When is middle aged for men

It results from virtually universal access to clean water, sanitation, waste removal, electricity, refrigerators and vaccinations, and continued improvement in health care. Many demographers predict longevity will keep lengthening in the decades to come. Howver, while we should be dancing in celebration of our longer and healthier lives, instead we're wringing our hands over the significant challenges of an aging society.

The statistics cited above point to the compelling need for people to continue working in some manner during their later years. But as a society, we set cultural expectations for appropriate retirement ages decades ago, when many people in their 60s and 70s were unable to work and were considered "old" or "very old.

We'll need to rethink those expectations. It's simply too expensive to continue adding more and more years to the retirement phase of our lives. That requires savings levels that we just can't afford, and it's putting serious strains on Social Security and pension systems. According to official national data, there are now more adults over 65 than there are unders. Although seven out of 10 early somethings quizzed for the survey defined themselves as middle-aged, the average age at which the period of life was perceived to start was 54 years and days old.

However, a sizeable minority, nearly one in five, thought middle age did not begin until after the age of The research also asked the panel at what age they thought middle age ends.

The average came in at 69 years and days. At the time a lot of people told me that I was wrong; that 36 was not middle-aged. I noticed something, though: Most of the people who were telling me that 36 was not middle-aged were fellow members of the so-called baby boom generation. This is not a generation that is eager to proclaim that it has reached middle age. It was the baby boomers who made up the ''youthquake'' of the s, and who were part of the alleged college student ''revolution.

So it is understandable that men and women of the baby boom generation are not eager to concede that they now qualify as middle-aged people. They said that the world was changing--that ideas of what is elderly have dramatically shifted, and that a person should not be branded as elderly as long as he or she felt full of life.

But this can get out of hand. Lines have to be drawn, though; at some point middle age begins, and the purpose of this exercise is to determine exactly when that happens. The works. What the hell is he talking about death for? I thought. Spoiler alert. Meaning a whole lot of guys happen to be in the same boat as I am: midway between cradle and grave. As a guy with some things to make up for over the past couple decades, I feel a little behind. As it happened, I spent most of that mathematically significant 37th year at home, staring at the walls, as a pandemic upended every norm of everyday life.

Turns out, plenty of truly middle-aged men are at crossroads of their own. Which is strange, because if our days are getting scarcer, you would think that each should hold more value.

My 20s were wonderful, but some nights were a boozy blur. Then some nights turned into most nights and my 20s turned into my 30s. At a certain point I got tired of waking up feeling like shit, with a phone full of missed calls and pissed-off texts and only a hazy half-memory of what I did to deserve them.

So at age 33, I took the painful, scary step of getting sober. Many people get a little karmic kickback of dropping some weight when they stop drinking, but sadly, not me. I learned that losing weight requires a million small daily choices that add up slowly so, so slowly over time.

The point is, you can change—and learn more about yourself in the process. How to, well, take control. Or, in some cases, realize that you never had it and press forward anyway. My partner of eight years and I recently bought a house and, even better, a terrier mutt named Edie.