Composing a Further Life

of
ego integrity
versus
despair
, yet ordinarily we regard despair as the opposite of hope, the strength developed in infancy. Erikson refers to the virtue of old age as
wisdom
, yet at a certain point wisdom may become synonymous with trust, which arises in childhood, or even humility, by which a lifetime of learning tells us how little we know. He turns to Webster’s to point out the complementarity in these terms; trust is defined as “the assured reliance on another’s integrity.” We can go trustful into that good night.
    Whether we call them strengths or virtues, each in its turn is needed in meeting the ongoing demands of development and engaging with others, and each in its turn becomes an essential component at the next stage. All become a part of who we are as adults and how we respond to the transitions of aging. In our day, however, extended life expectancy and health often offer the opportunity to make new choices in exploring and developing ways of being in later life that were not possible earlier on. We now have a second era of adulthood, Adulthood II, after children have matured and careers leveled out. During Adulthood II, before the decline of health and mobility in old age, the crises associated with all three stages after puberty recur: the crisis of identity, the crisis of intimacy, and the crisis of generativity.
    Generativity is the central challenge of adulthood, referring directly to reproduction and child care but also to the full range of contributions an individual makes to the community by work and creativity, to the need to nurture what we plant and what we initiate, and to continue caring for what is passed on to us, yet generativity builds on identity and intimacy. As a society, we often identify ourselves by our careers and jobs, and many people, men especially, fall apart when there is no longer an office to go to and a paycheck to bring home. Others, retiring from a career that has defined them, make choices that involve embracing a new identity, searching for ways to remain
somebody
, resisting being reclassified as nobody.

    FIGURE 2
An outline of the life stages, showing the relationship between the eight Eriksonian stages and the modifications suggested in this volume, which are in boldface. Note that Erikson’s numbering has been preserved, so the inserted stage, Adulthood II, is indicated with an asterisk instead of a number
.

    Here are some of the ways in which Adulthood II replicates earlier stages in relation to identity. The physiological changes of adolescence that seem to trigger an intensified search for a sense of identity are mirrored by the physiological changes of aging. It was confusing in adolescence to be flooded with hormones, and it is confusing again as they dwindle; confusing in adolescence to discover zits on one’s face and confusing again to deal with wrinkles; confusing to become an object of sexual desire and confusing again to be invisible. Physiological changes are accompanied by social changes as one suddenly encounters a new set of attitudes and expectations and must grow into new roles. There was a time when our parents said to us, “Act your age.” Now, shockingly, our children may begin to say it. There was a time when I found it uncomfortable to be endlessly described as “the daughter of Margaret Mead,” but now, with a daughter who is an actor and has adopted a stage name, I enjoy being “the mother of Sevanne Martin.”
    In Adulthood II, the new crisis of identity may be simultaneous with a new crisis of intimacy, as adult children move away and couples who have spent a long period as parents find themselves alone together and must adjust to each other’s changes and changing roles. To lose the other is devastating, but much of what brought them together has changed, and something new needs to be built.
    Given all of this, it is not surprising that there has been a great increase in late-life divorces by couples who would in the past have said, It’s too late for me to imagine something new. At the same time, my husband and I seem surrounded by marriages. Not the marriages of our daughter’s friends or the children of our contemporaries—those peaked out several years ago, although there are more to come, most of them after two or three years of living together. No, the marriages we are seeing today are marriages of people in their sixties and seventies, often after decades with the same partner but often, too, with someone