Middle AdulthoodPhysical DevelopmentChapter 12 & 13

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Middle Adulthood

• Ages 40 to 60 years

• Social Construct

• Something that society has had to create; not a hard and

fast thing, because when people started living longer, we

had to come up with something to call this period. It’s not

that you go everywhere and this would be considered

middle adulthood. In our society is it is.

• Population up 72% in 25 years

• Baby boomers were in this generation, but the bulk of baby

boomers have move on and now considered in late

adulthood

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Sensory Changes

• Vision

• Near and farsightedness are common

• Speed of visual processing slows

• Your ability to see something and make meaning of it, the message gets to your brain of what is it or what

you need to do upon seeing that. That process actually slows down during middle adulthood. More

specifically were talking about things like being able to locate things visually. So for example you steep off

a plane, and into the airport and you need to go the restroom, being able to locate the signs that says

restroom make take you a little bit longer. Your ability to read signs that move. So the sign is scrolling a

message like the ones that are on the highway that tell you this lane is going to be closed, if it’s a moving

sign, your speed of being able to process that information is going to be slower than it was.

• Hearing

• Presbycusis

• When you have loss of hearing at the high frequencies

• Just like with vision, you might have had perfectly fine hearing, tested well, and then all of a sudden

during this time there are changes. What we do know about hearing loss, and were not talking about

hearing loss to the extent that someone is going to need aids or something like that, its not that severe for

most people, hearing loss is more gradual.

• High frequencies

• Men lose (hearing) faster than women

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Climacteric Menopause

• With regard with to other changes that are going on, the biggest one physically that’s happening

for both men and women is something called the Climacteric – The climacteric is a general term

that means loss of reproductive capacity. You can no longer produce. Climacteric is the term used

for both men and women. For women specifically that is called menopause.

• On average at 51

• Occurs in stages

• 3 stages

• 1st stage: early 40’s peri-menopause. What happens during peri-menopause is that a women's hormones

(estrogen/progesterone) those hormones go all out of whack they are fluctuating high/low all over the

place. And what a women probably notice during peri-menopause is that her period is somewhat

irregular.

• 2nd stage: pre-menopause. What happens during pre-menopause is those hormones that were all over

the place in peri –menopause just drop. Estrogen and progesterone levels just drop, they’re very low.

What happens is that the ovaries at this time become almost non-functional, the ovaries are no longer

releasing eggs. The periods are very irregular, she may go for several months and not have a cycle and

this is where if a woman is going to have hot flashes, she will have them in pre-menopause. The 2 most

common symptoms are hot flashes & weight gain.

• 3rd stage: post-menopause. Post-menopause means that you’ve had no cycle, no period, for 12 months

for an entire year.

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Climacteric Menopause

• Climacteric loss/decline of reproductive capacity

• Official: no period for 12 months

• Strongly linked to physical changes

• What we know about menopause, is yes, there are some physical changes that

happen from the hot flashes, the weight gain, those changes definitely we know

come from those hormone level fluctuating and then dropping out. But the mood

changes that are talked about, a lot of people will attribute severe mood changes

to menopause, but there is no evidence that those are caused by menopause.

• What the research has shown, is if a women is depressed during menopause,

guess what? She was depressed before menopause. She’ll probably be

depressed after menopause. If a woman is moody in menopause, she’s

probably moody before that and will be after that. There’s no evidence that

support those mood changes that are talked about.

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Climacteric Andropause(?)

• No official medical name

• Slower loss of reproductive capacity

• Men are of course, capable of fathering children longer than women are capable of getting

pregnant.

• Men in their 40ish will see a natural decline in testosterone level. Those hormone levels are lowering

also for men. It’s a natural decline that happens but for some men it tends to happen faster or

earlier than typical so that’s why you see those advertisements for low T, that’s what their talking

about when the guys can go get low T hormone therapy we’re talking about low levels of

testosterone.

