Midlife? It’s Not What You Think
The myths surrounding middle age are legion. From midlife crises to the “change of life,” the middle years are often viewed as a time of upset and endings.
Beginning with 30th-birthday celebrations, the decades of midlife are marked as milestones along the bridge to old age and the gradual loss of vigor and diminishing opportunities.
But results from a new, large research project by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development paint a far different portrait of midlife, one that may shatter the cultural perceptions of these middle decades.
Studies abound of childhood, adolescence and old age. But the years from 30 to 70 have been largely neglected until now. The goal of the MacArthur project is to identify major biomedical, psychological and social factors that allow some people to achieve good health, psychological well-being and social responsibility.
The findings challenge the notion that middle age is automatically a time of slow decline or fraught with angst and psychological discomfort.
Even 10 years ago, societal attitudes portrayed midlife as a time of hazard and peril. “It was considered a time of empty nests, stress and worry, poor health, menopause, midlife crises,” said Orville Gilbert Brim, who directed the MacArthur research. “But the more we got into it, the more we studied it, we found that, on balance, middle age really is the best place to be.”
The project included 11 studies involving more than 8,000 men and women ranging in age from 25 to 74.
By probing participants about a wide range of topics--from satisfaction with personal relationships, job and finances to how people coped with problems--researchers discovered midlife to be a time of surprising calm. Additional findings will be released in the next three to four years as more results are analyzed.
The project shows midlife to be a time of stable relationships and some financial security. Health remains good. Work is satisfying and relatively secure. “For most, it is smooth sailing,” Brim said.
While the researchers expected to find many people complaining that they had lost control over much of their life during these middle decades, they discovered instead an increased sense of control. “That was one of the biggest surprises,” said Margie E. Lachman, professor of psychology at Brandeis University in Boston and a member of the research team.
The popular belief in a midlife decline is a relatively recent concept, dating to the late 19th century, the team pointed out. It represents a uniquely American and European perspective. Other cultures, such as India, Samoa and Kenya, have long venerated middle age, rewarding those who achieve it with status and privileges.
Richard A. Shweder, a University of Chicago anthropologist and one of 13 scholars who ran the MacArthur study, said that many of these cultures have no tradition that “emphasizes the . . . biology of aging.”
Perceptions on When Middle Age Begins
The MacArthur researchers defined midlife as the time stretching from 30 to 70 years, with ages 40 to 60 as the core. But in the study, the older the participant, the later he or she said that midlife began. Men from 25 to 34 targeted 40 as the time when most men entered middle age. But older men, from 64 to 74, thought that middle age began for men at 46 years.
Women followed the same trends, with those of younger ages identifying 43 as the age when an average woman enters midlife. Older women set 49 years as the threshold.
However participants defined middle age, they generally agreed that it lasts for about 15 years.
But age is also an attitude. Despite the widespread satisfaction with their lives, nine out of 10 respondents said they would like to be younger than they are. Two-thirds said that, most of the time, they feel younger than their chronological age. Only 14% said that they feel older than their birth certificates indicate.
While the oldest of the respondents, ages 65 to 74 years, wanted to be 32 years younger than they were, they were not necessarily yearning for a fountain of youth.
Instead, the desire to be younger may reflect society’s treatment of aging. “Some people will say that this represents the fact that people have accomplished all that they will accomplish,” said Alice Rossi, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “But another interpretation is that our society does not value the elderly and make adequate use of their skills and knowledge.”
Study Debunks the Midlife Crisis Myth
Popular culture fuels the notion that the midlife crisis is universal. Television and movies feature pervasive images of 40-something individuals suddenly shedding spouses and impulsively acting like adolescents. Television ads promise that snappy new cars, exotic getaway vacations or expensive jewelry will help soothe the midlife crises that supposedly arise like clockwork.
A far different picture emerges from the MacArthur study. While nearly all 750 participants in one part of the study recognized the term “midlife crisis,” only 23% had actually experienced one. When researchers analyzed their responses, they found that only 8% tied the emotional turmoil to the realization that they were aging.
