"If I had it to do over again...": midlife review, midcourse corrections, and women's well-being in midlife.

Regrets about early adult life choices, expressed in midlife, are examined as a source of motivation for life changes in later midlife in 2 samples of women. Replicated findings with longitudinal data indicate that regret motivates goal setting but is not associated with actually making desired life changes. In both samples, women who had regrets about early adult life choices but did not make relevant life changes were lower in later well-being than both women with regrets who did make such changes and women without regrets. Compared with women who transformed regrets into life changes, women who did not were lower in effective instrumentality and higher in rumination, though they did not appear to face more barriers to change. Analyses with longitudinal data indicated that both rumination and effective instrumentality mediated the relationship between regret and well-being for women who did not translate regret into life changes.

Predicting women's well-being in midlife: the importance of personality development and social role involvements.

Theories of adult development suggest that both personality and social roles are sources of adult well-being, but most research has examined only social roles. An integrated model was used, including personality, number of roles, and role quality, to predict well-being in 2 longitudinal studies of college-educated women. Results for both samples indicated that role quality and personality development were important components of the path to well-being, whereas number of roles, occupied was important mainly in early adulthood. Moreover, the results provided support for E. Erikson's (1968) notion of the importance of the sequencing of personality development for later well-being. Path analyses indicated that engagement in multiple roles during early adulthood facilitated the development of identity, which predicted generativity and role quality, which in turn predicted well-being.

Negotiating the middle years: ego-resiliency and successful midlife adjustment in women.

Midlife is a time of heightened reevaluation and reorientation during which individuals are faced with potentially stressful changes and turning points. Ego-resiliency (ER) is proposed to be a powerful personality resource that enables individuals to adaptively negotiate the challenges of this period. Through examination of data from 2 longitudinal samples of women (N = 208), Study 1 examined whether observer-based and self-reported ER assessed at the beginning of midlife (at age 43) can predict life adjustments of specific relevance to this period assessed in late middle age (ages 52 and 48). In Study 2 age 43 ER was used to predict directional changes in central life adjustments and feelings about life over this same period (between ages 43 and 52). Predictions across samples, across measures of ER, or both were confirmed by replicated findings.