Midlife and the life-course: The associated shifts in life perspective and societal obligations

Abstract

Generativity is a very essential and intuitive psycho-social construct intrinsically associated with the age span of middle adulthood. The construct deals with an enhanced personal concern to oblige and contribute constructively for societal welfare. Generativity is driven by a voluntary feeling of obligation to care for others. Positive and productive adult development effectively brings about a broadening and enlargement of the life perspective and philosophy and this in turn, leads to a gradual shift in the primary focus of attention which moves away from purely selfish motivations to concern and commitment for facilitating the benefit of the future generations.The concept of was first introduced in Erikson's (1950) psychosocial theory of development. He posited an eight stage life-span theory in which an individual's healthy development resulted from overcoming a series of psychosocial challenges (Erikson, 1950). According to Erikson, generativity is the concern to establish and guide the next generation. The crisis centering generativity versus stagnation gets manifested when an individual is moving through the middle years of his life, an unclearly defined period of the life-course but roughly occurring between the ages of 40 and 60 (Brim, Ryff & Kessler, 2004). Erikson maintained that, men and women are most likely to be concerned about the well-being and get involved in parenting and politics during the middle years of life and this concern would ultimately aim at creating a positive legacy that would outlive the self. During middle adulthood the primary developmental task is that of contributing to society and to help and establish the future generations through proper guidance. When an individual makes a contribution during this phase, by raising a family or working towards the betterment of the society, a sense of generativity happens to come about. The virtue of this period is care. However, if this urgent need to contribute to society in meaningful ways is not felt from within the self, the person might become totally self-absorbed and face a complete stagnation (Erikson, 1950). Erikson's conception of increased generativity during middle adulthood sounds plausible, but little empirical support exists for the concept (Ryff & Heincke, 1983; Vaillant & Milofsky,1980).Erikson's concept of generativity remained relatively unexplored empirically unless a new generation of scholars of adult development brought forth new interest to it (e.g. Browning, 1975; Kotre, 1984; McAdams 1985; Peterson & Stewart, 1990). In 1985, Dan P. McAdams led the most major resurgence of interest in the area of midlife generativity (Marks & Greenfield, 2009). He redefined the concept of generativity on the bases of seven interrelated psychosocial features; desire, demand, concern, belief, commitment, action and narration, all of which centre around the individual and societal goal of providing for the future generations. Generativity begins with firstly, agentic and communal desires that motivate a person to seek out opportunities for symbolic immortality (agency) and also for providing nurturance (communion). Secondly, age-graded cultural demands provide socially prescribed normative expectations concerning how people, should begin to take responsibility for the next generation as they move into and through middle adulthood. Thus, motivated by inner desire and cultural demand, adults develop a conscious concern about the next generation. They begin to expand the purview of their concern to encompass the well-being of others who will survive them. They become more interested in those institutional and cultural practices designed to promote positive functioning and social life into the future. They become more concerned with inteigenerational relations .they begin to feel that it is time to give something back to society to move from being the recipient to the agent of care and concern. This concern when supported by a belief in the species, may lead them to formulate plans and goals which constitute generative commitments. …