We’ve Been Thinking About 'Middle Age' All Wrong. Here’s What It Actually Means

You might be middle-aged without even realising it.

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What age comes to mind when you think of “middle age”? Chances are it’s younger than you’d probably guess.

This time in life is often associated with the namesake “midlife crisis” and the start of grey hair, smile lines and chronic back pain. That’s not how health experts would define it, though.

“The oldest millennials are now in their early 40s to mid-40s. And I think ... they don’t want to be called ‘middle age’ because ‘middle age’ has a bad connotation,” said Margie Lachman, author of Primetime: A New Vision for Midlife and professor of psychology at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

“That is unfortunate,” Lachman said. “I call it prime time.”

Yet, getting older does have a certain negative implication, even for someone who is 50 but doesn’t actually feel that way. This is especially true as people delay major life milestones, such as having kids, buying a house and getting married. Life may feel a lot like it did at 26 for some people who are, likely, in middle age.

Experts say that middle age is not one exact number, but the time period starts younger than you think – and extends longer than you think.

Midlife isn’t one set age, but there are some decades that experts generally consider to be middle age.

Lachman is an investigator on the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, a 30-year research initiative led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison that looks at the health, psychological and social factors that are important for healthy ageing.

“We started this study, and we asked people of different generations ... when is a man or a woman middle-aged? When does it start, and when does it end?” Lachman explained.

Most people surveyed said midlife starts between 40 and 48 (older adults said it starts closer to 48, while younger adults said it starts closer to 40), she noted.

“And the exit, when you leave midlife, is somewhere between 55 and 65,” Lachman added. “What I usually say is that the heart of midlife is the 40s and the 50s.”

“There isn’t a single age when someone officially becomes middle-aged,” said Dr. Baljash S. Cheema, the medical director of the Northwestern Medicine Human Longevity Clinic in Chicago. “I generally think of it as roughly the 40s through 60s, but biologically people of the same chronological age can look different.”

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