The Decades of a Woman's Life

Transcribed from a video interview with Louise Moreau, Registered Clinical Counsellor

Hi, I'm Louise Moreau. I'm a Registered Clinical counsellor living in North Vancouver, BC. I've been in private practice for five years now, at The Woman's Place Counselling Service, providing counselling primarily to women and families.

The study of human development is largely a new phenomena started in the early sixties. In the first half of the century, the focus was on children, mainly on the first few years of their lives.

Developmental stages are often studied within the context of the nature vs nurture debate. By that we mean, is behaviour influenced by internal forces or more by external or social and environmental forces?

What's clear, but often ignored, is that there is a need to examine the biological, psychological and social realities of women's lives when studying stages.

We later learned to recognize that both forces are equally important. Eric Erickson's work, in the early sixties, Eight Stages of Life is seen as the first major attempt and first major contribution in outlining adult stages of development.

Many areas have been criticized in Erickson's work in relationship to women. It is seen as being too biased to be really valid for women today. Erickson gives his perspective from a male view point of healthy adult development and his work is biased due to the historical and social era in which it was developed. It doesn't fit well for men, or women, of the nineties. He believed, for example, that monogamous marriages, heterosexual relationships and nuclear families were necessary for healthy development. Today we know that there are many different possibilities and that the nuclear family may produce social isolation and emotional oppression for women and children.

No theory can be independent from the time in which it is developed or free from the personal and professional bias of its creator. Since then, some attempts have been made to incorporate women's perspectives using developmental theories taken from male models -- or to make them gender neutral. Both have met with limited success.

We are still struggling to develop women's models based on women-oriented psychology. Any theory, to be useful and valid, must incorporate the social, political and economical realities of women's lives and the stories must be told by the women themselves.

Selecting this link will download a brief (3198 K) .mov file (movie) of Lou summarizing the stages of life.

Select the dancer icon of the specific decade of life that interests you.

 Birth to Age Ten (Childhood)

 Ages Ten to Twenty(Adolescence)

 Ages Twenty to Forty (Young Adulthood)

 Ages Forty to Sixty (Middle Adulthood)

 Ages Sixty to Seventy (Later Adulthood)

Birth to Age Ten

Its difficult to use this period as a marker since there is so much growth and change. Usually this period is divided into 4-5 stages: infancy, early childhood (toddler and preschooler), middle childhood and late childhood.

To give a brief overview, the child first moves from extreme dependency to learning to care for self, to communicating with others. During school years children are exposed to the larger world and its culture as well as the study of history and art. They now begin to confront contemporary social problems. Besides school, a major influence in a child's life, aiding in the socialization process, is exposure to television and other media. The emergence of specific sex role behaviours begins at this time and there is the beginning of social bonding with others (parents, friends, teachers) and the beginning of self concept (how they view themselves) from the perspective of the child.

Age Ten to Twenty (Adolescence)

The major developmental task at this stage is to render the child productive for the adult world. The major developmental task, according to Erickson, is to achieve self identity. During this period adolescents go through long periods of uncertainty and testing out of different roles in the development of identity. Since we live in an achievement-oriented society, the emphasis is on being best and mastering physical and psychological skills. Since boys receive more support for achievement than girls do, it is easier then for them to be self directed rather than to take direction from others. The result is that self esteem starts to decline for girls. They are far more concerned with what others think of them than their male contemporaries.

Age Twenty to Forty (Young Adulthood)

Review Women's Responses for this Stage.

These two decades are banded together, as it is difficult to separate their developmental tasks.

A researcher by the name of White, in 1995, talked about this period as being one of stabilizing identity. Men and women are beginning to establish a personal set of values. There is a difference in how successfully this is done between women and men. Women generally have a more difficult time in that there is more pressure to conform to culturally defined roles and values. There is also an extension of self to community and concern for others at this time. In this extension, we see the difference between men and women. Women extend self to community in terms of service to others while men do so in terms of leading others.

Looking at Erickson's developmental tasks, intimacy vs isolation, this time period is supposed to focus on developing connectedness within the nuclear family groups and with others in the work place and the community. Erickson has been criticized for emphasizing too much conformity and acceptance at this stage of life. He doesn't encourage the challenging of the status quo, not even when it needs challenging.

Age Forty to Sixty (Mid Life)

Haveckhurst, another researcher, has listed several developmental tasks at this stage of life: (1) achievement of civic and social responsibility (2) establishment and maintenance of a standard of living (3) assisting teenagers in becoming adults (4) adjusting to the physical changes taking place (5) adjusting to spouse as a person (6) adjusting to aging parents and (7) development of appropriate leisure time activities.

Again, we can see the male bias, as well as a heterosexual bias and a socioeconomic bias, in what Haveckhurst describes as important developmental tasks.

From personal experience and from working with clients, it is a time for reviewing life. It's a time for women to say "where have I been and where am I going?" It's also a time for them to define their own set of values to live by. Changes are often now self directed rather than other directed.

This stage has received a lot of attention in recent years with our increasing aging population. It's viewed as a time of life for adjusting to age related physical changes. Erickson says that the task is that of achieving integrity vs despair. By integrity, he means having a sense of acceptance of one's life as being meaningful and significant.

Sex role distinctions are leveled at this stage, producing more egalitarian relationships. Men and women both report having more meaningful relationships at this time of life.

Our social structure offers few options for women at this stage, particularly for widows and other single women who make up the bulk of this age group. Women often find themselves living with either an active self-initiated lifestyle or they can become socially isolated. This is often because of economic factors or health related problems. These are the major determinants in deciding whether this is a time of satisfaction or one of loss and despair.

Another task is learning to accept the use of leisure as a valuable and significant pastime. It can be difficult for both men and women who have a strong work ethic and believe that work is central for a healthy mature adult.