to proceed
with caution with testosterone therapy. Researchers have begun to take interest in the sexual
lives of midlife and older adults, but most of that research has focused on heterosexual
couples. Much less is known about the sexual lives of midlife gay males and lesbians.
The research indicates that age is a major predictor of diminished sexual desire,
decreased sexual frequency, and decreased intensity of the sexual response, particularly after
age 45. Midlife men and women with partners in midlife have been found to be equally likely
to be sexually active, but the frequency of sexual activity declines for women more than men
over middle and late adulthood. Researchers have found, however, that the increasing
proportion of women who are widowed is the major explanation for this sex difference in the
research findings.
Both menopause in women and chronic health problems in men have been found to
contribute to the decline in sexual activity in midlife. One large community-based study of
middle-aged women who were sexually active tracked their sexual functioning over a 14.5-
year period. Midlife couples have been found to be distressed when they experience physical
changes that affect their sex lives.
In another study, in-depth interviews were conducted with both gay and heterosexual
midlife men. These researchers found that gay midlife men were more likely than
heterosexual midlife men to report concerns about how the attractiveness of their bodies
would affect their sexual relationships.
Changes in the Brain
Some brains age better than others, resulting in much variability in middle-aged
brains. The current thinking is that individual differences in the midlife brain may be
predictive of brain health in old age, and it may become possible to predict brain diseases
such as Alzheimer’s disease many years before the disease becomes evident. There is strong
evidence that gray and white matter volume declines with age and that cortical thinning
occurs by middle age. There is considerable variation in gray matter reduction in middle
adulthood, and some individuals may not experience it at all.
There are also evidence that amyloid and neurofibrillary tangles, both associated with
AD, begin to accumulate in many brains in midlife. Most notably, people in middle age begin
to use both sides of their brains to solve problems for which only one side was used in the
past, a process called lateralization. The available evidence indicates that both genetics and
environment play a role in structural and functional changes in the midlife brain. Both the
apolipoprotein E type 4 allele and the cholinergic receptor gene CHRNA have been
implicated in genetic predisposition to deterioration in brain structure and function during
midlife.
Poor vascular health, diabetes, and obesity in midlife have also been found to be
factors in brain volume depletion. On the other hand, greater midlife exercise has been found
to predict larger total brain volume and increased gray matter in midlife, particularly in the
frontal lobes. In summarizing the situation of the midlife brain, Barbara Strauch notes that
«this middle-aged brain, which just as it’s forgetting what it had for breakfast can still go to
work and run a multinational bank or school or city. » Research indicates that starting in
middle age, the brain’s ability to tune out irrelevant material wanes, leading to more time in
daydream mode but also greater capacity to capture «the big picture».
Health during middle adulthood is highly variable, but overall midlife is characterized
by good health. Conversely, although many people live through middle adulthood with little
disease or disability, the frequency of chronic illness, persistent symptoms, and functional
disability begins to rise in midlife. Similar improvements in midlife mortality were found in
all rich countries but not in less affluent countries. In the United States, cancer is the leading
cause of death in middle adulthood, followed by heart disease.
The increased death rates for middle-aged non-Hispanic Whites have been attributed
to drug and alcohol poisoning, suicide, and chronic liver disease. This is reflected in CDC
data indicating that, overall, in 2015, liver disease was the fourth highest cause of death
among the U. population aged 45 to 54, and suicide was the fifth highest cause of death in
this age group. This pattern of increased morbidity and mortality among Whites with low
educational achievement was not found in other rich countries where the mortality rates fell
more rapidly for midlife adults with low education than for those with higher educations
during the same period. Social analysts are currently exploring explanations for this
unexpected trend, and a life course perspective would alert us to give thought to the
circumstances this cohort of White midlife adults with low education have experienced at
earlier phases of their life journey.
COPD: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
In the past century, there has been a change in the types of diseases likely to affect
health across the life course in affluent countries. With the increase in life expectancy,
chronic disease plays a more important role in the great stretch of middle adulthood and
beyond. The prevalence of chronic conditions increases with each decade from middle
adulthood on. With advancing age, chronic conditions replace unintentional injury, suicide,
and homicide as primary causes of death.
As you can see from Exhibit 8.5, unintentional injury is the leading cause of death in
the 35-to-44 age group. If Adam had not had good health insurance, the costs of his
rehabilitation program could have meant financial ruin for the family, and their life
trajectories over the next decade might have been very different from what we read about. It
is important to note that there are some global differences in causes of death. The World
Health Organization reports on the leading causes of death in low-income, lower-middle-
income, upper middle-income, and high-income countries.
In high-income, upper-middle-income countries, and lower-middle-income countries,
heart disease is the number one cause of death and stroke is number two. In low-income
countries, however, lower respiratory infection is the number one cause and diarrheal disease
is number two. These data indicate that chronic illness is the major cause of death in high-
income and middle-income countries, but infectious diseases continue to be a major
challenge in less affluent nations. Death is not the only outcome of chronic illness.