• What eventually happens for the males is that the quantity of viable sperm decreases

• So sperm is still there, sperm is still produced but the quantity of the viable sperm decreases

• Chances that a much older gentleman get a women pregnant go down significantly. Yes there’s sperm

but there not good sperm

• We talk a lot of about women are older and have children and the risks that could happen of having your children

older, we actually finding out too that old sperm is not good. There are links to older men fathering children and it’s

been linked to autism and to other developmental issues. It’s not just mom’s age but dad’s age that makes a

difference.

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General Health Issues

• Most are in good health

• Chronic ailments are common

• When we talk about chronic ailments, we’re talking about things like having arthritis those

kinds of things.

• May take longer to recover from illness

• Get the flu at 48 vs. 28 there’s going to be a difference in the rate of recovery. Takes you

longer generally, as you get older to recover from illness.

• Immune system not as strong when you get older

• You can get a shingles vaccination but their target is like 50ish.

• Sleep problems are common esp, if other conditions exist

• Side effect of other conditions

• Medications may cause side effect of not able to sleep

• Leading causes of death are (1) heart disease and (2) cancer

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SES, Race and Health

• Social class is the most significant predictor of a person health

• When we’re talking about that who’s going to be in better health? Those who come from higher social class, higher

SES groups, typically just as is always has been are in better health

• Minorities (esp. African Americans) have higher rates of disease

• Most common health concerns:

• Heart disease

• Leading cause of death

• Hypertension

• High blood pressure

• Blacks are twice as likely to have high blood pressure but Mexican Americans are more likely to have

untreated high blood pressure

• Diabetes

• Type II; preventable

• Most often when we talk about these things: heart disease, hypertension, diabetes they are directly linked to

what other condition? Obesity. High rates of obesity during middle adulthood. So diabetes again directly

related Type II diabetes, which can be changed by changing lifestyle.

• Type I diabetes is juvenile diabetes that is genetic and people can’t help that

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Stress

• People in middle adulthood rate their levels of stress higher and more frequently under stress than other groups.

• Most common stressors that are reported:

• Family – changing roles within the family, children getting older

• Work – highest positions or frustration (woman - glass ceiling, level to which women and rise up in the corporation

but they can’t go any higher)

• Work – Family conflict (there are demands that are happening at work and demands that are happening in family

and that are pulling a person in different directions and they can’t find a way to make those 2 things balance)

• Allostatic load – physiological wear and tear on the body that results from ongoing efforts to maintain stability under stress

• Long periods of stress and you trying to survive through that that is not good for your health. You can stay in that

high phase of fending off the stress but when the stressful event is gone your body comes back down and then you

are very susceptible to a lot of different illness.

• Women report more extreme stress than men

• Impact of stress can depend on behavior pattern type (A or B)

• Type A people who are consistently in a state of hostility. They are very competitive, always seems to be angry,

aggressive, impatient, always seems to be in a hurry, someone always annoying them, there not happy (Examples:

traffic on 35 nobody’s moving but they’re laying on their horn as if that’s going to make a difference; can’t wait for

the train, got killed by the train. They’re the reason why they have those yellow stick thing up so people can’t go

around the arms; annoyed at you greeting the cashier, slowing down the line tremendously by taking 2 seconds to

say hi)

• Type B Opposite of type B. Better able to handle stress and it will have less of a negative impact on them

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Middle Adulthood Cognitive Development

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Cognitive Ability

• Cognitive prime

• Considered to at your best, cognitively

• There is peak performance in:

• Inductive reasoning

• Where you tend to take something that is personal that is specific to

you and your able to generalize it and make decisions or give advice

to someone else in that situation

• Spatial orientation

• Ability to understand the relationship between your own body and

objects in space or the relationship between different objects in space

• Vocabulary

• Verbal comprehension skills, are at their peak level at this time

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Intelligence

• Fluid

• Applied to novel problems (new situations, new problems being able to solve new issues)

• Fluid intelligence is relatively independent of culture and education

• Crystallized

• Information acquired throughout lifetime

• Vocabulary, general information that you have acquired throughout your lifetime in a educational

setting? Yes, that all counts in to crystallized intelligence and those things you learn outside an

educational setting.

