You Are Not Who You Were, Only Older

Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood
by Suzanne Levine

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The most important discovery I've made about Second Adulthood is that a woman entering this new stage is not the same one who set up her first adulthood life. We are approaching the next frontier as women with new ideas and responses, whose priorities are changing. That's why answering the question what's next? is not as easy as it may appear. For example, despite all I had riding on that wilderness challenge, outdoor life is off my agenda. The tomboy trip has become irrelevant, as have many of the other long-standing items on my to-do (in life) list. It would be easy if what Gail Sheehy first identified (in New Passages) as Second Adulthood were really about the opportunity to do "everything you always wanted to do." But like me, many women find themselves staring blankly at their life lists and wondering why they are not enthusiastic about fulfilling those long-standing dreams. The truth is we have outgrown them. They are dreams of a past adulthood. "Everything you always wanted to do" has little bearing on what you are going to do next. Because you are simply not that you anymore. You are simply not who you once were, only older.

This can be terribly confusing. Allison, who considers herself a clear-thinking woman, found herself awash in mixed signals. After only a year at a job that should have felt like the crowning achievement of her career, she couldn't believe she was thinking about, of all things, retiring. Where had all her ambition gone? Why was she not able, as she put it, "to enjoy success"? Why did she suddenly want to be home for the high school years of her youngest child, when she had always maintained that the stimulation of work she loved made her a better mother? She felt she was losing her convictions as well as her drive. "I just want to stay home and paint and take courses," she said flatly, as if talking about someone she barely knew.

Other women described their own experiences of getting off track with equal bewilderment. Some could not explain new tastes in foods - or new sexual interests. Others found themselves "behaving badly" but not inclined to apologize. Several described behavior that ultimately opened up new prospects, but looked and felt inexplicable or flaky at the time. Sylvia, for example, comfortable in a midlevel executive job, was in the midst of sending out an e-mail to her friends and colleagues about an opening at the top of another organization when instead of pushing send, she picked up the phone and proposed herself (and got the job). And Sara, who fought like crazy during her divorce proceedings to keep her rambling apartment with the dark velvet furniture and towering bookshelves she loved, but the next thing she knew, she was longing for sunshine and cozy spaces. She now lives in a small suburban high-rise where she can grow geraniums in every window. Patricia, a nonpracticing Jew all her life, felt an inexplicable longing for "more mystery" in her religious life and, after much soul-searching and study, ultimately converted to Catholicism. Madeline retired in order to escape the city and spend more time making her garden grow, yet found herself drawn toward a different kind of gardening. She now teaches English as a Second Language in an inner city homeless shelter.

As the journey goes forward, this unfamiliar persona, this mischievous Tinkerbell at our ear, matures into the voice we count on most. It gets stronger, more authoritative, more philosophical, more courageous. "Old women are different from everyone else," wrote novelist Ursula LeGuin. "They tell the truth."

You Are Not Who You Were. Literally.

The reconstructed you is not a figment of your imagination. The dynamic that many women are reporting - new outlook, new confidence, new dreams - is supported by scientific research from many disciplines. What we are learning about our bodies tells us that nature has by no means abandoned us at this stage, and what is becoming understood about our style of behavior tells us we are not programmed to fade away. On the contrary, we might be as well or better suited to new challenges at this stage of life than before.

Some of the most spectacular news I will report comes from neurology labs where researchers are concluding that, contrary to conventional thinking, the aging brain is not just degenerating. In fact, it is generating in ways that are supportive of big achievements after midlife. Until very recently, it was thought that brain growth stops even before physical maturity and, in middle age, the brain begins a decline into a series of senior moments. While it is true that certain kinds of memory processes get rusty (I have a friend who claims that "these days, remembering a name is better than having an orgasm"), other capabilities begin gearing up at around age forty-five and continue for a decade or more. Specifically, in that part of the brain responsible for making judgments, finding new solutions to old problems, and managing emotions - not sweating the small stuff - there is a great leap forward.