As Sapolsky suggests, chronic disease often has a slow course and involves some
level of disability over several years. WHO uses the concept of disability adjusted life year to
measure the sum of the years lost because of premature death plus the number of years spent
in states of poor health or disability. There is much international evidence that socioeconomic
position is a powerful predictor of both mortality and poor health. WHO has calculated the
worldwide causes of DALYs for low-income countries, lower-middle-income countries,
upper-middle-income countries, and high-income countries.
As you can see in Exhibit mental and behavioral disorders are listed as the sixth
greatest cause of global disease burden. They note that this more inclusive understanding of
mental illness brings the contribution of mental illness to global disability burden about to the
level of cardiovascular disease and well ahead of cancer.
Maha Ahmed saw both her mother and father struggle with depression after their
resettlement in Jordan, but she had not struggled with depression until recently as she grieved
her mother’s death while also feeling that she was losing her children. States and Europe have
higher rates of depression and substance abuse than previous generations, and this finding is
supported by Case and Deaton’s finding of increasing morbidity and mortality among White
midlife adults with low education, due in part to increases in drug overdoses, suicide, and
alcoholic-related liver mortality. A longitudinal study in the Netherlands found that mental
health tends to improve across the life course, but a minority of midlife adults shows
persistently high levels of depressive symptoms and loneliness across the middle-adult years.
Longitudinal research of women in the United States also found that persistent or recurrent
depression is common among midlife women. Researchers have found that «midlife is a
particularly high-risk period for either delayed onset or reactivated PTSD».
Intellectual Changes in Middle Adulthood
Perhaps no domain of human behavior in middle adulthood arouses more concern
about the balance of gains and losses than intellectual functioning. You may have taken note
of the variety of supplements and herbal remedies marketed to midlife adults with promises
of maintaining mental alertness and mental acuity. Reading the earlier discussion of brain
shrinkage can heighten the concern about what happens to our cognitive functioning in
midlife. And yet middle-aged adults are often at the peak of their careers and filling
leadership roles in several domains.
Research on cognitive changes in middle adulthood is recent, but there is growing and
clear evidence that cognitive performance remains relatively stable for most midlife adults.
However, a significant subset of midlife adults shows important gains in cognitive
functioning, and another significant subset shows important decline. The amount of gain and
decline varies across different types of cognitive functioning. For example, one study found
that depending on the specific cognitive skill, the proportion of midlife adults who were
stable in performance ranged from 53% to 69%, the proportion who gained ranged from 6%
to 16%, and the proportion who declined ranged from 15% to 31%.
Researchers are finding that individual differences in intellectual performance
increase throughout middle adulthood. Adverse circumstances early in life, including low
socioeconomic position during childhood, have also been found to be a risk for midlife
cognitive decline. These findings are consistent with the increasing evidence of brain
plasticity throughout the life course and suggest that cognitive decline can be slowed by
engaging in activities that train the brain.
Study
Research from the SLS shows that these six intellectual abilities peak at different
points in the average human life course. Even by the late 80s, word fluency and inductive
reasoning show only modest declines. United States, speed is highly valued, and quick
thinking is typically seen as an indication of high intelligence. On average, men were found
to reach peak performance somewhat earlier than women, except for perceptual speed for
which, on average, women begin to decline somewhat earlier than men.
Schake also reports cohort differences in selected intellectual abilities. The SLS found
that some individuals begin to decline intellectually in their 40s, whereas other individuals
maintain high levels of intellectual functioning into very advanced age. The researchers also
found that virtually no person declines on all six abilities even after age 88.
Longitudinal research in Germany explored cognitive change during middle
adulthood but used a different classification of dimensions of cognition than used in the SLS.
They found that over a 12-year period in middle adulthood, research participants showed
significant declines in fluid intelligence, processing speed, and memory.
Trait Approach
That, of course, leaves a great deal of room for environmental influences, but scholars
who favor the idea that personality is stable across adulthood argue that people with
personality traits choose environments that reinforce those traits. Another way to look at the
question of stability or change in personality traits in adulthood is to look at mean levels of
traits at different points in the adult life course. A number of both cross-sectional and
longitudinal studies have done this and found that mean levels of extroversion and openness
to experience decline with age starting in middle adulthood.
Conversely, the mean level of agreeableness has been found to increase with age, and
mean levels of conscientiousness and emotional stability have been found to peak in middle
adulthood. These findings suggest that some personality change does occur in middle
adulthood, but McAdams and Olson note that studies of mean changes are unable to tell the
more complex story of middle-adult personality. Other personality psychologists, consistent
with life course scholars, have recently placed human agency at the center of adult
personality development, focusing on how human agency facilitates change in midlife
personality. Researchers in this vein of thought have found that middle-aged adults, on
average, focus their goals on the future of their children and on prosocial societal
engagement.
The concept of human agency is consistent with humanistic models of personality that
see middle adulthood as an opportunity for continued growth. It is also consistent with the
work of neo-Freudians like Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, and George Vaillant who propose that
middle adulthood is a time when the personality ripens and matures. Jung conceptualizes
middle adulthood as a time of balance in the personality. Although Erikson sees early life as
important, he suggests that societal and cultural influences call for different personal
adaptations over the life course.
