Those select few who did make it to the 80’s and beyond were likely quite frail given the lack of treatments for chronic illness or disability. Perhaps this 100 year depiction of the life course, with age 50 at the peak and images of decline and frailty beyond then, was tied to the fact that those who lived through childhood and childbirth were hearty and some of them did live to 60 or 70. The midlife peak seems especially remarkable given that the average life span during those periods was less than 50. These art works illustrated the life course from birth to death or cradle to grave, with each decade from 10 through 100 represented. The exalted placement of the middle of life (with the peak typically labeled as age 50), first seen in the late 16 th century European paintings, continued through the 17 th and 18 th centuries ( Cole, 1992). However, in the 16 th century, artists regularly depicted the life course as a series of steps ascending and then descending, with an apex in the middle ( Cole, 1992). Artistic conceptions of the life course from the 13 th, 14 th, and 15 th centuries do not give special status to the middle years, as they typically portray a circular representation of the cycle of life, or in some cases a linear, or even seemingly haphazard placement of individuals representing different ages. Yet, images of middle age can be found as early as the 16 th century in artistic representations of the life cycle. According to Patricia Cohen (2012) midlife is a relatively new construction, invented about 150 years ago. The dictionary describes it as the period between youth and old age, a vague, undifferentiated status. Middle age is neither clearly defined nor well understood.
We present middle age as a pivotal period in the life course in terms of (a) balancing growth and decline, (b) linking earlier and later periods of life, and (c) bridging younger and older generations.
We highlight the role of protective factors and multisystem resilience in the middle years. With research examples from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) national longitudinal study ( Brim, Ryff, & Kessler, 2004), we provide evidence for multidirectionality, variability, and plasticity in the nature and direction of change in physical health, cognitive functioning, and well-being. Trajectories of change during adulthood are considered with an eye towards characterizing midlife relative to other age periods. The goal of this paper is to elucidate the middle years within the context of the life course from a developmental perspective. With over 85 million people in the middle decades holding key roles in the family, the workplace and the community, there is widespread interest in learning more about this period in the life course. Scholars of the life course have devoted more attention to the earlier and later periods of life than to the middle years ( Lachman, 2004).
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