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Midlife transition

Young adulthood then draws to its close with 'the Midlife Transition, from roughly age 40 to 45' —producing 'a brand-new passage in the forties, when First Adulthood ends and Second Adulthood begins.' In the midlife transition, early adulthood often ends, and individuals make changes in their lives, such as in their career. The end of early adulthood can be defined as when a person stops seeking adult status or wanting to feel like an adult. When people reach the midlife transition, they shift from talking about how old they are to bolster their reputation and emphasize how young they are. In the midlife transition, individuals focus more on the present than the future and the past. In this transitional period from early adulthood to middle adulthood, changes individuals make tend to focus less on the self and more on relationships. In addition, individuals experience physical changes (outside of the changes that occur to the individual's character), and this may necessitate changes to their perceived body image.

Levinson thought midlife to be a time of development of crisis. However, research today in the United States shows that individuals do not experience a midlife crisis. Instead, individuals report midlife to be a freeing and satisfying period of life. In the midlife transition, the issue is not whether the individual has achieved or failed in accomplishing the goals they formed in the previous era. Rather the issue at hand is what the individual should be doing with the experience of disparity between their goals and outcomes.