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The Social Construction of the Midlife Crisis: A Case Study in the Temporalities of Identity
Author(s) -
Kearl Michael C.,
Hoag Lisbeth J.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
sociological inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.446
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1475-682X
pISSN - 0038-0245
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-682x.1984.tb00061.x
Subject(s) - temporalities , sociology , reductionism , sociocultural evolution , reification (marxism) , phenomenon , epistemology , social constructionism , period (music) , identity (music) , personality , subject (documents) , social science , social psychology , psychology , anthropology , aesthetics , philosophy , politics , library science , political science , computer science , law
This paper examines the emergence, reification, and dissemination of the “midlife crisis” from a sociology of knowledge perspective. Two decades of articles on the subject from both professional and mass media sources (n = 233) are content analyzed. Upon elaborating the various biological, psychological, and social psychological theories of this biographical phenomenon, we address such questions as how different disciplines portray the event, what patterns of interdisciplinary citations there are, and how these professional depictions lead into the mass media. The results suggest longitudinal declines in the frequency of reductionist explanations from the biological and psychiatric paradigms and increasing attention given to the interplay between social dynamics and personality structures. From this, a new sociocultural theory is posited, one portraying this subjective experience deriving not simply from age, but from external social temporalities. Specifically, we consider the particular cohort that most midlife research is based upon as well as the particular historical period when it reached middle age.