New Passages: Pioneering Second Adulthood - Tapa blanda

Sheehy, internationally bestselling author of Passages and high priestess of life changes, takes us through the maze of troubles, advances and triumphs associated with the second half of our lives.

Millions of readers literally defined their lives through Gail Sheehy's landmark bestseller, 'Passages.' Now, twenty years later, Sheehy finds that a historic revolution has occurred in the adult life cycle.

The old demarcations and descriptions of adulthood, beginning at 21 and ending at 65, are hopelessly out of date. In 'New Passages', Gail Sheehy discovers and maps out a completely new frontier – a Second Adulthood in middle life.

People are taking longer to grow up and much longer to die – thereby shifting forward all the stages of adulthood by up to ten years.

· Young people are waiting until their 30s to marry and start families
· Men and women now in their 40s feel 5 to 10 years younger
· More and more women are having children in their 40s or over
· 50-year-old men are increasingly being forced into early retirement
· 50 is what 40 used to be
· 60 is what 50 used to be
· Healthy men and women who reach age 50 today can expect to see their 80th or 90th birthdays

'New Passages' is the first book to address the new dilemmas and demands each generation of today now faces.

Sheehy explores the radical changes for those now in the Tryout Twenties and Turbulent Thirties – whose adult world is one of job insecurity, changing roles, the demise of the welfare state, the rise of a digital revolution. She finds those now in the Flourishing Forties rejecting the whole notion of middle age.

'Stop and recalculate,' Sheehy writes. 'Imagine the day you turn 45 as the infancy of another life.' Instead of declining, men and women who embrace a Second Adulthood are progressing through entirely new passages into lives of deeper meaning, renewed playfulness and creativity – beyond both male and female menopause. She redefines these stages as the Flaming Fifties and Serene Sixties.

Sheehy vividly dramatizes these newly developing stages through hundreds of personal and group interviews, attitudinal surveys of professionals and working-class people, and fresh findings extracted from fifty years of US Census reports and specially commissioned British research.

As engrossing and informative as always, Gail Sheehy has applied her highly original insights to a revolutionary work which – like the original 'Passages' – will not only help us make sense of our own lives by understanding others, but will permanently alter the way we think about ourselves.

Gail Sheehy, the author of eleven books, is best known for her landmark work 'Passages' as well as the book that broke the silence about menopause, 'The Silent Passage'. She is also a political journalist and contributing editor to 'Vanity Fair'. The mother of two daughters, she divides her time between New York City and Berkeley, California, where she lives with her husband, publisher and editor, Clay Felker.