In the beginning of our lives everything is easy. Our parents, teachers, and other authority figures help us out a lot. This period ends around the time that one enters college and starts to learn how to do things on his or her own. Once they find themselves they usually settle down, get married, and find a steady job that they continue on with for the majority of their life. This stage is usually reached between the years of 40-60. Once people are in this stage of life, called mid-life, they realize that their life has become very routine. At this point one usually begins to wonder if there is more to life then what they can see. They begin to ask questions and with these questions they question themselves and all the choices they’ve made
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There are four psychologists, Erikson, Levinson, Vaillant, and Peck who looked into this period of age. While some of them made the same points in regards to the age period of 40-60, they had some very different theories and views. In order to further investigate on this topic of middle-aged adults I chose to interview my aunts, Carrie and Kelly. For this interview I asked them a variety of questions in the psychologists perspective in order to determine where they stood on the scale of mid-life in relation to the psychologists.
Erikson viewed middle adulthood as ages 40-50. His views on middle adulthood can be seen in his seventh developmental stage where he talks about generativity versus stagnation in relation to this age period. Generativity Erikson says is, “primarily a concern for helping the younger …show more content…
He actually had a book called; “The Seasons of a Man’s Life” where he interviewed 40 middle-aged men of all different statures. In this book he covers the changes that occur socially and physically with men from the ages of 17-65. The part where he talks about middle age in his book he states that men have to come to grips with four different categories that have been of conflict since a young age. The categories are the following, “being young versus being old”, “being destructive versus being constructive”, “being masculine versus being feminine”, and “being attached to others versus being separated from them” (Santrock, p. 487). He concluded that 80% of the men he had interviewed found this time in life to be hard and painful because they often questioned every detail about their life. For this part I asked my interviewees a couple questions to relate to the categories that Levinson had. The first question I asked was if you could describe your childhood I one word what would it be? Carrie answered, “fun” and Kelly answered, “crazy”. After hearing their responses I then asked them to describe their adulthood in one word. Carrie responded with “chaotic” and Kelly responded with “lonely”. I then proceeded to ask when they were younger did they think this is how they would feel as an adult? Carrie responded with, “yes, of course I knew it would be hectic because I wanted a family and with families comes
There are four psychologists, Erikson, Levinson, Vaillant, and Peck who looked into this period of age. While some of them made the same points in regards to the age period of 40-60, they had some very different theories and views. In order to further investigate on this topic of middle-aged adults I chose to interview my aunts, Carrie and Kelly. For this interview I asked them a variety of questions in the psychologists perspective in order to determine where they stood on the scale of mid-life in relation to the psychologists.
Erikson viewed middle adulthood as ages 40-50. His views on middle adulthood can be seen in his seventh developmental stage where he talks about generativity versus stagnation in relation to this age period. Generativity Erikson says is, “primarily a concern for helping the younger …show more content…
He actually had a book called; “The Seasons of a Man’s Life” where he interviewed 40 middle-aged men of all different statures. In this book he covers the changes that occur socially and physically with men from the ages of 17-65. The part where he talks about middle age in his book he states that men have to come to grips with four different categories that have been of conflict since a young age. The categories are the following, “being young versus being old”, “being destructive versus being constructive”, “being masculine versus being feminine”, and “being attached to others versus being separated from them” (Santrock, p. 487). He concluded that 80% of the men he had interviewed found this time in life to be hard and painful because they often questioned every detail about their life. For this part I asked my interviewees a couple questions to relate to the categories that Levinson had. The first question I asked was if you could describe your childhood I one word what would it be? Carrie answered, “fun” and Kelly answered, “crazy”. After hearing their responses I then asked them to describe their adulthood in one word. Carrie responded with “chaotic” and Kelly responded with “lonely”. I then proceeded to ask when they were younger did they think this is how they would feel as an adult? Carrie responded with, “yes, of course I knew it would be hectic because I wanted a family and with families comes