Vaillant suggests that with age and experience, coping mechanisms, or the strategies
we use to master the demands of life, mature. He proposes that as we age across adulthood,
we make more use of mature coping mechanisms such as altruism, sublimation, and humor
and less use of immature coping mechanisms such as denial and projection. One research
team found evidence of personality growth throughout middle adulthood, with slow and
steady favorable resolution of earlier life tasks of industry, identity, and intimacy, suggesting
that work on these tasks continues into middle adulthood. They also found that midlife
change regarding these life tasks was influenced by life history, a finding consistent with the
life narrative approach.
Life Narrative Approach
They suggest that in the construction of the life narrative, adults draw on stories from
childhood, stories rooted in culture. Mark Roslin is coming to terms with early neglect and
trauma as he composes a life story in the transition to middle adulthood. In contrast to the
trait approach, which has received considerable longitudinal research attention, there has
been little longitudinal research to explore the changes in life narratives across adulthood.
Cross-sectional research has suggested that midlife adults construct more complex and
coherent life narratives than adolescents and young adults, with increased tendency to draw
summary conclusions about the self from the narrative.
One research team found that the life narratives of midlife adults older than age 50
used more positive and fewer negative emotional words than the life narratives of college
students. McAdams and Olson note that culture provides the menu of stories from which
individuals choose to develop their own life narratives. A study in the United Kingdom found
that 40% to 60% of adults reported a life appraisal crisis during adulthood, but about the
same number said they experienced such crises in young adulthood as reported experiencing
them in midlife. Erikson suggested that the life task to be resolved in middle adulthood is
generativity versus stagnation.
Research on life narratives shows much diversity in midlife narrative identities. For
many midlife adults, life narratives are full of themes of agency, relationships, generativity,
and personal growth, of forgiveness and overcoming obstacles. For others, depression,
depletion, stagnation, and life gone bad are the content of the life narrative. One research
team examined the effect of major stressful life events on personality development in middle
adulthood.
When the person sees the stressful event as a point when life changed direction for the
worse, neuroticism increases. If, however, the person sees the stressful event as a life lesson,
there is an increase in both extroversion and conscientiousness.
Lynn Johnson/National Geographic Society/Corbis
In this faith stage, the individual relies on a pastor or rabbi or other spiritual leader to
define morality. Many people remain in this faith stage throughout their lives and never
progress to the other stages. Individuate-reflective faith. The adult no longer relies on outside
authority and begins to look for authority within the self, based on moral reasoning. The
individual also takes responsibility for examining the assumptions of his or her faith.
Conjunctive faith.
Fowler’s description of conjunctive faith overlaps with theories of middle adulthood
previously discussed in this chapter. For example, the reference to balance calls to mind the
theories of Jung and Levinson, who saw middle adulthood as a time of bringing balance to
personality and life structure. In addition, the idea of opening oneself in service to others is
consistent with Erikson’s idea of generativity as the psychosocial struggle of middle
adulthood. There are two models of spiritual development in adulthood.
One rare longitudinal study of spiritual development across the adult life course found
evidence for both models. The researchers found a strong tendency for increased spirituality
beginning in late middle adulthood, something that occurred among all research participants
but was more pronounced among women than men. They also found that experiencing
negative life events in early adulthood was associated with higher levels of spirituality in
middle and late adulthood. Although Fowler’s conceptualization of faith included both
religious faith as well as the more personal, no religiously based search for purpose and
meaning, commonly referred to as spirituality, most of the research on faith development
across the life course has focused on the concept of religiousness or religiosity.
This research suggests that for most people, religiousness is quite stable across the life
course, meaning that people who are highly religious relative to their peers at any given point
in time are likely to be more highly religious than their peers at any other point in time.
United States become more religious over time, but for most people religiosity is not a
straight line but is punctuated by temporary increases or reductions related to life events and
transitions. Using longitudinal data over a 60-year time span for two cohorts, one born in the
early 1920s and the other born in the late 1920s, Dillon and Wink found a U-curve of
religiousness over the life course. Religiousness was high in adolescence and late adulthood
but, on average, lower in middle adulthood.
These researchers found three distinct trajectories of religious development during
adulthood. A first group, making up 40% of the sample, entered adulthood as slightly
religious but became more religious throughout midlife and declined in religiousness after
that. A second group, 41% of the sample, had low levels of religiousness in young adulthood
and became less religious over time. A third group, 19% of the sample, entered adulthood
with relatively high levels of religiousness that increased throughout adulthood.
The researchers note that their sample was less religious than the U. Wade Clark Roof
has been interested in the question of cohort effects on spiritual journeys. His book A
Generation of Seekers reported on the «spiritual journeys of the baby boom generation» in
the United States. Drawing on survey data and interview responses, Roof suggested that the
baby boom generation was «changing America’s spiritual landscape». He reported that most
baby boomers grew up in religious households, but 58% of his sample dropped their
relationship with religious institutions for at least 2 years during their adolescence or young
adulthood.