I will also describe how medical science is only just beginning to address the ways that women's bodies get sick or stay well. Until now most of what we knew about heart attacks, for example, was based on the male model. It is now clear that heart attacks in women have been going undiagnosed because we present different symptoms. Our bodies age and adapt in ways we are just beginning to understand. Every day there is more to know about our physical ability to engage and manage the experiences of Second Adulthood.

Another research frontier particularly relevant to understanding the reinvention process of Second Adulthood is the relatively new academic discipline of gender studies. After thirty years of activism against stereotypical gender distinctions, the playing field has become level enough to begin looking at the real behavioral differences between men and women without imposing restrictions or value judgments on them. Sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, and feminists are exploring those traits, be they nurtured or natural, that take women and men down different roads to the same goal. A wide range of studies are analyzing the way men and women deal with moral questions, with power, and with the demands of daily life. Early analysis suggests that women's multifaceted thinking process and more improvisational approach to problem-solving are particularly suited to the challenges of Second Adulthood - not to mention the twenty-first-century world.

My current favorite example is how women and men deal with stress (that is, the modern-day form of danger once represented by a menacing jungle predator). We have always been taught that the human animal is equipped with a fight-or-flight response in which adrenaline mobilizes the body for enhanced speed to escape or enhanced strength to strike out. It turns out that those conclusions were drawn from studies done on men. According to University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) psychologist Shelley E. Taylor, it is now clear that "every man for himself" is primarily a male response; women exhibit what scientists have labeled tend-and-befriend behavior. Our impulse in times of danger is to join with others in our group to make peace, to reach out to friend and foe, to defuse the situation. The genesis of the inquiry into women's behavior came, appropriately, in a casual girl talk between Taylor and her colleague Dr. Laura Cousino Klein. "There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded," recalls Dr. Klein. "When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own." Their study is the result of their determination to find out why.

The notion that women seek safety in a social network is confirmed in animal studies. Another UCLA study found that while crowding made male rats more stressed, it calmed the females. An important source of this different behavior is the pituitary hormone oxytocin - best known for its role in labor before birth and lactation afterward - which has a calming effect and is produced in both men and women. The difference is that in men the effect of oxytocin - also known as the hormone of love or the cuddle chemical - is diminished by the release of testosterone, which promotes aggressive responses.

There is an interesting corollary to this discovery. Previous research shows that when adrenaline is rushing, as in the fight-or-flight response, cognitive functions are focused on the body's mobilization against danger. But those rational faculties are actually enhanced in a calmed-down state, which the tend-and-befriend mode is, and they can be called upon to think through a problem rather than attack or flee it.

These insights also offer a new perspective on women's friendships, which play an enhanced and crucial role in Second Adulthood. The network of friends we instinctively turn to is more than a support group; it is a significant survival technique. Not only because women are hard-wired to confront adversity better in groups, but because the combination of trust and respect we practice with each other is a model for the new intimacy that our changing circumstances call for in our other relationships.

The importance of this bond was confirmed by how often the women I have interviewed say that it was their friends that talked them through a crisis and, in general, kept them going. "I don't know what I would do without my friends" is a mantra we all chant. Few men have that kind of intimate support network; that may be one reason why they become less adventurous than women in Second Adulthood and why many seem to be going through a second childhood instead.

Women arrive at the frontier of this new stage with impressive credentials. Although we are flying under the radar, obscured by the wildly flawed expectation that we will become less and less who we were as we get older, we are poised to take off into the unknown. Futurist Ken Dychtwald, a consultant on what he calls the age wave, issued an early warning alert to a group of business executives about "the most amazing women our country has ever seen. They are living the most complex lives, managing households, managing jobs, dealing with in-laws....We haven't come close to understanding the complexity of the mind, heart, and soul of these women" who, he added, "are going to become the power group in our country!"

© 2005 Plume, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Suzanne Braun Levine is a writer, editor, and nationally recognized authority on women, media matters, and family issues. Editor of Ms. magazine from its founding in 1972 until 1989 and editor in chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, she is currently a contributing editor of More magazine . The author of a book about fatherhood and numerous articles and essays, she has also produced a Peabody Award-winning documentary about American women. She has appeared on Oprah and the Today show and has lectured widely.