Middle Adulthood

• Middle Adulthood


  Long period in the life span, customarily subdivided into Early Middle Adulthood (age 40-50) and Advanced Middle Adulthood (age 50-60)
• Physical and psychological changes that first began during the early 40's become far more apparent in Middle Adulthood
• Characteristics of Middle Age


  • Middle Adulthood is a Time Stress
  • Middle Adulthood is a "Dangerous Age"
  • Middle Adulthood is an "Awkward Age"
  • Middle Adulthood is a "Time to Achievement"
  • Middle Adulthood is a "Time of Evaluation"
  • Middle Adulthood is the "Time of the Empty Nest"
  • Middle Adulthood is a "Time of Boredom"
• Categories of Stress in Middle Adulthood


  1. Somatic Stress

  2. Cultural Stress

  3. Economic Stress

  4. Psychological Stress
• Generativity


  Tendency to produce
• Stagnation


  Tendency to stand still
• Women, like men, who have worked throughout the years of early adulthood, generally reach their peak during middle adulthood. However, this peak, until very recently, was far below that of male workers.
• As a result of self-evaluation in Middle Adulthood, people come to terms with their fantasies and illusions about what they are and what they will do.
• After years of living in a family-centered home, most adults find it difficult to adjust to a pair-centered home in the "empty nest" stage of Middle Adulthood.
• The empty nest period of Middle Adulthood is far more traumatic for women than for men, especially for women who devoted their adult years to homemaking and have few interests or resources to fill their time.
• Many men and women experience boredom during the late 30s and 40s in Middle Adulthood.
• Developmental Tasks of Middle Age


  • Adjusting to physical and physiological changes
  • Adjusting to the reality of the work situation
  • Assuring economic security old age
  • Maintaining contact with children & grandchildren
  • Reorganizing living arrangements
  • Adjusting to being a couple again
  • Participating in the community
  • Ensuring adequate medical supervision for old age
  • Looking after aging parents
• Adjusting to physical and physiological changes in Middle Adulthood


  • Facial wrinkles
  • Graying or loss of hair
  • Reading glasses
  • Sleep disorders
  • Weight management issues
  • Coronary artery disease
  • Hypertension
  • Diabetes
  • Dyslipidemias
  • Joint degeneration
• In mid-life, there may be new or growing anxieties about health and aging. The extent of this concern may be related to whether one is a realist, pessimist, or optimist.
• Middle-aged people are often torn between the needs of their children and their elderly parents, assisting the latter with various tasks.
• Caregivers of aging parents may experience negative feelings such as denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.
• The body organ of most persons show a 0.8 to 1 percent decline per year in the functional ability after the age of 30, due to normal aging, disease, and environmental factors.
• Middle-aged adults still report good health and physical functioning, but undergo various physical changes such as decreases in strength, coordination, reaction time, sensation, and fine motor skills.
• Major adjustment in middle age


  • Adjustment to physical changes & changed interests
  • Body organ of most persons show a 0.8 to 1 percent decline per year in the functional ability after the age of 30
  • Part of this decline is normal, some is disease-related, and some is caused by factors such as stress, occupational status, nutritional status, and many other environmental factors
  • Middle-aged adults still report good health and physical functioning
  • Decades of exposure and use take their toll on the body as wrinkles develop, organs no longer function as efficiently as they once did, and lung and heart capacity decrease
  • Decreases in strength, coordination, reaction time, sensation (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch), and fine motor skills, the coordination of presbyopia (farsightedness of difficulty reading) and presbycusis (difficulty hearing-pitched sounds)
  • None of these changes is usually so dramatic that the middle adult cannot compensate by wearing glasses to read, taking greater care when engaging in complex motor tasks, driving more carefully, or slowing down at the gym
  • People age at different rates, so some 40 year olds may feel middle-aged long before their 50-year-old counterparts
  • Most people, however, describe feeling that they have reached midlife by their mid-50s
  • The bio-psychosial changes that accompany midlife appear to be major turning points in terms of the decline that eventually typifies older adulthood
• None of the biological declines of middle and late adulthood needs to be an obstacle to enjoying all aspects of life, including sex
• Sexuality in middle adulthood


  • As people age, they may experience physical changes, illnesses, or emotional upheavals, such as the loss of a partner, that can lead to a decline in sexual interest and behavior
  • In women there is a gradual decline in the function of the ovaries and in the production of estrogen
  • Decreased estrogen leads to thinning of the vaginal walls, shrinking of the vagina and labia majora, and decreased vaginal lubrication
  • These conditions can be severe enough to cause the woman pain during intercourse
  • Women who were sexually active either through intercourse or through masturbation before menopause and who continued sexual activity after menopause are less likely to experience vaginal problems
  • Women can use hormone-replacement therapy or hormone-containing creams to help maintain vaginal health
  • In men, testosterone production declines over the years, and the testes become smaller
  • The volume and force of ejaculation decrease, and sperm count is reduced, but viable sperm may still be produced in elderly men
  • Erection takes longer to attain, and the time after orgasm during which erection cannot occur (the refactory period) increases
  • Medications and vascular disease, diabetes, and other medical conditions can cause erectile dysfunction
  • The middle years can often lead to problems for married couples who do not understand some of the challenges they are going through during the middle years
  • A man's aging crisis can be related to the pressure he feels "to make it"
  • A woman's aging crisis can be related to concerns and anxiety she feels about her physical appearance
  • These changes have direct implications for their sexual relationship
• Desire


