Week 11: Middle Adulthood, Economic Survival Considerations

Middle Adulthood
Your name
Your Institution of Affiliation
November 4, 2017
Question 1: What are some of the sources of tension between managing a career and other developmental tasks of middle adulthood? Brainstorm possible conflicts between management of career and nurturing an intimate relationship, parenting and caring for aging parents, and management of household. What factors determine how these potential conflicts are resolved? How are values, goals, and beliefs related to the resolution of these conflicts? How are basic economic and survival considerations related to the resolution of these conflicts? How does career advancement related to leadership?
On of the most common knowledge is that the period of middle adulthood is one the phases in life when people is at its peak of their physical and emotional stability CITATION Allnd \l 1033 (AllPsychologyCareers.com, n.d.). Generally, middle adulthood is considered as the phase in life between ages of 35 to 64, which is also characterized as the phase when people are supposedly married and established in their own chosen careers. However, while this phase is not as volatile as adolescence and early adulthood, middle adulthood could also pose some challenges for the individual since people in this age are usually those who have the most responsibilities when it comes to establishing their careers, providing for their families, as well as making sure that they’re doing the exact thing that they really want in life. In line with this, one of the most common misconceptions about middle adulthood is that this is a confusing stage in life because this is usually where individuals experience what is commonly known as “midlife crisis” CITATION Lac15 \l 1033 (Lachman, 2015). Midlife crisis is a phenomena where an individual experiences a great deal of stress and emotional burden, while thinking is his/her decisions in life, leading to where he/she is now is the right one that he should’ve taken in the first place. An example of this could be an established doctor contemplating whether he should have really taken med school as compared to taking a degree in fine arts, when he was younger. Nevertheless, studies in midlife crisis have shown that this phenomena does not even exist in the first place. As according to Lachman (2015), the concept of a midlife crisis is not real since studies done of the subject matter, proved that the phase of middle adulthood is also the phase where emotional stability is much higher as compared to the other phases in life. He also added that the main reason as to why some people experiences this is not because of their age and corresponding cognitive processes that goes with it, but because of their own specific personality traits that causes them to cope with stress inefficiently.
In their article Luong, Charles, and Fingerman (2011), also added to the idea that the phase of middle adulthood is characterized with better emotional stability as they discussed how individuals at this age manage their social relationships. According to them, social relationships and experience increases as an individual ages. As for middle adults, they are able to do this by “engaging in strategies that optimize positive social experiences and minimize negative ones by avoiding conflicts” and as “social partners often reciprocate by treating older adults more positively and with greater forgiveness than they do younger adults”. However, this does not mean that individuals in this stage does not experience any anxiety and stress in balancing their careers as well as their interpersonal relationships with other people. Perhaps in this phase one of the greatest factors that could affect an individuals relationship with others is the amount of reponsibility that they have, which could then take an great toll on their emotional, physical, and even their cognitive self. Specifically speaking, this responsibility which is tied to one social class or Socio economic status. According to Conger, Conger, and Martin (2010), SES is one of the factors that could affect a person’s “satisfaction and stability in romantic unions, the quality of parent-child relationships, and a range of developmental outcomes for adults and children”. The main reason for this is that, as individuals enter this phase, responsibilites – such as taking care of their aging parents and their immediate families, maintaining a healthy relationship with their husband/spouse, and constantly advancing their careers, among others – could take a great deal of their enegies which could then make them prioritize certain aspects of their lives over the others. As according to AllPsychologyCareers.com (n.d.), “Career pressures combined with other changes taking place in their lives requires the ability to adequately juggle personal and professional responsibilities”.
Now that it’s been established that the increase in one’s job responsibilities during middle adulthood could affect his/her emotional, cognitive, physical, and social traits, this elicits the question, what factors could affect the resolution of such conflicts. In the study done by (Luong, Charles, and Fingerman (2011), what they found ...