• Crystallized is improving while fluid is declining

• What you know and what you have known throughout your lifespan that is strong and you can use those skills but

your ability to solve new issues, solve new problems that is not as good anymore.

• We’re more talking about things like technology, that haven't been a part of their lifetime, because we’re talking

about problem solving. Things like phones, you give your smart phone to your kid and they’ve go it figured it out in 5

minutes, but you give your smart phone to your parents it’s a whole different issue.

• Essentially what we’re talking about here with fluid and crystallized intelligence is, you can think of it as the old

saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks “. The old dog knows what it knows, but the new tricks are harder.

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Crystallized IQ: Expertise

• Selective Experts

• Not necessarily an “extraordinary” talent

• We’re not talking about being able to play piano with your toes or something crazy like that. We’re talking about being

more skilled at a certain task than the average person. And that task can be just be a regular normal task. That expertise

comes through experience, getting stronger and stronger at that

• More skilled at a task than average person

• Typical normal like cooking, we’re not talking about having to be some sort of master chef but just a person who has been cooking

and been in the kitchen for a longer time than someone else. We might refer to their skills as having expertise.

• You can’t be with your mom for a certain holiday or something like that, and so you call her and say hey mom I want to make that

such and such that you make. I want to make it this time for my family, and she says ok, and you say can you send me the recipe?

And she says well I don’t use the recipe, well I need to know what to put in. She might have to really think, and say I’ll have to write it

down for you because she has to think through, because that has become automatic for her making that dish. And maybe the

way she’s making it and ¾ cups of sugar if you actually found the recipe that’s not what it is but she has made it to be her own and

it works out for her recipe and she put a little salt in there, well how much? I don’t know you just have to know. Sometimes when you

get to this point being able to break down those skills, and teach them to someone else is hard because it’s so natural and

automatic to you as the “expert”

• This is when you call your dad and say, Dad my car is making this noise, and he in 2 seconds, diagnosis the problem and tells you

what you need to do or whatever. Its that kind of a thing, just through experience and knowing, that becomes stronger, so then

there we have those characteristics of what we consider expert thought, intuitive. It’s intuition, you just know. It’s automatic, it’s

strategic, this didn’t work I just need to change something, and its somewhat flexible, so that’s what what is becoming stronger for

the person at this time.

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Crystallized IQ: Expertise

• Characteristics of expert thought

• Intuitive

• Automatic

• Strategic

• Flexible

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Mature Learner

• Significant % of college students are over 40

• Majority of adult learners are women

• Typically women who have been staying home with kids, and now the kids are older and more independent and

they come back to school.

• What we do know and what the research has shown is this is a very good thing. Most returning students, mature

learners, even if there not returning, sometimes you find people who come they went straight from high school or if

they finished high school into the workforce, and they’ve been working or went to the military or something like that

so their coming to school or coming back to school, what we know is that personally the impact it has on self

esteem is very good. We also see that most people who fall into this category actually do very well academically

and in some respects, this group of people will do better academically then your younger population of students.

• Most returning students benefit and personally and do well academically

• Priorities – because this is it, if I screw this up I don’t have 30 more years to figure it out.

• More committed

• The attitude about what this experience is for is generally different. Its not I’m going to see, I’m going to dabble and

see what I want to do. There tends to be more of a I know what I want to do this is my focus; don’t have a lot of

time to, ok I can do this for 5 years and if I mess it up I’ll go and do something else there’s a sense of time urgency

that comes.

• Their own money. They are investing in this, its not mom and dads money, its their own money. Am I going to invest

that much money in something and not give seriousness to it? There tends to be a different attitude about the

process of going to school

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Middle AdulthoodSocial DevelopmentChapter 13

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Generativity vs. Stagnation

• Erikson

• Time to turn outward

• Interest in guiding the next generation

• They should become interested in their community their society in the next generation.

