Socioemotional Development in Middle Adulthood

According to Erikson’s seventh stage of development, the psychosocial crisis is generativity vs stagnation. In this stage, the key challenge is to acquire a genuine concern for the welfare of future generations, which results in providing unconditional guidance to younger people. On the contrary, if one fails to tackle the challenge, one will experience stagnation or self-absorption, which is characterized by self-indulgent concerns with meeting one’s personal needs and desires.


According to Levinson’s seasons of a man’s life, adult male in their middle adulthood are faced with four major conflicts: 1) being young vs being old, 2) being destructive vs being constructive, 3) being masculine vs being feminine, 4) being attached to others vs being separated from them. It is important to note that Levinson’s theory drew on interviews exclusively with middle-aged males, which may or may not apply to female adults as Levinson’s work included no statistical analysis.



Life-events approach relies on life events to conceptualize adult development. This approach takes into the account not only critical life events, such as death of a spouse, divorce, marriage, etc. and their influences, but also the individual’s adaptation (coping strategies) to life events, the life-stage context and sociohistorical context. This approach is criticized of neglecting the stress from day-to-day hassles.

Social historical context (cohort effects) is important in understanding life span development. Social expectation, values, attitudes and behaviors are by-products of the social historical context we live in. Elder people who had experienced WWII have a very different perspective on the daily hassle that bothers the younger generation today. Divorce was a taboo in the 60s for people living in China, it is undoubtedly a very special events than today.


There are also differences between female and male in terms of their adult stage development. As the sociohistorical context changes, the cohort effect on female is even more far-reaching. As career opportunities increases for women, we are juggling both traditional roles, such as childrearing and child bearing, and non-traditional roles by helping to pay the rent.


As for the debate on the extent to which there is stability or change in adult development, a few longitudinal studies are conducted. Some conclusions include people show more stability in their personality when they reach midlife than when they were younger adults. These findings confirm the “cumulative personality model”, which states that as we grow older we become more adept at interacting with the environment in ways that foster stability in personality.


Midlife crisis is over-hyped by the media. Vaillant conducted a study called the “Grant Study” maintained that only a minority of adults experience a midlife crisis. Various studies on the sociopsychological well-being of mid-life adulthood found that mid-life crises are characterized more so by negative life events than aging. Studies also found that adults experienced a peak of personal control and power in middle age, and with high internal locus of control. In general, personality traits across adulthood occur in positive directions.


It is important to note that there are individual variations of middle life development that may or may not fit the age related stages/ crisis as prescribed by Erikson or Levinson or the life-event/daily hassle approach.


During middle adulthood, there are several aspects of close relationships. In terms of love and marriage, affectionate or companionate love increases in midlife. Rocky early adulthood marriages turn out to be better during midlife because either the issues are resolved or the marriage is dissolved by midlife. Some midlife parents may experience “empty nest syndrome”, which means parents experience decline in marital satisfaction after children leave home.

But most parents actually enjoy better marital satisfaction because they are free from child rearing responsibility and have more time for each other.


Some people become grandparents when they are in their middle adulthood. Being a grandparent is a source of biological reward and continuity, it is also a source of emotional self-fulfillment and satisfaction. Younger grandparents tend to be characterized to be the fun-seeking style when interacting with grand children.


Middle-aged adults are described as the “sandwich”, “squeezed” or “overload” generation because of their responsibilities both for the adolescents and the elderly. They are also the bridges for intergenerational relationship. It is interesting to note that daughter-mother is amongst the closest inter-generational relationship, more so than son-father, daughter-father or son-mother.