The Study of Women In Midlife GRACE K. BARUCH AND JEANNE BROOKS-GUNN To describe the middle years-that relatively long span when one is neither young nor old-as a neglected period may no longer be accurate, given current scientific and popular interest in adult development and aging. But midlife is still too often seen merely as a kind of staging area on the way to old age, when one gathers one's forces and tries to stock up on assets-health, money, relationships-that will be needed for the rigors of the last phase of life. The middle years have been characterized more as a transition period...