Article ID: CBB699307947

The Anti-Feminist Reconstruction of the Midlife Crisis: Popular Psychology, Journalism and Social Science in 1970s USA (2018)

unapi

Journalist Gail Sheehy's Passages (1976) was the first book to successfully promote ‘midlife crisis’ in the United States as a feminist idea, which described middle life as the point when men and women abandon traditional gender roles. Psychological experts responded with a male-centred definition of middle age, which banned women from reimagining their lives. Presented and received as more scientific, this became the dominant meaning of ‘midlife crisis’. This paper reverses histories of ‘popularisation’ by tracing how an idea moved from popular culture into academia. It examines the gender politics of scientific demarcation and shows that the midlife crisis has historical roots in debates about gender roles.

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Authors & Contributors
Rutherford, Alexandra
Sharman Levinson
Stéphanie Pache
O'Donnell, Kelly Suzanne
Nina Franke
Paul Williams
Concepts
Popular culture
Psychology
Feminism
Journalism
Social sciences
Gender
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century, early
19th century
18th century
Places
United States
Germany
Austria
Great Britain
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