Roof acknowledged that earlier generations had also dropped out of religion during
early adulthood, but not in the numbers found in his sample of baby boomers. He suggests
that the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, with a youth culture that questioned authority, was
probably largely responsible for the high rate of dropout among baby boomers. Roof found
that about one fourth of his sample that had dropped out had returned to religious activities by
the end of the 1980s. Roof found that religious affiliation and activity did not tell the whole
story about the spiritual lives of baby boomers, however.
Regardless of religious affiliation, baby boomers were involved in an intense search
for personal meaning. In a follow-up study with the same sample from 1995 to 1997, Roof
found that many boomers had shifted in their religious affiliation again. More than half of the
earlier dropouts who had returned to religious activities by the late 1980s had dropped out
again. But, conversely, one half of those who had dropped out in the 1980s had returned to
religious activities by the mid-1990s.
Presence of children in the home again seemed to be the factor that motivated a return
to religion. Roof suggested that the baby boomers are leading a shift in U. religious life away
from an unquestioning belief to a questioning approach and toward a belief that no single
religious institution has a monopoly on truth. Others have found evidence, however, that
Black and Hispanic midlife adults have higher levels of religiousness than White midlife
adults. Black and Hispanic baby boomers have been much more constant in their religious
beliefs and participation than White baby boomers and are far more likely to consider religion
very important in their lives.
Relationships in Middle Adulthood
Social relationships play a major role in life satisfaction and physical wellbeing across
the life course. The life course perspective reminds us that relationships in middle adulthood
have been shaped by relationships in earlier life phases, in the attachment process in infancy
as well as in family and peer relationships in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood.
Although current relationships are shaped by our experiences with earlier relationships,
longitudinal research indicates that it is never too late to develop new relationships that can
become turning points in the life course. Researchers have been interested in different types
of social networks and have used the term global network to indicate all existing social
relationships that a person has with such people as family members, spouses and romantic
partners, friends, coworkers, neighbors, religious congregations, and so forth.
The personal network is a subnetwork of the closest relationships. Relationships in the
convoy differ in level of closeness and are affected in different ways across the life course.
The closest relationships are expected to be stable over time, but the more peripheral
relationships are assumed to be less stable and prone to drop away over time with changing
circumstances. The size of personal and friendship networks decreased across adulthood.
The size of family networks was highly consistent across adulthood, however. In
middle adulthood, new relationships are often added to the family network, with adult
children marrying and having children of their own, but there are also losses of parents and
other older relatives. Most of the other research on midlife adult relationships is based on the
premise that the marital or partner relationship is the focal relationship in middle adulthood.
Consequently, too little is known about other familial and nonfamilial relationships.
Recently, however, gerontologists have suggested that a variety of relationships are
important to adults in late adulthood, and this hypothesis has led to preliminary investigations
of a variety of relationships in middle adulthood. In the following sections, we look first at
multigenerational family relationships and then review the limited research on friendship.
Multigenerational Family
The life circumstances of midlife adults are very much influenced by the number of
living generations in the family. In 1990, Bengtson, Rosenthal, and Burton proposed that
increased longevity was leading to an increase in the number of generations in the family,
with fewer people in each generation, leading to what has been described as a beanpole-
shaped family, tall and thin. This raised concern about the possibility that midlife adults
would become stressed by the need to simultaneously provide care to both the oldest and the
youngest family generations, a situation sometimes called «both-end carers». Adults ages 51
to 61 were slightly more likely than other adults to report at least 4-generation families.
They also found social class and racial differences in the likelihood of living in
4generation families. As socioeconomic status increased, the likelihood of a family
decreased, and Blacks were more likely than Whites to live in 4-generation families. Adults
with higher levels of education and income begin childbearing at a later age than their peers
with less education and income.
Good shoot/Think Stock
They further found that after the year 2000, the percentage of 55-year-olds who
became grandparents while their own parents were still alive decreased from 28% to 18%.
Other researchers have noted, however, that many midlife adults are still providing
simultaneous care to aging parents and their emerging adult offspring who are making a slow
transition to adulthood because of the dual challenges of economic downturns and increasing
demand for prolonged education. There is much popular speculation that family ties are
weakening as geographic mobility increases. Research suggests, however, more
intergenerational solidarity than we may think. Using a national representative sample in the
United States, Putney and Bengtson identified five types of extended family relationships.
About one quarter of the families were classified as tightly knit, and another quarter
were classified as sociable, meaning that family members are engaged with each other but do
not provide for, and receive concrete assistance from, each other. Despite the evidence that
intergenerational family relationships are alive and well, there is also evidence that many
family relationships include some degree of conflict. 8 adult intergenerational relationships
can be described as «long-term lousy relationships». Although Mark Roslin would like to
improve his relationships with his daughter and his parents, he probably would agree that his
relationships with his parents are «long-term lousy relationships».
