ABSTRACT

This chapter begins with a brief summary of the extant research findings about men, women, and marriage in middle age. In terms of family development, middle age is usually considered as synonymous with the "empty-nest period," or the time between when children leave home and the husband retires. Work development relates to life-cycle stage in terms of economic attainment as well as occupational achievement. For families in which the principal wage earner is middle-aged and is not a high-level professional, middle age is likely to be a time at which standard of living falls unless an additional worker enters the labor force. Middle-aged rural women have been married longer, have more children, and are less likely to be in the labor force than their urban counterparts. To be middle-aged in rural America today is not the same as it was in 1960, nor the same as it will be in 2000.