Adulthood

To understand adaptation to aging, Laurie Russell Hatch (2000) proposes the adoption of a multilevel life course model organized around four interrelated levels of human experience: personal biographies, social location and membership in social groups, birth cohort, and social context. Personal biography or history encompasses our personal characteristics (i.e., cognitive abilities, personality, health), our patterns of coping and adaptation, and events of our lives.

Social location and membership in social groups recognizes the variability between individuals in human development, both within cultures and across cultures. For example, middle-aged adults from lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to have chronic health conditions. Social location and group membership recognizes the hierarchies of privileges (i.e., gender, social class, sexual orientation, ethnicity) that shape individuals' life experiences and determine the life chances available to them.

Birth cohort and social context analysis recognizes the impact of generational differences. As Matilda White Riley, Anne Foner, and John W. Riley, Jr. (1999) emphasize, changing societies change the life course of individuals, who then during their lives modify society. Cohort variances are particularly relevant to adult development. As Klaus Werner Schaie (2000, p. 262) notes, cohort variance in infancy and childhood studies may be only a "minor disturbance unlikely to overshadow or hide universal developmental laws." In contrast, Schaie stresses cohort variance has "a substantively meaningful role" in the study of adult development. Individual differences in adulthood, prior to old age, are largely modified by environmental context. Examples cited as major contexts that differ dramatically for successive generations include shifts in educational attainment, changes in diet and exercise, and advances in life expectancy.

Although social scientists increasingly emphasize the link between social history and context and adult development, few empirical studies have explored this connection. An exception is Lauren E. Duncan and Gail S. Agronick's (1995) study of the intersection of life stage with the experience of social events. Their research, using three agecohorts of college-educated women, revealed that social events (i.e., World War II, the Eisenhower and Kennedy presidencies, social protests, the women's movement) that coincided with early adulthood were more salient than events that occurred at other life stages.

Duncan and Agronick (1995) also examined more closely the impact of one specific social event, the women's movement. They were particularly interested in a comparative analysis of the effects of the women's movement on college-educated women who experienced this event in early and middle adulthood. Their findings not only underscored that the women's movement was more personally meaningful to women who experienced this event in early adulthood, but also revealed that women of both age cohorts who found the movement important were likely to have higher educational, career, and income attainment, and be more assertive and externally oriented at midlife. Studies, such as the one conducted by Duncan and Agronick (1995), underscore the importance of a multilevel approach to understanding adult development.