Secret paths

Drawing on detailed interviews with women in their forties and fifties, Apter finds that women in midlife undergo a series of changes through which they develop a newly powerful sense of their own identity. She sees midlife as a time when women gain greater control over their decisions and a strengthened sense of their potential. While other writers have seen midlife for women as a time dominated by biological changes associated with menopause, Apter looks at midlife passage through women's psychology. She debunks the myths associated with women's fear of aging and decreased attractiveness. Though this once was thought to cause anxiety and depression, Apter finds that women deliberately negotiate an acceptance of who they are physically, and resist cultural images that marginalize them. While "midlife crisis" for some men is associated with a last-ditch attempt to hold on to their youth, for women it is an attempt to refocus their energies for the future.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Mental Health. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.