stantly renegotiated as new problems and opportunities emerge—the
birth of a child, a career for the wife, an older parent moving in? Is itpossible that there are regular developmental changes that characterizerelationships, even if there are no developmental changes in individuals’traits? Do wives take over the decision-making roles in the family aftermiddle age even though they do not otherwise become more assertiveor masculine?
One set of relationships does show change closely related to age. As
we age, we become independent of our parents and our children be -
come independent of us. Interview studies seem unanimously to sug -
gest that the intrapsychic rate of change by no means keeps pace with
the behavioral. Years after moving away from home and taking financialresponsibility for themselves, adults sometimes seem curiously tied tothe approval and opinions of their parents. Some writers argue that it isonly the shock of a parent’s death or chronic disability that convincesmiddle-aged men or women that they are really as big and strong astheir parents once were. The struggles of the adolescent to break awayfrom parental domination sometimes result in periods of many years inwhich there seems to be no feeling at all left for parents. Levinson’s in-terviews suggest that at middle age the feelings, positive and negative,may reawaken and lead to a new , perhaps more mature relationship. Isthere a developmental progression from individuation in which youngadults emphasize their separateness from their parents, through a pe-riod of increasingly better perspective on the parents as individuals, tofull peer-like mutuality between adult children and their parents?
It is of some interest to note that studies of the external trappings
of family life show great continuity between generations (Troll, Miller,& Atchley , 1979). The majority of adult children see their parents atleast once a week, and considerable mutual support is offered in theform of money , favors, and so on. These family ties generally continueuntil death; the notion that their children abandon most old people islargely myth.
The Self-Concept
The Self-Concept is technically a part of Characteristic Adaptations, butit is a special part through which we understand ourselves. Our view ofour own traits is a part of our self-concept, and, to the extent that traitsare stable, so is the Self-Concept (Mortimer et al., 1981). But roles and214 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD