{"id":1588,"date":"2026-07-25T13:42:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T13:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1588"},"modified":"2026-07-25T13:42:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T13:42:30","slug":"when-youll-know-youre-middle-aged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1588","title":{"rendered":"When You\u2019ll Know You\u2019re Middle-Aged"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The only thing anyone can reliably tell you about middle age is that it\u2019s in the middle of life. What\u2019s the middle? Well, it\u2019s after the beginning, and before the end.<\/p>\n

Read more The Ticking Clock on the Strait of Hormuz<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, we can do a little better than that: Middle age comes after young adulthood, and before what we used to call \u201cold age\u201d but now might more decorously refer to as \u201colder age\u201d or \u201clate life.\u201d But to get more specific, to figure out when<\/em> precisely middle age begins and ends, is a daunting challenge.<\/p>\n

The average life expectancy in the United States is 79. So if you cut that in half, 39.5 is the precise statistical midpoint of the average American life. But that doesn\u2019t reveal much\u2014middle age isn\u2019t just a point in time but a phase of life. How long does that phase last? When does it start? When does it end? How can you tell when you\u2019re in it? These, it turns out, are very fraught questions.<\/p>\n

I am 35. Is a 35-year-old middle-aged? If you ask my friends, they\u2019d be quick to say I\u2019m \u201cstill young,\u201d but the word still<\/em> carries a note of reassurance that I find troubling. Is a 66-year-old retiree middle-aged? Maybe, maybe not\u2014but they sure don\u2019t want to be called \u201cold.\u201d Is a 29-year-old middle aged? Surely not, yet The<\/em> Wall Street Journal<\/em> ran a story a couple of years ago about 20-somethings who claimed they felt middle-aged.<\/p>\n

When pollsters ask the populace about when middle age begins and ends, they get a variety of answers. In , the median response put middle age as lasting from 40 to 60. In another, the average British person said that middle age begins at 35 (hello!) and ends at 58. Meanwhile, 55 percent of Americans think 65 is still middle-aged. And according to that Journal<\/em> story, 20 percent of people ages 25 to 34 say they feel middle-aged.<\/p>\n

If anyone could authoritatively answer the question \u201cWhen is middle age?\u201d I figured it would be Margie Lachman. She is a psychologist studying midlife at Brandeis University and the author of the recent book Primetime: A New Vision for Midlife<\/em>; she\u2019s also worked on the massive longitudinal Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study for all of the 30-plus years it\u2019s been running. Yet even she cannot decide on a firm definition for when middle age begins and ends. Her official definition, in her book and her research, is 40 to 60, \u201cplus or minus 10 years.\u201d Even among scholars, the boundaries of middle age are fuzzy.<\/p>\n

One reason for that fuzziness, Lachman told me, is that how you think about middle age depends on what age you currently are. The older people are, the later they tend to think middle age starts and ends. According to data Lachman shared from MIDUS, people in their 20s define middle age as starting around 39 or 40 and ending around 53, 54, or 55. Those numbers inch up with each successive decade of life. The oldest group in the study, people in their 70s, say middle age begins around 48 or 49 and ends from 62 to 65.<\/p>\n

Ageism is likely to blame for a lot of this. In a youth-obsessed culture, it makes sense that people want to consider themselves young for as long as possible. In Primetime<\/em>, Lachman writes that she\u2019s found that many people in their early 40s \u201cactively resist the idea that they are middle-\u00adaged,\u201d and many in their late 60s or 70s \u201cinsist that they are still <\/em>middle-aged.\u201d Indeed, that the older someone is, the later they think old age begins, too. And middle age has its own branding problem: \u201cThe No. 1 word attached to midlife is crisis<\/em>,\u201d Chip Conley\u2014the founder of the Modern Elder Academy, an organization that offers workshops for making the most of midlife, and the author of Learning to Love Midlife<\/em>\u2014told me. (This association persists despite evidence showing the midlife crisis is mostly a myth.)<\/p>\n

On top of that, the appearance of aging itself is changing. Celebrities get plastic surgery, Botox, and fillers to retain or restore youthful faces\u2014and are more open about it than they once were\u2014further confounding how we perceive the phases of life. (Saying the 70-year-old Kris Jenner is \u201cold\u201d feels odd when, after her much-publicized facelift, her facial skin is stretched so taut you can scarcely detect a single wrinkle.) Even the faces of ordinary people who don\u2019t get work done are generally aging more slowly, The Cut <\/em>reported, because overall, people smoke less than they used to and use more sunscreen. Wrinkle-reducing retinol is widely available in creams, gels, and serums at any old drug store. Anti-aging is now such a normal part of beauty routines that even some children are using products to prevent wrinkles they\u2019re nowhere near having.<\/p>\n

