The Parental Experience in Midlife - John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Mental Health and Development 1996 (Hardback)

Most adults experience parenthood. The longest period of the parental experience - when children grow into adolescence and young adulthood and parents themselves are not yet elderly - the editors see as the least understood. In this volume, contributors from the fields of anthropology, demography, economics, psychology, social work, and sociology explore the years of midlife parenthood. The authors employ a varied array of theory and methods to address how the parental experience affects the health, well-being, and development of individuals. Collectively, they look at the time when parents watch offspring grow into adulthood and begin to establish adult-to-adult relationships with their children and examine the factors that influence the quality of the midlife parenting experience.