A Decade of Reminders: Changing Age Consciousness Between Fifty and Sixty Years Old

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Abstract
Documented are the commonalities of aging consciousness among a group of 72 professional men and women between 50 and 60 years old. The frequency and intensity of aging messages increases in the fifties, fostering a quickened sense of aging during this decade. Discussed are four general categories of age reminders characteristic of the fifties: body, generational, contextual, and mortality reminders. The findings reflect a contrast to uniform, invariant, and universal stages to adult life. Rather, the contextual events giving rise to distinctive aging consciousnesses are correlated with age, but not determined by age.