Normative Age Perceptions of Major Life Phases

Abstract

Subjective perceptions age boundaries and age norms play an important role in shaping the calendar of people's lives, their demographic behavior and life strategies. The author of this article analyses age perceptions of three life stages — transition to adulthood, middle-age, and old age — in Russia. The analysis is based on the data of a national survey of general population RSS (Russian Social Survey) comparable to the European Social Survey (ESS), and on in-depth cognitive interviews with respondents from three generations of Russians. Age perceptions are characterized by median age of the transition to adulthood close to European average, relatively low median age for transition to middle-age and elder age, but also broad age normative intervals and relatively low consolidation of opinions. The similar opinion structure was found in most East European countries and in Germany.

In-depth interviews confirmed that the understanding and interpretation of the periods of adulthood, maturity and old age are quite similar in three generations of Russians and are close to theoretical ones. When defining the boundaries of life stages, the informants often use intervals rather than discrete numbers, and the differences in the cognitive process of converting an interval into an exact value are quite significant. However, methodological limitations cannot serve as the main reason for the differences in the age-related ideas of Russians; substantive reasons are more important. The structure of age norm perceptions in Russia was stable between the surveys of 2006 and 2018. The changes in normative climate are driven by the transition of generations rather than by intragenerational changes, and the general system of views is stable.

Age normativity, which arises with a high and stable agreement of opinions regarding the onset of life stages, is weakly manifested in Russia. Although the stereotypes regarding markers and characteristics of life stages can be strong, the time of onset of life stages is not determined unambiguously, which allows pushing back or expanding the boundaries of life stages, making them less predetermined. In younger generations, the perceived age boundaries of the main life stages are more flexible than in older generations. In the modern Russian socio-cultural environment, age perceptions of major life stages perform mainly guiding and orienting functions and only to a small extent prescriptive, opening the space for the variety of individual life trajectories.

Acknowledgments. The research was carried out with the support of the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 23-18-00635 “Life course, values, expectations of the generation entering the adult life in 1990x, — longitudinal survey after 30 years”.