The roaring 40s: why this is the decade of your life

It can be a decade filled with the joys of family life. For others it can be a time of great reckoning, if youthful dreams simply didn’t work out. We’re talking, of course, about one’s forties.

By the age of 40 most Australians have one or two kids at primary school, and have established a household with both parents working in some capacity. Picture: istock

It is the middle decade of the average Australian lifecycle. It signals the end of youth and the onset of middle age, despite the protestations of some. It can be a decade filled with the joys of family life. For others it can be a time of great reckoning, if youthful dreams simply didn’t work out. We’re talking, of course, about one’s forties.

The average Aussie reaches their peak income earning capacity at the age of 43 (according to the census) which means that things on the work front are generally ascendant across the thirties and into the early forties. Thereafter, income earning gently subsides. But by the mid-forties it’s not all about the money; it can be and it should be about happiness and contentment, too.

Indeed, by the age of 40 most Australians have one or two kids at primary school, and have established a household with both parents working in some capacity. And while this arrangement works for many, for others it means unacceptable stress. The age at which most Australian women describe their relationship status as divorced is 46, three years after peak income. For men, peak divorce is 52.

The point is that there is a change in the trajectory of life across the early forties. It is a time when choices are made about the balance between career/business and family life, about the lifestyle that can be supported, about the kind of personal relationship that is most likely to deliver contentment and happiness. The forties can be a time of reckoning.

Teenagers typically arrive in the family home when parents are in their late forties (which is old enough to be daggy, apparently). Approaching the milestone of 50 is confronting in other ways, too: the cycle of life is revealed to be moving inexorably, bluntly, through the present generation and ever onwards towards the next. The late forties is a time in life, perhaps, when Australians really begin to think about their own mortality.

Happy Birthday to your 40s ... the decade when youthful dreams and unbridled ambition are cautioned, when familial love and affection are savoured, when the gorgeous fullness of the lifecycle comes into view

Up until the late forties I don’t think the average Australian much engages with the idea of retirement, other than occasionally noting the balance of their superannuation. But from the late forties onwards, perhaps in response to one’s changed life goals, or the experience of navigating divorce, there is an appetite for better understanding how superannuation works. All of a sudden, the retirement horizon comes into view.

It’s almost as if the average Aussie lifecycle is an arc that peaks in the early forties, and bends thereafter, providing a clearer picture of the extent and of the fullness of life. There is a point at which work subsides, at which families mature, at which the oldest generations depart. These points, these facts of life, can be measured, averaged, sequenced; they show what we can expect and hopefully how we can better plan for what lies ahead.

And straddling this arc of the lifecycle is the forty-something decade when the joys of family, the sorrows of death, the frustrations of work weave their way into everyday life. Here is a decade when youthful dreams and unbridled ambition are cautioned, when familial love and affection are savoured, when the gorgeous fullness of the lifecycle comes into view. Here is a decade that surely shapes the balance of the arc of Australian life.