The remaining 15% said they had experienced a turbulent period in their middle years but the crisis was caused by significant life transitions--not by aging. “When you look more closely, they are saying this is my crisis that occurred when I was 40 years old rather than what caused it was the fact that I was 40,” said Elaine Wethington, professor of sociology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and part of the research team. Among the events that sent lives into a tailspin were divorce, loss of a job, the early death of a child, the serious illness of a close relative or friend or severe financial problems.
“One of the most important findings is that the fear that there is a midlife crisis awaiting us all as we go through middle age doesn’t appear to be true at all,” Wethington said.
At the same time, the study found that the number of stressful life events--what the researchers call psychological turning points--peak during the middle years. But these events don’t necessarily trigger a midlife crisis in most people.
More Comfort and Control Reported
Americans are often reminded to “take control” over their lives. The MacArthur project found that most of those in middle age have already figured out how to do that successfully in many different ways.
One of the studies, conducted by Lachman and Suzanne L. Weaver of Brandeis, asked 3,032 participants, 25 to 75 years old, to rank their control over health, finances, work, the contribution to others, spouses, sex life, children and life overall according to a scale of zero (no control) to 10 (great control).
The findings paint a comfortable picture of midlife. The sense of control over work, finances and marriage increased in the late 40s to early 50s and continued rising into old age. The highest current satisfaction is for relationships with children and spouses. Each ranked from 9 to 10, the study found.
Marriages that last to midlife also appear to have reached solid ground, with both partners reporting high levels of comfort. Fighting, bickering and other tensions have eased.
“If you read the tabloids, you think that everyone is having an affair and an unhappy marriage,” said Paul Cleary, professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School and a researcher on the MacArthur study. “It’s true that there are a lot of marriage breakups. On the other hand, in midlife there appears to be quite a bit of stability.”
Some 72% of study participants rated their marriages as excellent. Ninety percent said they were not at all or not very likely to separate or get divorced. “We’re not saying that breakups and infidelity don’t happen,” Cleary said. “But this time of life looks like a relatively stable kind of period.”
Satisfaction with sex life did diminish as people aged. The youngest age group reported their control over sex to be 7 on a scale of 10. By middle age, that sense of control had dropped to 6 and it sank to a 5 in old age. During all ages, women consistently reported feeling slightly more in control of sex than men did, ranking it an average 7 compared with a 6 for men.
Health is also rated highly. Seventy percent ranked their overall health as excellent. On average, midlife folks said their health was a 7 to 8 on a scale of 10, lower than what it was 10 years ago, but still quite high. Middle-aged adults said they expect to maintain their health for the next 10 years, but the project found that less than a quarter of participants “are working hard” to make sure that it does. Seventy percent of participants described themselves as overweight.
About a quarter of the men and 42% of the women age 45 to 54 years said they were already experiencing shortness of breath upon exertion--an indication of their chronic inactivity and a possible early warning sign of heart disease.
“I am 50 and I should be doing a lot more things to protect my health,” said Cleary. “But part of it is that we are very busy. We have a lot of responsibilities.”
In the 40-to-60-year-old group, job satisfaction is also extremely high in midlife, regardless of income, education levels or profession. “I love what I do for work,” said James Dickson, 53, a vice president for the National Organization on Disability, echoing sentiments from most of those in the MacArthur project. “I’m an unregenerate product of the 1960s and my role is to make the world better.”
Dickson, who has been legally blind since age 7, graduated from Brown University, worked on political campaigns and has been an advocate for the disabled for 30 years. In 1987, he sailed solo to Bermuda, encountering a hurricane along the way.
Like many others, he feels the financial pinch of having young children while he is in middle age. “I will be 63 when my daughter leaves home to go to college,” said Dickson, and this worries him.
“There is no doubt that age discrimination occurs. The fear is that age discrimination could occur at the same time that someone hands you a college tuition bill for $125,000.”
Even so, Dickson and others in midlife recognize that they are experiencing a special time of life, perhaps especially so because of the medical advances, the educational opportunities and the healthy economy that have given baby boomers more midlife opportunities than any other generation.
“Midlife just isn’t what it used to be,” said Wethington. “I’m 48. When my parents were in their 40s, they were not looking forward to as long a life expectancy as I am.”
That revolutionary longevity, plus the unprecedented access to health care, financial reserves and social and professional opportunities, makes midlife today a valuable life stage. As Dickson puts it: “It is a good balance between the physical vigor and moderation that comes with experience.”
