Chapter 13Making It in Midlife: the Unique Challenges of Middle Adulthood

Chapter 13Making It in Midlife: The Unique Challenges of Middle Adulthood

Learning Objectives

Physical Changes and Health

· Explain the physical changes that cause wrinkles, gray hair, baldness, and middle-aged bulge.

· Describe the causes and possible prevention of osteoporosis and explain why it is more common in women than in men.

· Describe changes in the joints and problems such as osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.

· Describe the physical changes that occur in women during the climacteric.

· Explain how ethnicity and culture are related to menopause.

· Describe how reproductive technology has changed the age of childbearing.

· Describe the risks and benefits associated with hormone replacement therapy.

· Describe changes in men's fertility with age.

· Describe the changes that occur in men's sexual functioning with age.

· Describe how control over one's job is related to stress.

· Describe how reported stress differs by age and gender.

· Describe the stress and coping paradigm.

· Describe how stress is related to one's physical health.

· Define Type A and Type B behavior patterns and explain how both are related to cardiovascular disease.

· Describe how stress and psychological health are related.

· Describe the physiological effects of exercise.

· Describe changes across adulthood in the reasons why people exercise.

· Describe changes across adulthood in the reasons why people exercise.

Cognitive Development

· Define practical intelligence and explain how it differs from traditional measures of intelligence.

· Explain the difference between optimally exercised and unexercised abilities and describe the developmental course of both.

· Describe the applications of practical intelligence.

· Explain the differences between the mechanics and pragmatics of intelligence.

· Describe the differences in the thinking of experts and novices and describe the developmental course of expert performance.

· Define encapsulation and explain how it is related to the ability to explain how one arrives at a particular answer.

· Explain why lifelong learning is becoming the norm.

· Describe the 4 ways in which adult learners differ from younger learners.

Personality

· Describe Costa and McCrae's 5 dimensions of personality: neuroticism, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion.

· Describe the evidence that personality traits remain stable across adulthood.

· Describe the evidence for personality change during adulthood.

· Describe how priorities change over the course of one's lifetime.

· Explain generativity and stagnation and ethnic differences in generativity.

· Explain how changes in self-descriptions of gender-role are related to changes in behavior across adulthood.

· Define mid-life crisis and explain whether or not the mid-life crisis is universal.

Family Dynamics and Middle Age

· Describe the role of kinkeeper that many middle-aged mothers assume.

· Define what is meant by the sandwich generation.

· Describe how the relationship between parents and children changes as the children move from adolescence to young adulthood.

· Explain how most parents feel when they have an empty nest.

· Explain the reasons why adult children return home.

· Describe the gender difference in caring for aging parents.

· Define filial obligation.

· Describe the 2 factors that contribute to negative feelings about caring for one's aging parents.

· Explain some of the psychological costs of caregiving.

· Describe ethnic differences in adult caregivers’ stress.

· Explain how personal and social dimensions of grandparenting influence grandparenting.

· Describe the different meanings of grandparenthood.

· Describe ethnic differences in grandparenthood.

· Describe how the role of grandparent has changed in recent years.