Read more Washington, the Useful Abolitionist<\/a><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the only factor shifting back our aging goalposts. Many milestones that people once used to define adulthood (marriage, home ownership, having kids) are happening later in life, if they happen at all. Given the association of middle age with responsibility, perhaps people don\u2019t feel middle-aged unless they\u2019re tied down in some way. Indeed, some of the 20-somethings who said they felt middle-aged attributed it to becoming parents or taking on major work responsibilities at a young age.<\/p>\n

Also complicating the definition of middle age is the fact that people are living longer. And as they do so, their quality of life in their later years will vary depending on their physical and cognitive limitations. Because American culture has such a negative view of what it means to be \u201cold\u201d\u2014all aches and pains and forgetting where you put the car keys\u2014if someone is aging and feeling good, they may think I can\u2019t possibly be old, because I can do everything I want to do<\/em>, Lachman said. And if they don\u2019t feel old, they may continue to identify as middle-aged well into their 60s and beyond.<\/p>\n

Increasing longevity is one of the reasons that Conley sees middle age as a very long stage of life. He believes it lasts from 35 to 75, in three stages: \u201cearly midlife,\u201d from 35 to 50; the \u201ccore of midlife,\u201d from 50 to 60; and \u201clater midlife,\u201d from 60 to 75. Although 75 might seem to be pushing it, given that Americans\u2019 average lifespan is 79, Conley pointed out that \u201cfor math reasons,\u201d the longer someone has lived, the longer they are likely to live. That is to say: 79 is an average that takes into account all deaths from people of all ages. And if you make it to 65, you\u2019ve dodged many of the things that might have killed you when you were younger. According to the Social Security Administration, the life expectancy of a 65-year-old American is actually 83 for men and 86 for women. And I haven\u2019t seen anyone try to claim that an 80-something is still middle-aged.<\/p>\n

Lachman played along gamely as I fixated on the numbers, but really, that\u2019s not how she likes to define middle age. \u201cChronological age does not tell you much about anybody, except how long they\u2019ve lived,\u201d she told me. She prefers to think of middle age in terms of the roles people take on in their life and in their community. Being middle-aged, to her, means truly being in the middle\u2014having people both younger and older than you looking to you for help and guidance. That might mean you\u2019re in the sandwich generation: caring for children and starting to support aging parents. Or it might mean you\u2019re a leader in your workplace, mentoring younger colleagues and relied on by older ones. \u201cIn midlife, you\u2019re giving more than you\u2019re getting in general,\u201d Lachman said.<\/p>\n

This definition of midlife<\/em> also has ambiguous boundaries, which Lachman readily admits. But despite the vagueness around when middle age actually is, both she and Conley believe it\u2019s a useful term. \u201cBeing in the middle of anything, I think, is a really meaningful point,\u201d Lachman said. \u201cIt\u2019s a great opportunity to look back and look ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point in my quest to define middle age<\/em>, I started losing my grip a little. If you want to be precise about it, a life really only has one beginning and one end, and the rest is all middle. So a 2-year-old could be middle-aged. A 90-year-old could be middle-aged. We\u2019re all born middle-aged, and then we die.<\/p>\n

Just kidding. Ultimately, middle age might be better understood as a feeling that creeps up on you than as a clear turning point. No one thing brings it on, though parenthood, caregiving, or other responsibilities could fuel it. It\u2019s a time of life that is often both exhausting and fulfilling: when you\u2019ve lived enough life to have learned some lessons, and also plenty of time ahead of you to make changes. That might be accurate, but it\u2019s still not satisfying. I want the numbers! So I asked Lachman: If you have<\/em> to choose, when does middle age start and end? \u201c45 to 65,\u201d she said. So there you have it. I\u2019m officially \u201cstill young\u201d for 10 more years, if anyone\u2019s asking.<\/p>\n

\u200bWhen you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Read more How to Open Yourself Up to a New Passion<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trying to attach some numbers to a fuzzy phase of life<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen You\u2019ll Know You\u2019re Middle-Aged - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1588\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When You\u2019ll Know You\u2019re Middle-Aged - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Trying to attach some numbers to a fuzzy phase of life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1588\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-25T13:42:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1588#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1588\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"When You\u2019ll Know You\u2019re Middle-Aged\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-25T13:42:30+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1588\"},\"wordCount\":1573,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1588#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/57fd908eac34af17848e47957bcc1336.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Family\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1588#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1588\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1588\",\"name\":\"When You\u2019ll Know You\u2019re Middle-Aged - 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