Adulthood, midlife and transition crisis: Australian midlife women's transitions to homelessness

We examine adulthood as an ideal standard for the social recognition of independent personhood, focusing on single Australian women’s midlife transitions to homelessness. While adulthood has been critiqued as the destination for youth transitions, we explore its conceptual articulation with midlife. Adulthood, emblematic of maturity, imposes culturally inscribed benchmarks for life course attainments, forming societal expectations that inform individual self-assessments. At midlife such assessments often highlight perceived shortfalls, exemplified by public discourse on the ‘midlife crisis.’ Drawing on studies of Australian women’s first homelessness, we show the deleterious consequences of gendered policy regimes on ‘conventional’ lives. To do justice to these midlife women’s experiences, we propose the term transition crisis to designate socially induced ruptures in self-identity causing moral injury.