ABSTRACT
The questions of language acquisition in childhood can be extended to cultural competence throughout the course of life. One of the instrumental uses of folklife is to adapt to physical as well as social changes as people age. Play and fantasy are often presumed to be restricted to childhood, but they are also important at other times in life, especially in response to transitions such as adolescence, early adulthood, midlife, and retirement. They may take a variety of socially prescribed behaviors, reflecting adjustment needs. A “developmental” psychology of folklife, in examining the processes of adaptation, makes a problem of aging and its various cultural settings (such as race, ethnicity, class, region, gender), by seeking psychological explanations for the way traditions are strategically enacted to “be reborn,” “act like a kid,” “be an adult,” or “prepare for death.” The modern American tradition of the midlife crisis, for example, often attributed to men’s perceptions that they are “over-the-hill,” is ritualized with surprise parties and joke gifts referring to ritual death. Although it is not physically a moment of deterioration, a folklife has emerged about a culturally constructed stage of life with the purpose of demarcating psychological passage for the man, particularly at a time when he feels a lack of personal fulfillment and social support. Although there is no single school or theory of psychology that fully explains the motivations behind such traditional behavior, the various approaches share attention to folklife as vital evidence of what makes humans tick.
