Understanding Midcareer Development: From Whose Perspective?

By presenting their model of midcareer development, Power and Rothausen have turned counseling psychologists' attention to a set of lifespan career issues that have often been overlooked. I address three primary issues in this reaction to the model. First, their model highlights the unfortunate partitioning that has occurred in the study of career, resulting in a lack of communication and awareness across the multiple disciplines that focus on career issues. Second, a critical examination of their model indicates that it is not sufficiently connected to previous theory or research in vocational psychology, thereby undermining the model's potential utility. Third, the model is overly prescriptive, and appears to be focused on a narrowly defined group of individuals, further limiting the model's utility. Despite these limitations, Power and Rothausen's model does have implications for the theory, research, and practice of lifespan career development.