Whether or not midlife adults become both-end carers, several researchers have found
that they are the kin keepers in multigenerational families and that this holds true across
cultures. Kin keepers are family members who work at keeping family members across the
generations in touch with one another and who make sure that both emotional and practical
needs of family members are met. Because of these kin keeping role, midlife women have
been described as the «sandwich generation». This term was originally used to suggest that
midlife women are simultaneously caring for their own children as well as their parents.
Research suggests that with demographic changes, few women still have children at
home when they begin to care for parents, but midlife women continue to be «sandwiched»
with competing demands of paid work roles and intergenerational kin keeping.
It appears that Lisa Balinski is playing important kin keeping role in her Family. She
seems to be indicating that she feels like she is engaged in both-end caring and trying to
balance her family caring roles with her employee role. Although Maha Ahmed was not
employed, she was a major kin keeper in her 3-generation family throughout her middle
adulthood.
Relationships With Spouse or Partner
In recent decades, there has been an increased diversity of marital statuses at midlife.
Some men and women have been married for some time, some are getting married for the
first time, some are not yet married, some will never marry, some were once married but now
are divorced, some are in a second or third marriage, and some are not married but are living
in a long-term committed relationship with someone of the same or opposite sex. Adults such
as Mark Roslin who have struggled with mental health issues are more likely than other
adults to be single. S Census Bureau found that 18 million adults were living in cohabiting
relationships.
About half of the cohabiting couples were younger than 35, but the number of
cohabiting adults ages 50 and older increased by 75% from 2007 to 2016, the biggest rate of
increase of any age group. One research team found that midlife African American men with
higher education and income were more likely to be married than cohabiting, whereas the
opposite was true of midlife African American men with lower education and income. We
know very little about the different midlife experiences of partners of different marital
statuses, but there is evidence that each person brings prior relationship experiences to partner
relationships of all types. Möller and Stattin reviewed the empirical literature on these
relationships and identified several characteristics of prior relationships that have been found
to influence partner relationships in adulthood.
Interactions with peers during adolescence help to build the social skills necessary to
sustain partner relationships. Based on these findings, Möller and Stattin engaged in
longitudinal research with a Swedish sample to investigate the links between early
relationships and later partner relationships. They found that warm relationships with parents
during adolescence are associated with later satisfaction in the partner relationship.
Relationships with fathers were more strongly related to partner satisfaction for males than
for females.
Contrary to previous research, Möller and Stattin found that the quality of parents’
marital relationship was not associated with the quality of later partner relationships. The
parent–child relationship was a better predictor of later partner relationships than the quality
of the parents’ marital relationships. Research suggests that secure attachment in childhood is
associated with better conflict resolution in adult spouse and partner relationships. For
heterosexual marriages, a long line of research indicates a U-shaped curve in marital
happiness, with high marital satisfaction in the preparental years of marriage, a decline in the
middle parental years, and a rise in the later post parental years.
It is important to remember, however, that many adults are marrying for the first time
in midlife and others are marrying for a second or more times, and it is unclear how the
above-mentioned research applies to such couples. One researcher found that couples from
feministic/collectivist cultural orientations tended to perceive competing midlife caregiving
responsibilities as less damaging to their marriages compared to couples from more
individualistic cultural backgrounds. At the micro contextual level, perceived fairness in
family work is associated with high marital satisfaction, and chronic economic adversity is
associated with low marital satisfaction. At the macro contextual level, public policy that
supports family life can play a role in reducing stress on the couple relationship.
Of these same-sex couple households, 115,000, or about 19%, reported having
children in the household. census data on same-sex relationships is incomplete, and the
Census Bureau is currently at work trying to improve their methods for collecting these data.
Midlife gay and lesbian partnerships have been found to be more egalitarian than married
heterosexual couples and to divide household labor more evenly. Kurek compared gay,
lesbian, and married heterosexual couples in long-term relationships.
In this study, the gay and lesbian couples lived without children and the married
heterosexual couples lived with children. For 50% of the comparisons, gay and lesbian
couples did not differ from married heterosexual couples with children. Both groups of
heterosexual couples reported lower levels of relationship quality than both gay and lesbian
partners, and both groups also reported change over time. Heterosexual couples without
children reported a steep decline in relationship quality in the early years followed by
stability.
In contrast, heterosexual couples with children reported a steep decline in the early
years, followed by a gradual decline until year 8 when another period of steep decline began.
This research begins to clarify some different experiences in partner relationships of various
types but only covers relationships through the young-adult period. One hopes further
longitudinal research will continue into middle adulthood and will also investigate
relationships of gay and lesbian couples with children. There is even less research about
bisexual and transgender relationships than about gay and lesbian relationships.
Disclosing transgender status in the context of romantic relationships is also a
challenge for transgender adults, and many report fear of rejection. The participants in one
study of transgender relationships reported, however, that they do disclose their transgender
status to romantic partners. In this same study, two thirds of the transgender research
participants reported that they were in monogamous relationships. The current generation of
midlife adults has more complex marital biographies than earlier generations.