• Expressed though teaching or mentoring

• This can be done in a personal or professional level

• We’re talking about a person who’s been at a company for a while and reached a high level in the

company maybe taking on a newer person into the field or a new person in the company under their

wing, giving them advice and steering them along in the process. It could even be a mentor/tutor for

young children. It could be on a personal level, passing down a recipe to someone in the family. What

the purpose is, is to make a mark on the future. Make a valuable contribution to future generation.

• Need to feel that one is making a valuable contribution to the future

• If your not doing those things, you might feel that your stagnant, that your not going

anywhere, no purpose.

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Jung’s Theory

• Individuation – “true self”

• Process of finding your true self

• Basically you’ve been going through life and there’ve been some aspects of yourself, some aspects of personality,

some wishes, desires that you had, but maybe you had to put aside just because of your situation, because of

where you were in life, because of who was in your life at that time, so those things you had to put aside, or you

neglected you can bring those things back and now integrate them into your personality and find your true self.

Erickson was saying you focus outward, Jung said no-no-no, this is all about getting you, getting you together.

You’ve been focused on other people all this time now it’s about you. So he said what you should do is focus on

your inner spiritual self, finding the true you.

• New focus on inner, spiritual self

• Necessary Tasks:

• Give up the image of youth

• Understand that you are the age that you are and your not going to go back to being a young person

• Acknowledge mortality

• Acknowledge that your life has past, and that you are at some point going to leave this earth

• According to Jung, if you can do those things, and meet yourself where you are, you can start

getting right with yourself.

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Midlife Crisis: Fact or Fiction?

• Stressful, negative event

• When we think a midlife crisis who is having it? A man, and he’s having a

midlife crisis so he goes out and buys a car, and what color is the car? Red.

Who does he put in his car? His young girlfriend. We have this idea that’s

what’s supposed to happen, that your supposed to go through this break

down, and do things like that and we talk about it in relation to it being a

result of the awareness of mortality. “Oh my gosh, I’m getting old, I’m going

to die at some point so let me do all these crazy things.”

• Result of awareness of mortality

• 25% of Americans over 35 think they’ve had one

• Research fails to support the idea (that we go through this

negative event that causes us to lose our mind)

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Midlife Crisis: Fact or Fiction?

• Actually dealing with normal life stresses

• Family life events

• Death of loved one. Who are most people going to lose in mid life? Their own parents. Maybe they lost their parent earlier then

they would have liked to some sort of disease or medical issue. So you might see that person start making some drastic changes

because they realize this is what I come from, these are my genes, I need to make some changes, so that I don’t leave this earth

as soon as maybe my parents did.

• Children leaving the home

• For many people at this time, during midlife, their children have grown up and their leaving and going off to college so

that might cause them to make some life changes.

• Lets talk about that middle age man who goes and gets the sports car and whatever. Lets says he’s 40 something years old maybe 50, and he

goes out and he buys that red car. Logically thinking about this, at age 47,48,49, whatever, is that the 1st time he’s thought about the red

sports car? No. is that the 1st time he’s wanted that red sports car? No. When did he start wanting a red sports car? When he 5! He’s wanted a

red sports car since he was a little boy. Why didn’t he get it when he was 16 and could learn how to drive? His parents are not going to buy

him that. Why didn’t he get it when he was 22? Family, still couldn’t afford it. Why didn’t he get it when he was 28? Family issues, you cannot

put the baby in a 2 seater. Now he’s in his late 40’s is he carting his kids around so much? No. Career wise what did we say where are most

people? Their doing well, their at a high point, maybe he’s raised up and he’s CEO or something like that in the company. So now he’s 48, he

can get that red sports car. Did that process that we just described, is that some sort of crazy crisis? No, its logic. It’s perfectly logical,

something he’s wanted since he was a little boy and life circumstances throughout the way he couldn’t have and now he can so he gets it for

himself. Not crazy, it would have been crazy if he had gotten it at 28, 30 and told his wife and kids, I don’t care. This is not crazy, this is logical

and so what a lot of people seeing as changes, are actually normal life stresses event.

