People view midlife as a time of trouble and unhappiness, but it can also be viewed as a time of growth.

A new book challenges some of the predominant myths about midlife and shows how you can maximize your growth.

By findings ways to get gains to outweigh losses, your midlife can indeed become your “prime” time.

The essence of “midlife” may seem hard to grasp. Whether you’re in your 40s, 50s, or 60s, you may wonder how exactly to define your age group. Unfortunately, for better or worse, society seems pretty hung up on defining people in terms of their age. This can leave you confused, especially if—as many people will attest to— you don’t “feel” your age.

In a new book, Brandeis University psychologist Margie Lachman (2026) tackles this definitional question and more, showing readers that midlife has not only many possible meanings but also many possibilities. Primetime begins by questioning the very use of the term “middle” to capture what happens to people sometime between childhood and later adulthood. Indeed, as she notes, “midlife could use a better publicist.” After reading the book, you’ll understand why. Here, I’ll try to summarize just some of its main points.

Midlife as Prime Time

Because “middle” has so many negative connotations (“middle” seat of an airplane row, “middle” child, even “Middle Ages”), the term midlife is doomed from the get-go. But this doesn’t have to be the case. As Lachman points out, midlife is full of reasons to see it as a time of new possibilities for growth, change, and joy. And if you need to pin it down with a number, she suggests using the broad scope of 30s to 70s with the 40s and 50s as the central defining decades. You might not even know your midlife years until the end, of course. Thirty-five is the midlife point if you live to 70, but 50 is if you’re lucky enough to live to 100. It’s not worth getting too picky, though.........

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