1. Adulthood’s Ages and Stages

2. Objective 11-5: Explain why the path of adult development need not be tightly linked to one’s chronological age

3. Midlife Transition: a crisis or time of great struggle, regret, or of feeling struck down by life.
Popular image: 40-yr. old man who forsakes his family for a younger girlfriend and sports car
Unhappiness, job dissatisfaction, marital dissatisfaction, divorce, anxiety, and suicide do not surge during early forties
Social Clock: the cultural prescription of the “right time” to leave home, get a job, get married, have children, and retire that varies from culture to culture and era to era.
Rigid structure of women in western society has loosened.

4. People feel freer about being out of sync with their social clocks
Life events mark transitions to new life stages, and occur at unpredictable ages.
Marriage
Parenthood
Vocational Changes
Divorce
Nest Emptying
Relocation
Retirement
People feel freer about being out of sync with their social clocks
Repeated exposure to someone after childhood may lead to a bond (infatuation) with any available person who:
Has a roughly similar background
Similar level of attractiveness
Reciprocates your affections