Middle Adulthood- The Most Challenging Stage of Life



Middle Adulthood- The Most Challenging Stage of Life

Introduction

Middle adulthood is a time of transition; a stage of life that is shaped by a number of life changes and crises that one experiences, predictable and common, as well as unanticipated. That's why, I consider the these years in life course as the most challenging and significant one as it determines how successfully a person manages changes and crises in the course of middle adulthood. In middle adulthood, development of a real concern for the future generation's welfare is an important challenge. Majority of Middle Adults have to struggle with the demands of their careers, lesser options available for career, bringing up of children, provision of care to aging parents, marital conflicts, personal and familial health issues, too-lean retirement accounts' concerns, and debts from risky financial decisions etc (Busse, 1969). The focus of this paper is to discuss the rationale of considering middle adulthood as the most challenging period in life span. The challenges of "overload" stressors experienced by midlife adults, along with the juggling of too many activities at a time will also be elucidated in this paper.

Discussion

In middle adulthood, there are different outlooks regarding personality development (Bode et al., 2007). One of the viewpoints is normative-crises model, i.e. the traditional view of development which argues that people move through fixed stages, each tied to age. Another model is life events model which suggests that events in middle adulthood determines personality development (not age). Whichever model is chosen, it is clear that middle adulthood is not a time of passivity and stagnation but of continued psychological growth (Feldman, 2011).

Erik Erikson also proposes a theory of dynamic personality development, which is consisted of eight stages, where each stage is almost correlated to a chronological age range. Middle Adulthood is the second last stage in his proposed stages in life course. Middle adulthood is comprised of roughly the ages from 40 through 65. It is suggested by Erikson that Middle Adulthood encompasses the period of Generativity versus Stagnation, where contributions to work, family, community, and society are considered by people. According to Erikson, every individual, in some sense hasthe need to be generative: to care for someone or something. A feelingof stagnation will prevail otherwise, without generativity (Erikson, 1980).

Physical Development in Middle Adulthood

Overall health status, in the stage of middle adulthood, shows a decline ...