From 1980 to 2010, the percentage of midlife remarriages rose from 18%to 32%.
Although there is a period of adjustment to divorce, midlife adults cope better with divorce
than young adults. Generation Xers living in their parents’ home at the same age in 2000 and
an even larger increase over the share of the Silent Generation who lived at home in 1964.
Living at home with parents in young adulthood is more common among young adults with
less education and more common among young-adult males than among young-adult
females. European countries, and most European countries have higher rates of young adults
living with parents than in the United States. In a summary of findings of three studies,
Fingerman, Pillemer, and colleagues report that the current generation of midlife adults is
much more involved in the lives of their adult children than their parents were with them, a
trend that began when their offspring were young children.
In general, mothers have closer relationships with their young-adult children than
fathers, and divorced fathers have been found to have weaker emotional attachments with
their adult children than either married fathers or divorced mothers. Midlife parents help their
young-adult children in different ways, depending on the resources they must share.
Relationships with young-adult children are important to both Lisa Mark Roslin
would like to find a way to be supportive to both his daughter and his aging parents while
also continuing to work on his own recovery. He has limited financial resources but takes
pride in his recent ability to provide child support for his daughter.
Maha Ahmed was a major source of emotional support to her mother after the family
resettled in Jordan, even after Maha and her husband moved to the United States. She has
been a nurturing wife and mother who was proud of her ability to juggle the care of multiple
generations of the family for so many years. She and her husband were able to pay for higher
education for their children and to offer financial assistance as they made the transition to
adult roles. With the help of her therapist, Maha is now considering what she can expect to
receive from her children.
Research in Europe suggests that intergenerational financial transfers are common and
often sizable, with midlife and late-life adults serving as an important source of financial and
practical support for younger adults, often helping with household chores and paperwork.
found that midlife adults had more negative emotions, more disruption in cortisol, and more
physical symptoms on the days they spent more time with their disabled children. Fingerman,
Cheng, Burditt, and Zarit found that midlife parents are only as happy as their least happy
young-adult child. These findings suggest a need for social service support for midlife parents
whose adult children are facing ongoing challenges.
Relationships With Parents
Most research shows that middle-aged adults are deeply involved with their aging
parents. As suggested in the stories of Mark Roslin, Lisa Balinski, and Maha Ahmed, the
nature of the relationship with aging parents’ changes over time. A cross-national study of
adults in Norway, England, Germany, Spain, and Israel found that across countries, support
was bidirectional, with aging parents providing emotional and financial support to their
midlife adult children and receiving support from them. As the parents’ health begins to
deteriorate, they turn more to their midlife children for help, as is the case for Lisa Balinski
and was earlier the case for Maha Ahmed.
The Pew Research Center found that when adults were asked if their parent over the
age of 65 needed help to handle their affairs or take care of themselves, 69% reported that
their parents needed no assistance. About 60% of the adults who reported that their parents
needed some helps were midlife adults in their 40s and 50s. About 17% of adults in their 40s
who had a parent over the age of 65 reported providing some day-to-day assistance to a
parent, and 29% of adults in their 50s reported providing such care. About 10% of adults in
their 40s and 50s reported being a primary caregiver for a parent.
This continues to be the case, even though a great majority of midlife women are
employed full-time. Despite competing demands from spouses and children, providing
limited care to aging parents seems to cause little psychological distress. Extended
caregiving, conversely, has been found to have some negative effects as midlife adults try to
balance a complex mix of roles, but there is also some evidence of rewards of caregiving.
Most of the research on caregiving focuses on caregiver burden, or the negative effects on
mental and physical health caused by caregiver stress. found that psychological distress was
greater on days that adult child aided aging parents, but they also found more distressed mood
among caregivers with higher caregiving demands and lower resources. Another research
team studying caregiver burden in caregivers of individuals with dementia found that the
number of hours devoted to caregiving was a significant predictor of caregiver burden. One
early proponent of this line of inquiry found that most caregivers have something positive to
say about their caregiving experiences. One group of researchers was interested in the
balance of positive and negative emotions in family caregivers of older adults with dementia.
They found considerable variation in the responses of caregivers in terms of the
balance of stressful and positive experiences of caregiving. Culture appears to play a role in
whether providing care to aging parents is experienced as burden or gain. For example,
Lowenstein and Darland found a strong expectation of providing care for parents in Spain
and Israel but a more negotiable obligation in northern Europe. This seems to be the way that
Maha Ahmed thinks about family caregiving.
Found that middle-aged Blacks, on average, give more support of all kinds to aging
parents and are more likely to report an expectation that one support one’s parents and that
personal rewards are found in providing such support.
Although there is clear evidence of the importance of intergenerational ties across the
life course, few researchers have explored the intergenerational relationships between midlife
gay men and lesbian women and their parents and parents-in-law. When thinking about these
findings, it is important to remember that the respondents were midlife adults who came of
age before widespread gay activism, and their intergenerational experiences might be very
different from the next generation of midlife gay and lesbian adults.
