Midlife myths and realities: women reflect on their experiences

This was one in a series of studies whose goal was creation of a rich, deep description of women's midlife psychological development. All studies in the series used qualitative approaches of unstructured focus groups followed by grounded-theory data analysis. The participants were a culturally and ethnically mixed group of 11 women between ages 40 and 60 who met in Manhattan and discussed their lives, feelings, behaviors, and perspectives during this important period. Data analysis led to a three-part developmental model describing women's midlife experiences. Data from this group of participants offered particularly rich descriptions of how they reacted to social stereotypes about midlife.