Drawing on detailed interviews with women in their forties and fifties, Terri Apter has discovered that many women in midlife today possess a powerful sense of their own individuality. Their sense of where they are headed and what they have accomplished is achieved through a crisis in which they reassess past ideals and goals. In "Secret Paths" Apter takes us through women's change and growth, giving us the full and, until now, untold story of women's midlife path. By dividing the women she studied into four categories - the traditional homemaker, the career woman, the late starter, the premature developer - Apter takes us through midlife women's development as they move towards a new life where they are finally able to gain control over the compromises and choices that have been demanded of them. At the end of the path, the midlife woman moves into her own sense of powerfulness, independence and selfhood.