Other Family Relationships
Midlife is typically a time of launching children and a time when parents die. Not all
midlife adults are involved in the grandparenting role, but data from the United States and
Europe indicate that, for those who do become grandparents, the average age for making the
transition to grandparenthood is 51 for women and 54 for men.
The average age for becoming a grandmother varies from 46 in Ukraine to Of course,
average age masks the great variation within a given country, and the transition to
grandparenthood can occur in the early 30s or in late adulthood. Lisa Balinski nor Maha
Ahmed have become grandmothers at age 50 and This latter finding about the sequencing of
grandparenting and empty nest is affected by the trend of young adults staying longer in the
parental home, as discussed earlier. In eastern Europe, people become grandparents many
years before experiencing the empty nest, but in western Europe these transitions are spaced
more closely. This may result in midlife grandmothers assuming caregiving responsibilities
for both young grandchildren and aging parents. This period of multiple family roles usually
occurs from the mid-40s to the mid-50s for women and from the late 40s to the late 50s for
men.
In addition to the multiple family roles, many grandparents are still engaged in paid
work activity, with grandparenthood preceding retirement by at least 5 years, and many more
in most countries. American, African American, Hispanic American, and Italian American
grandparents are more likely to play an active role in the lives of grandchildren than other
ethnic groups. European grandparents, Neuberger & Haberkern found that different European
countries have different family cultures and expectations about the role of grandparents.
Netherlands and Denmark, grandparents are not considered to be obliged to play large
support roles in their grandchildren’s lives, but grandparents in the Mediterranean countries
are expected to play large support roles with their children and grandchildren. Neuberger &
Haberkern also found that the overall quality of life of grandparents in countries with high
expectations for grandparenting is associated with whether they comply with these
expectations. Zealand, grandparents talked about the importance of «being there» for their
grandchildren while also avoiding «interfering» by overstepping the parents’ authority or
offering uninvited advice. Research has indicated gender differences in enactment of the
grandparent role as well, with most research suggesting that grandmothers, particularly
maternal grandmothers, play more intimate roles in their grandchildren’s lives than
grandfathers. However, Bates and Goodsell argue that grandfathers have been
underrepresented in research on grandparenting and recommend a more focused research
effort to examine these relationships.
In a study of gay grandfathers, most grandfathers reported close or extremely close
relationships with their grandchildren. As found with other grandparenting studies, the gay
grandfathers reported closer relationships with grandchildren who live in closer proximity to
them. In this study as well as the study of gay grandfathers, being open about the grandparent
sexual orientation was associated with closer relationships with grandchildren. Researchers
have noted two potential problems for grandparents.
First, if adult children divorce, custody agreements may fail to attend to the rights of
grandparents for visitation. And baby boom adults are often serving as step grandparents, a
role that can be quite ambiguous. Second, if adult children become incapacitated by
substance abuse, illness, disability, or incarceration, grandparents may be recruited to step in
to raise the grandchildren. The number of children cared for by grandparents in the United
States has risen dramatically in the past 30 years.
Sibling relationships have been found to be important for the well-being of both men
and women in midlife. Siblings often drift apart in young adulthood, but contact between
siblings increases in late midlife. Midlife adults are often brought together around the care
and death of aging parents, and research indicates that sibling contact decreases again after
the death of the last parent. Sibling collaboration in the care of aging parents may bring them
closer together or may stir new as well as unresolved resentments.
Pillemer and colleagues found that midlife adults who recall their mothers playing
favorites when they were children often have problematic relationships in midlife. Maha
Ahmed was an important lifeline for her sister who was caring for their parents back in
Jordan.
Relationships With Friends
Midlife adults have fewer friends in their social convoys than do adolescents and
young adults, but they also continue to report at least a few important friendships. It has been
suggested that midlife adults have less time than other adult age groups for friendships. One
research team extended socioemotional selectivity theory to the study of online networking
and found that compared to younger adults, middle-aged adults had fewer friends on
Facebook, but a higher proportion of the Facebook friends of midlife adults were actual
friends than was true for younger adults. Friendships appear to have an impact on midlife
well-being for both men and women, although they do not seem to be as important as close
familial relationships.
In a German sample that included both men and women, activities with friends
increased positive mood and life satisfaction of midlife adults. American families often call
attention to the «nonblood» family members as a strength for these families. Friendships also
serve an important role in the social convoys of single midlife adults, serving as a chosen
family rather than a «poor substitute» for family. The research indicates that family ties
remain strong in societies around the world.
Work in Middle Adulthood
Like Lisa Balinski, most midlife adults engage in paid labor, but the first decade of
the 21st century was a precarious time for middle-aged workers, and Mark Roslin is an
example of the precariousness. These midlife baby boomers are too young to draw a pension
or social security or to have medical coverage through Medicare. Given these meanings,
employment is an important role for midlife adults in many parts of the world, for men and
women alike.
