Is 40 the new 30? Why the onset of middle age is changing
In 1964 in the US and in Australia, life was very different. Young couples met, married, had children and bought a house in their twenties. By age 30 a woman might have had three or four kids. Life expectancy (at birth) was shorter, too: 70 in the US, 71 here. Today these figures are 79 and 84 respectively.
There have been many improvements in public health, of course. But the way we live has also changed. No one had heard of recreational jogging in 1964, and there was no awareness of the nutritional value of salads. There was, however, a popular dessert known as jam roly-poly pudding, which wouldn’t make it onto the menu of any fashionable cafe today.
Access to the Pill changed the way we lived, as did the rise of the women’s movement. All of a sudden having children could be postponed to the thirties; a better standard of living could be had with a two-income household. Four-or six-kid households shrunk to two, with the two kids being added towards the end of the fertile years. This opened up the twenties for education and a period of travel called a “gap year”.
The ageing process has slowed, too; we now have funds to allocate to keeping fit, looking good, taking care of ourselves – all epitomised in the concept known as “wellness”. Look through your family photo albums and line up pictures of your grandparents in chronological order. See how they aged from debutantes to 40-somethings, let alone to 60-somethings. Few made it through to their seventies.
So, yes, in 1964 there was a clear dividing line between those older and younger than 30. The reason why the phrase Don’t trust anyone over 30 has survived is because it was delivered just prior to a tectonic shift in the way we lived. From “our side of the fence”, looking back, the comment seems naïve. But within the context of the times it was a brutally accurate portrayal of the ageing process.
We the Australians of the 2020s (and I include all generations in this) are fortunate to have access to universal healthcare as well as to things like vaccinations, control over fertility, support for the disabled. And yet, if we could magically return to 1964 and ask 30-somethings what they thought of their lives, I am sure they would say they were blissfully happy. Their frame of reference for this question would have been the Depression, or the war.
I wonder what the people of Australia in 2086, 61 years hence, would say about the way we live today. Perhaps by then life expectancy will have increased to 100 – forcing a rethink about the way we live, work and form (and dissolve) relationships past the age of 50.
Maybe we should call the ever-moving line between youth and middle age “the Weinberg line”. By my reckoning, the onset of middle age is creeping out by one year every four to five years. So by 2086, will antsy and frustrated 24-year-olds will be saying, “Don’t trust anyone over the age of 57”?
My search for meaning brought me to a new sacred ritual
In an American newspaper interview in 1964 a frustrated 24-year-old student activist by the name of Jack Weinberg said words to the effect of, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” This phrase has reverberated down the decades as a symbol of the dividing line between youth and middle age. Today I think that dividing line has pushed out to 40 and perhaps even to 42 or 43.