CHANGE IN WOMEN'S ROLES & WELL-BEING: AGE-COHORT EFFECTS

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This study will investigate social roles, personality, and well-being in a sample of socioeconomically and demographically representative women over the midlife years. The study capitalizes on prospectively gathered data on 800 women who were randomly selected at a mean age of 31 years when they had one or more children between one and 10 years old. The aims of the original study which they were sampled were limited to investigation of the problems and developmental course of their offspring; thus, the women were interviewed because they constituted the nurturing "environment" of their children. The initial 1975 interviews focused on family background, work and health status, offspring behavior, and parenting. In subsequent interviews, at mean ages 39, 42 and 48, the protocol was expanded to include women's personality characteristics, depression, life goals, and marital relationships. Previous funding has not been sought to investigate those data with a goal of understanding the development of the women. The goals of the proposed study are (1) to undertake a fifth wave of data collection to examine life roles engaged in women (mean age 57) and relationships with effective psychological functioning, depression, and overall life satisfaction, (2) to employ all five waves of data to examine reciprocal and interactive effects of personal characteristics and social roles and role transitions in predicting indicators of well-being across the midlife years, (3) to examine whether patterns differ across cohorts by comparing women born in the post World War II years (baby boomers) with those born before (pre-boomers), assessed at the same age, and (4) develop a data base for a life span model of the course of midlife in modern middle-aged women.