Finished At 40
Women's Development within the Patriarchy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12005657 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mary M Gergen (Penn State University, Delaware County Campus), Mary Gergen (0000-0001-7301-7741, Pennsylvania State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1990 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 471-493 |
| Publication date | 1990-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Psychology of Women Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0361-6843 • E-ISSN: 1471-6402 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1471-6402.1990.tb00225.x |
| OpenAlex | W2045775826 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 32 |
| References cited | 82 |
Psychological theories of women's lives in middle age and beyond are restricted, negative, and scarce. An overview of women's adult development in textbooks and the professional literature indicates that (a) the prevailing focus of concern is the woman as a biological creature, especially as a mother; (b) the proposed lifecycle trajectory is one in which the woman's life goes into decline after approximately age 40; and (c) little attention is paid to the particular character of women's life narratives. Such treatments of adult womanhood are advantageous to a patriarchal system of power. For future inquiry a social constructionist approach is proposed. Recommended are theories that: liberate interpretations of women from an exclusive focus on their reproductive roles; support methodologies along feminist valuational lines; give preference to relational networks over autonomous individualism; create new narrative life forms for women that are multiple and non-linear; and support a critical function both within psychology and in the society at large
Developmental psychology · Epistemology · Focus (optics · Individualism · Narrative · Patriarchy · Political science · Power (physics · Preference · Social constructionism · Social science · Sociology · Strict constructionism · Architecture, Design, and Social History · Coaching Methods and Impact · Education Methods and Practices · Gender Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology
Is There Adult Development Distinctive to Women?
Women Over 50
Retirement
Pioneers in Our Own Lives
“Renewed” “Older” Motherhood/Mothering
Looking Forward, Looking Back
Objectification Theory
Menopause Research and The Dominance of the Biomedical Model 1984-1994
Starting “Real” Life
Reconsidering Research On Divorce, Family Life Cycle, And The Meaning Of Family
In the Margins
Chapters of Our Lives
Rethinking the geography of ageing
Assisting Older Women in Combatting Ageist Stereotypes and Improving Attitudes Toward Aging
Framing Lives
Experiencing Flow
A Brief History of Feminist Psychology’s Contributions to Research
Turning points in the lives of midlife and older women
Turning points in the lives of midlife and older women
Worries and worriers in Thailand
A Voice of Their Own
Transitions in Midlife Women's Lives
Thirty nothing
Women Ages 30–60 and Their Crisis Events
Embodied Health and Constitutive Communication
Lesbian Friendships at Midlife
The dialectic of (menopause) zest
An even-handed debate? The sexed/gendered controversy over laterality genes in British psychology, 1970s–1990s
Motherhood as a Narrative of Moral Resistance
Social, psychological, and developmental factors in women's receptivity to cosmetic surgery
Midlife, adolescence, and parental employment in family systems
Women's Midlife Experience of their Changing Bodies
Subjectivity and method in psychology
Women as widows
The Prism of sex
Human inquiry
Social accountability and selfhood
Close to home
Sociobiology and behavior
The Man of Reason
The Reproduction of Mothering
Narrative and the Self as Relationship
Effects of Multiple Roles on Women's Health - Evidence from a National Longitudinal Study
The Effects of Day Care
The social construction of lesbianism
Masculinity and power
The woman in the body
The science question in feminism
The Woman That Never Evolved
Tropics of Discourse
Continuities and Discontinuities of Psychological Issues Into Adult Life
Timing of Psychosocial Changes in Women’s Lives
Interventions
Thinking Fragments
Contemporary Adulthood
Putting gender into context
Postmodern psychology
Gender and individualistic vs. collectivist bases for notions about the self
Infant day care and infant-care leaves
Issues to consider in conducting nonsexist psychological research
Infant day care and infant-care leaves
Working mothers and their families
The decentralization of identity
Employment and women's health
Women's changing work roles
Predicting infant outcome in families of employed and nonemployed mothers
Evaluating the Feminist Challenge to Research in Personality and Social Psychology
Personality Correlates of Age and Life Roles in Adult Women
A Search for Gender Differences on Fertility-Related Attitudes
Women in the Middle Years
From Freud to Feminist Personality Theory
Reflections on a Feminist Psychology of Women
Gender Roles and Women's Achievement-Related Decisions
Women's Self-Definition in Adulthood
Do Research Reports in Mainstream Feminist Psychology Journals Reflect Feminist Values
Beyond Nonsexist Research
New Voices, New Visions
Psychology Reconstructs The Female
Feminist Poststructuralism and Discourse Analysis
Feminist perspectives on empowering research methodologies
Biography and the search for women's subjectivity
Feminist Thought and the Structure of Knowledge
Changing the Subject
Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge
In a different voice
Feminism and psychoanalytic theory
Personality and patterns of adherence and nonadherence to the social clock
Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females
The meaning of difference
The social constructionist movement in modern psychology
The premenstrual syndrome
Unemployment, health and health services in German-speaking countries
Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference
Feminism and Deconstruction
A Feminist Politics of Non-Identity
Women and the Scientific Professions
The Experience and Meaning of Work in Women's Lives
Myths of Gender
Sociobiology
Primate Visions
Situated Knowledges
Unnatural Emotions
Interpreting Women's Lives
Oedipal Asymmetries and Heterosexual Knots
Social Criticism without Philosophy
The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology
Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory
| Unique citing works | 32 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 1994 - 2025 (32) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 32 |