This trend existed alongside trends of longer midlife and late adulthood periods and
the fact that many adults are entering midlife healthier and better educated than in previous
eras. Improved pension plans were at least partially responsible for the trend of declining age
of retirement. But with the demise of defined-benefit pension plans, and particularly after the
recession of 2008, retirement patterns have been changing again, with older adults remaining
engaged in the workforce later in life. Overall, the work patterns of middle-aged workers in
the United States have changed considerably in the past 3 decades.
Greater job mobility among middle-aged workers. Changes in the global economy
have produced job instability for middle-aged workers. Within these broad trends, gender,
class, and race have all made a difference in the work patterns of midlife adults. Women are
more likely than men to have job disruption throughout the adult life course, although those
with higher education and higher income are less vulnerable to job disruption.
Research indicates that loss of work in middle adulthood is a very critical life event
that has negative consequences for physical and emotional well-being. Greater variability in
the timing of retirement. Some midlife workers retire in their late 50s. Today, many other
midlife adults anticipate working into their late 60s or early 70s.
The decision to retire is driven by both health and financial status. Longitudinal
research indicates that earlier retirement is associated with poor self-rated health and chronic
disease. Although availability of a pension serves as inducement for retirement, men and
women who work in physically demanding jobs often seek early retirement whether they
have access to a pension. Blurring of the lines between working and retirement.
Many people now phase into retirement. Some middle-aged retirees return to work in
different occupational fields than those from which they retired; a phenomenon known as
encore career. Some large organizations are supporting late middle-aged adults to pursue
encore careers in teaching, health care, and social services. Encore careers are usually thought
of as something that can be done only by financially wealthy adults, but Marc Freedman
reports that in 2014, 57% of U. Increasing numbers of middle-aged workers leave a career
position because of downsizing and reorganization and find reemployment in a job with less
financial reward, a «bridge job» that carries them into retirement. Photo 8.3 Changes in the
global economy have produced job instability for middle-aged workers, and job retraining
often becomes essential. Photo 8.4 Research indicates that middle-aged workers often have
greater work satisfaction, organizational commitment, and self-esteem than younger workers.
Increasing educational reentry of midlife workers. This trend has received little research
attention.
However, workers with high levels of educational attainment prior to middle
adulthood are more likely than their less-educated peers to retrain in middle adulthood.
Research indicates that middle-aged workers have greater work satisfaction, organizational
commitment, and self-esteem than younger workers, but this is truer for white-collar workers
than for blue-collar workers. Blue-collar workers tend to have fewer opportunities to control
their work activities than white-collar workers, and control over work is associated with job
satisfaction. Employers may see middle-aged workers as hardworking and experienced, but
they also often cut higher-wage older workers from the payroll as a short-range solution for
reducing operating costs and staying competitive.
For some midlife adults, such as Mark Roslin, the issue is not how they will cope with
loss of a good job but rather how they can become established in the labor market. Mark
Roslin who have employment disruptions early in the adult life course tend to have more job
disruption in middle adulthood as well.
Risk Factors and Protective Factors in Middle
From a life course perspective, midlife behavior has both antecedents and
consequences. The rapidly growing body of literature on risk, protection, and resilience based
on longitudinal research has recently begun to add to our understanding of the antecedents of
midlife behavior. One of the best-known programs of research is a study begun by Emmy
Smith captured their risk factors, protective factors, and resilience in Journeys from
Childhood to Midlife. Most adults who had a troubled adolescence had recovered by midlife.
Many of these adults who had been troubled as youth reported that the «opening of
opportunities» in their 20s and 30s had led to major turning points. At midlife, participants
were still benefiting from the presence of a competent, nurturing caregiver in infancy, as well
as from the emotional support along the way of extended family, peers, and caring adults
outside the family.
Well-Being in Middle Adulthood
Other longitudinal research has found that childhood adversity continues to be a risk
factor for health and well-being in middle adulthood. Low socioeconomic status in childhood
has been found by several researchers to be a risk factor for poor midlife health. Some
researchers are finding that one pathway from early adversity to compromised health in
midlife is increased inflammation in the body caused by chronic or traumatic stress. They
also find that early adversity is associated with adverse life events throughout adolescence
and young adulthood, further adding to the accumulation of inflammation.
This line of research suggests that early life adversity puts down biological markers
that accelerate the aging process. A Swedish research team found that out-of-home care in
childhood was associated with a twofold risk of disadvantage in middle adulthood, with
disadvantage defined as economic hardship, unemployment, and mental health problems.
Despite this increased risk of midlife disadvantage related to childhood OHC, 56% of
the males and 47% of the females who had received OHC did not have disadvantaged
outcomes in midlife. This reminds us that risk factors increase the likelihood of disadvantage
but do not ensure it. One of the best trends in life course research is an increased interest in
the protective factors that alleviate the risk of adversity. The most common finding is that
emotional and instrumental support in the face of adversity protects against midlife health
problems.
One interesting finding is that even in the face of inequalities and discrimination,
midlife racial minority adults in the United States report higher psychological well-being than
midlife Whites. They have found several health behaviors that are risk factors for more severe
and prolonged health and disability problems in late adulthood.