• Financial events

• People either realize that they’ve done well and might have that money. We don’t have to be so tight anymore, and we can buy

this or that and people go why they buying all those things? Because they can. Or other people might realize, oh my gosh the kids

are in school, we’re going to have to pay for this and we’re still paying for this that or other so they tighten up. They make changes

because they realize have to tighten up and people go why did they do that? Because normal life events are happening and you

just have to make changes to go along with them.

• What we think of and what we describe as a society as this midlife crisis its actually not there, just normal things happening, and typical

reactions to those normal things.

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Friendships

• What we typically see during middle adulthood is that your networks become smaller.

People don’t have as many friends as they used to. Demands of careers, being parents,

whatever, make those networks smaller.

• Quality makes up for lack in quality

• People may spend time with “select” friends

• Maybe because of obligations with the kids, work or whatever, you don’t have as much time to spend

with those friends, or you don’t have as many opportunities to go out, so when you do, your going to

pick those select people. If you have one date night per month and know that you and your

husband/wife are going to have 1 date night, and you want to make it with another couple, are you

going to pick those people that you don’t really like? Your one shot at that month? No! absolutely not.

Your going to go with the people you know your going to have fun with because that’s it. That’s a 1

shot. So you might find that it’s the same people that your hanging out with and again making that

network smaller your trying to get the best bang for your buck if you will.

• Close friendships are valued and protected

• Because again there’s not such a big array of people to choose from to fulfill those friendship needs

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Marriage

• Marital satisfaction follows a U shaped curve

• Actually look at the letter U that’s what we’re talking about here. When you start out with marriage you start out on the left side of

the U, we go from the left side down, to the right side and back up.

• First 20-24 years; longer = less satisfaction

• First the longer your married, the less satisfied you tend to be, because your moving down.

• At 35-44 years; longer = more satisfaction

• The longer you’ve been married the more satisfied you tend to be because your on the other side and your coming out

of that dip in the U and going back up.

• Low point – raising teens and very involved in careers

• High point – children leave and retirement is near

• What were the biggest stresses? Work and family

• This is kind of actually, the whole marital satisfaction thing, this is going along this curve is looking at a typical marriage where the age of

getting married is somewhere in the 20’s what is typical and there are children. So, this might look very different for a couple who’s maybe got

married later, or if the couple doesn’t have children, cause remember those children don’t do wonderful things for the marriage, contrary to

popular belief.

• Professor has 2 opposite children: Oldest if she’s going to act up it’s going to be with mom. She doesn’t get in trouble at school. To her the

worst thing is to have other people see her acting bad, or thinking less of her. She doesn’t want that at all, she would never throw a fit in front

of friends. If her bad behavior is going to happen, it’s going to happen in the privacy of the home. That little one, she’s the opposite. When

she’s at home we’ve got it together, but then she goes to school and acts like she’s lost her damn mind! She gets in the car and says, “I stress

you out?” Yes, “Oh, ok!”

• Doing a math project, sorting and counting M&M’s, teacher said before she put the M&M’s on the table, “don’t touch the M&M’s” what did

she do? Ate them. And the teacher say I told you not to eat them, I’m going to give you some more, we’re doing math, don’t touch them.

What did she do? Ate them again.

• Chill out chair

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Divorce

• Less likely to happen in midlife

• It’s cheaper to keep her

• Marital capital

• What happens throughout your marriage you have built up financial and emotional benefits together as a couple

and so sometimes it’s hard to give those up those financial and emotional benefits. It’s also if you’ve been together

all those years, you’ve built up a network of friends, that are friends of yours as a couple and the idea of starting

over maybe very hard for some people.

