Emotionally, the middle-aged brain is calmer, less neurotic, more capable of managing emotions, and better able to negotiate social situations (Phillips, 2011). Older adults tend to focus more on positive information and less on negative information than do younger adults.
It turns out that across adulthood, negative emotions (like anger) wane, and positive emotions (like contentment) become more prominent. In very late life (in the eighties and beyond), this pattern reverses slightly, but never to the same low levels observed in younger adulthood (in the twenties and thirties).
Generativity vs. Stagnation (Care)—When people reach their 40s, they enter the time known as middle adulthood, which extends to the mid-60s. The social task of middle adulthood is generativity vs. stagnation the fundamental conflict of adulthood.
Middle adulthood, or middle age, is the time of life between ages 40 and 65. During this time, people experience many physical changes that signal that the person is aging, including gray hair and hair loss, wrinkles and age spots, vision and hearing loss, and weight gain, commonly called the middle age spread.
The adult brain seems to be capable of rewiring itself well into middle age, incorporating decades of experiences and behaviors. Research suggests, for example, the middle-aged mind is calmer, less neurotic and better able to sort through social situations. Some middle-agers even have improved cognitive abilities.
The emotional presence during middle adulthood takes on a prominent and important role in life. Relationships become deeper and more meaningful with a focus on time that is spent with those closest to them or with new family that is entering their lives through the younger generation.
Midlife is a period of transition in which one holds earlier images of the self while forming new ideas about the self of the future. A greater awareness of aging accompanies feelings of youth, and harm that may have been done previously in relationships haunts new dreams of contributing to the well-being of others.
Developmental Tasks of Middle Adulthood
These include: Launching children into their own lives. Adjusting to home-life without children (often referred to as the empty nest). Dealing with adult children who return to live at home (known as boomerang children in the United States).
Throughout adulthood, our bodies continue to change, and we continue to learn and grow through experiences. Early adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood are the three main stages of physical, emotional, and psychological development.
Many middle adolescents have more arguments with their parents as they struggle for more independence. They may spend less time with family and more time with friends. They are very concerned about their appearance, and peer pressure may peak at this age.
With increasing age, children confront the challenges of bullying, peer victimization, and managing conformity pressures.
Social changes and emotional changes show that your child is forming an independent identity and learning to be an adult. People spend their childhood learning to be like their parents, and their adolescence learning who they are and how they are different from their parents.
Midlife is viewed as a time of increased stability especially if compared with early adulthood or adolescence. A person's tendency toward extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness, the Big Five personality traits, is more consistent (McCrae & Costa, 2003).
A midlife crisis is a shift in identity that sometimes affects middle-aged adults between the ages of 40 and 60. 1 At this halfway point in life, people tend to reevaluate their lives and confront their own mortality. For some, this becomes a significant issue that affects their relationships and careers.
Relationships typically become more traditional and there are more financial hardships and stress in living. Children bring new expectations to the marital relationship. Two people who are comfortable with their roles as partners may find the added parental duties and expectations more challenging to meet.
Erikson stated that the primary psychosocial task of middle adult‐ hood—ages 45 to 65—is to develop generativity, or the desire to expand one's influence and commitment to family, society, and future generations. In other words, the middle adult is concerned with forming and guiding the next generation.
In early adulthood, an individual is concerned with developing the ability to share intimacy, seeking to form relationships and find intimate love. Long‐term relationships are formed, and often marriage and children result.
Midlife is a time when people reassess their life, come to terms with their limitations, and confront regrets about the past. Someone who is middle-aged may have to deal with illness, financial issues, career shifts, marital problems, divorce, death, and the early stages of mental or physical decline.
In late adulthood, it is common for certain social needs to increase, with greater practical support required to manage the demands of everyday life due to decreased physical and cognitive capacity, and greater emotional support required to cope with bereavement (Lee et al., 2020).
Adults can continue to improve their language, memory and reasoning skills. According to Kohlberg, middle age adults are in the final stage of moral development called postconventional morality. Middle-aged adults become more interested in establishing and living by their personal values.
Emotional Experience at Older Age
As a group, older adults consistently report feeling more positive (happy, content, accomplished) and/or less negative (sad, angry, anxious) in their everyday lives compared with younger adults.