Prime Time

Part 1 Introduction. Part 2 Meanings and numbers: chronological definitions of middle age; demonization; homogenization; individualization; a working definition of middle age; the number of the middle aged. Part 3 Health: decline; adaptability and improvement; gender, age and health; class, age and health. Part 4 Work, wealth and consumption: employment, income and wealth; the economic life cycle; targeting the middle aged; women's double disadvantage; working-class retrenchment and middle-class anxiety. Part 5 Family relationships: adultery, separation and divorce; middle-age parents and teenage children; middle-age children and elderly parents; pleasures and possibilities; men and women, children and parents; working-class responsibilities and middle-class opportunities. Part 6 Attitudes: the search for security; censoriousness and conservatism; the generation gap; age and identity; gender and generation; class, caution and contradiction. Part 7 Conclusion. Appendix: the Wolverhampton Oral History Project.