• Reasons for divorce in midlife differ between males and females:

• Men – fell out of love, just going in different directions, infidelity

• Women – abusive relationship, substance abuse, infidelity

• Women in traditional marriages have hardest time adjusting

• What we mean by that of course is that if the marriage was that he was the breadwinner, and worked outside the house

and she was the caretaker and took care of the kids, and him and the house, that is very hard. Why? She has to support

herself, its all about forming a different identity of themselves, which they might have been wrapped up in what they did

on a regular basis, your thinking about a traditional marriage, she’s supporting, she taking care of the house, kids, where

are the kids now? They’re older, and they don’t need 24/7 mothering anymore and so husband not there, so it’s a whole

different identity that she’s having to take on and maybe in ways she hasn’t had to do before.

• What we know when a divorce happens is that men usually gain financially and women lose significantly financially.

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Relationships: With Children

• Conflict is typical because everyone is changing

• Because most people at this time will have teens so your going through issues with mid-life and trying to parent a

teen so that can cause conflict.

• Empty nest

• Youngest child leaves the home

• For most couples this is a positive thing

• For that parent who has taken on that traditional caregiving role, for most of the time it’s a female, this

can be very difficult because again your talking about a role now a part of your identity no longer being

there so that might be really hard some people.

• Revolving door (boomerang)

• Adult children who have once left, come back and this is becoming more and more popular for couples to

experience. Now we’re not talking about what we generally refer to as ‘failure to launch’ because in failure to

launch you never get them out. The conflict that comes out of that can be pretty intense. A lot of times that

conflict comes from a blurring of lines of roles, between the adult children and their parents and not knowing when

to be a parent and let you do what you do, but your in my house. Treat the adult child as a tenant and make a

lease agreement. The 1st thing that needs to be agreed upon is how long? Finance; who can come and when. All

of those kinds of things they say you need to lay out and be very specific on because that’s where the conflicts

comes in.

• Couple and their son was living with them and they couldn’t get him to leave, and so they sold their house and

went to live on a boat.

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Relationships: With Parents

• Sandwich generation

• We’re saying this person in middle age, feels sandwiched between the needs of their own family and the needs of

their aging parents.

• Approximately 22% in America

• Filial (obligation) responsibility

• That persons perspective on whether or not they are supposed to be taking caring for their ageing parents. Do they

feel obligated to care for their parent if it becomes necessary or not.

• Can cause tension between family members

• Can cause tension between that middle age person who’s caring for parents and their spouse, children, those

aging parents.

• Internship – girl 13, 14 in middle school. She seemed very depressed. Discovered she had a lot of anger, negative feelings

and hostility towards her own mother. Her grandmother was very ill, no support over the weekend. On the weekends, her

mother was responsible was taking care of the grandmother. Every weekend was spent chasing around her younger siblings

at grandma’s house while mom too care of very sick grandma. She was conflicted with her feelings, she knew her

grandmother was ill but she was having to miss out on a lot of things.

• Can lead to caregiver burnout

• When they become physically and/or emotionally exhausted due to the responsibility of caring for this individual,

their parents.

• All of the research shows this kind of situation, the sandwich generation thing, its a negative for the induvial who is

the ‘meat’ in the sandwich.

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Relationships: Grandchildren!

• Average age to become one is 45

• Number will shift, because people are getting married later, having children later and so we know that people who

are not having their 1st child until their 30’s, their not becoming grandparents at 45.

• The transition into grandparents is typically a positive one for most individuals.

• 72% think being a grandparent is the single most important and satisfying thing in their life

• 72% take care of their grandchildren on a regular basis

• It’s actually more common for kids who are preschool age, to be taken care of by their grandparents then to be in

daycare or preschool situation.

• They spend $52 billion every year on their grandkids alone

• Professor mother sent Blair a keyboard, guitar, Kindle Fire, American girl doll (adamant she wanted her to be older

when she got one; she has to be older, she has to be responsible to take care of this doll)

• Amount of involvement with grandchildren may depend upon:

• Distance

• Relationship with daughter or son-in-law

• Gender of grandparent

• Grandma’s vs. Grandpa’s. Grandma’s are more involved.

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