healthy lifestyles experience decline mostly as a state of mind, an increasing aware-
ness that they have passed the midway point of their lives.
Some of these changes are class and race related. Difficult manual labor obvi-
ously ages one more rapidly than working in an office, and painting houses will age
you more quickly than painting on a canvas.
There may also be changes in workplace status and in roles as parents and part-
ners. People may come to an understanding that their youthful dreams will never be
realized: They will never be a great novelist or a rock star or drive an RV across the
country. They will never hit it big. The lives they have now are, most likely, the lives
they are going to have forever.
If there is a developmental task of middle age, then, it is this: acceptance. One
must accept one’s life as it is, and “put away childish things”—like the dreams that
you will drive a Ferrari, sleep with a rock star or supermodel, be a multimillionaire,
or get to say “you’re fired” on national television. Many adults have a difficult time
achieving that acceptance; indeed, the constant emphasis on youth and glamour makes
it increasingly difficult.
AGE AND IDENTITY 355Two best-selling
books of the
1970s, Seasons
of a Man’s Life
(Levinson et al., 1978) and Passages
(Sheehy, 1976) popularized the belief
that middle-aged men (and to a lesser
extent, women) go through a develop-
mental “crisis” characterized by a
pressure to make wholesale changes in
their work, relationships, and leisure.
For men, stereotypical responses to this
pressure might include divorcing their
wives to date younger women, pursuing
lifelong ambitions, changing jobs,
buying sports cars, and taking up
adventurous and risky hobbies.
The idea of midlife crisiswas
embraced by a large segment of
mainstream American culture.
Middle-aged people found the concept
intuitively compelling as a way of
understanding changes in their own
feelings and behaviors. Others employed
it as a useful explanation of erratic
behavior in their middle-adult parents or
friends. Thirty years later, it remains a
popular concept, the subject of pop
psychology books and websites offering
help for people (especially men) who
struggle with the symptoms of the
“crisis”: depression, angst, irrational
behavior, and strong urges to seek out
new partners.
Despite the popular belief that male
midlife crisis is universal and based on
chronological age, careful research
clearly demonstrates that this so-called
crisis is not typical. Most men do not
experience any sort of crisis in their
middle-adult years. Disconfirming
research became available shortly after
the concept was introduced (Costa and
McCrae, 1978; Valliant, 1978), and more
recent research finds no empirical
support for midlife crisis as a universal
experience for either men or women
(Wethington, 2000). Midlife does
present a series of developmental
challenges, and some middle-aged men
do respond in ways that fit the
stereotype. However, people go through
challenges and crises in every life stage.
The triggers are usually changes in work,The “Midlife Crisis”
How do we know
what we know
health, or relationships rather than
a mere accumulation of birthdays.
In the largest study to date on
midlife, sociologist Elaine Wethington
(2000) supported the findings of
previous studies in demonstrating that
midlife crisis is far from inevitable.
However, she also found that more than
25 percent of those over age 35
surveyed (all residing in the United
States)believedthat they have had such
a crisis. On further investigation, about
half of these reports reflected only a
time of stressful life events, not a
sustained period of loss of balance and
searching.
Belief in midlife crisis may partially
hinge on what’s called confirmation
bias,whereby a single case or a few
cases of the expected behavior confirm
the belief, especially when the behavior
is attention getting or widely reported.
Less obvious disconfirming behavior is
easier to ignore. In other words, if we
happen to know a man who spent the
year after his forty-fifth birthday getting
a divorce, dating a 22-year-old, buying a
sports car, and taking up skydiving, we
might believe in the midlife crisis, even
though we know a dozen other middle-
aged men who have done none of these
things.