  Being sexually motivated
• The side effects of diseases (such as diabetes or hypertension) that require drug treatment can all negatively affect desire
• In general overtime, the sex drive declines, particularly for men. The male sex drive is also affected by a drop in testosterone, the male hormone
• Excitement


  The first physiological reaction to stimulations and result in blood engorgement of the genitals
• Orgasm


  Changes dramatically, with age primarily in the area known as the refractory period the time between one orgasm and the physical capability to achieve another orgasm
• For the middle life woman, the sexual profile


  Quite different. Indeed, erotic interest often increases in the desire phase, primarily in response to changes to her biological makeup. When estrogen, the female hormone, declines, it allows her testosterone to have more of an influence. During menopause, the ovaries continue to produce small amount of testosterone, and given the decline of estrogen, the effect of the testosterone is greater, leading to increased sexual desire. However, in the excitement phase, lack of estrogen often leads to problems with vaginal dryness
• Sexual activity


  Reaffirms self-esteem, attractiveness, and gender identity
• Menopause


  Permanent ending of menstruation in women. Menopause marks the end of woman's natural ability to bear children
• Perimenopause


  • Encompasses the period of changing ovarian activity and also the first few years without menstrual cycling, typically characterized by hormonal and physical changes and sometimes emotional and psychological changes as well
• Premature menopause


  Menopause before age 35, may occur because of certain diseases, autoimmune reactions, surgery, medical
• Menopause


  Occurs when a woman has not experienced a menstrual cycle for one year
• Attitudes towards menopause


  • Vary depending on cultural connotations and women's individual expectations
  • In societies where women's role is mostly reproductive, inability to bear any more children is a loss of status
  • In cultures in which the wisdom and experience of older women is valued, menopause is seen as a positive life event
  • In general, young women and men view menopause more negatively, whereas women who have gone through the experience view it more positively
  • Individually, some women view the cessation of their monthly period as a sign of impending old age and mourn the loss of youth and beauty, while other women are glad to be rid of it
• Signs and symptoms of menopause


  • The experience of menopause differs among women, depending on differences in diet and nutrition, general health and health care, and even how women are taught to think about menopause
  • Not all women experience symptoms
  • Physical symptoms include longer menstrual periods, heavier menstrual flow, spotting or irregularity
  • Hormone pills or low-dose birth control pills may be prescribed to control bleeding problems
  • Hot flashes or hot flushes range from a passing feeling of warmth in the face and upper body to extreme sweating and visible redness of the skin, followed by chills
  • Heart palpitations and feelings of suffocation can also occur
  • As estrogen levels decline, the vaginal walls become less elastic and thinner, vaginal secretions are reduced and are less acidic, increasing the chances for vaginal infections, and insufficient vaginal lubrication during sexual activity can make intercourse uncomfortable or painful
  • Some women report a decreased interest in sex and a decline in sexual activity with menopause that are not vaginal problems
  • Psychological symptoms may include depression, mood swings, weepiness, and other emotional flare-ups, as well as memory lapses
  • Excess alcohol, caffeine, or sugar may stress the adrenal glands and decrease the amount of adrenal androgens available for conversion to estrogen, thereby lowering estrogen and making menopausal symptoms worse
  • Smoking decreases estrogen production by the ovaries, leading to earlier menopause and osteoporosis
• Osteoporosis


  A medical condition in which the bones become brittle and fragile from loss of tissues, typically as a result of hormonal changes, or deficiency of calcium or vitamin D
• Adjustment to mental changes in middle age


  • Middle-age adult thinking differs significantly from that of adolescents and young adults
  • Adults are typically more focused in specific directions, having gained insight and understanding from the life events that adolescence and young adults have not yet experienced
  • No longer viewing the world from an absolute and fixed perspective, middle adults have learned how to make compromises, question the establishment, and work through disputes
  • Younger people, on the other hand, may still look for definitive answers
  • Many middle-age adults have attained Piaget's stage of formal operations, which is characterized by the ability to think abstractly, reason logically, and solve theoretical problems
  • Many of the situations facing adults today require something more than formal operations
  • Middle adults may develop and employ post-formal thinking, which is characterized by the objective use of practical common sense to deal with unclear problems
  • An example of post-formal thinking is the middle adult who knows from experience how to maneuver through rules and regulations and play the system at the office
  • Another example is the middle adult who accepts the reality of contradictions in his or her religion, as opposed to the adolescent who expects a concrete truth in an infallible set of religious doctrines and rules
  • Post-formal thinking begins late in adolescence and culminates in the practical wisdom so often associated with older adulthood
• Formal operational thinking


  Teens use their considerable reasoning abilities to solve problems, but they are very likely to generate a single solution as opposed to multiple solutions. Disagreement with their solution is usually interpreted by teens to mean that the rot solution is somehow incorrect. Formal-operational thinking is absolute, and involves making decisions based on personal experience and logic
• Post-formal thinking


  More complex, and involves making decisions based on situational constraints and circumstances and integrating emotion with logic to form context dependent principles
• Formal operational thinking overemphasizes the power of pure logic in problem solving, underemphasizes the pragmatic quality of real life cognitive activity and cannot sever cognitive form affective, social, and pragmatic ties, and is only suited for the problems that call for scientific thinking and logical mathematical analyses
• Piaget assumed the goal of mature adult to think like a scientist, which does not apply to real-life social or interpersonal problems