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00:09:51.820If you're in the middle of generations, for example, so you have people who are younger
00:09:57.800and older who are depending on you and you're focused on helping those who are in your family
00:10:03.960or in the workplace or in community who are younger and older.
00:10:07.600To me, that's really a way to define midlife, being in the middle generation and having your
00:10:13.500responsibilities that are focused not only on yourself, but also on those who are younger
00:10:18.120and older. And that can really happen at any chronological age. Anywhere from 30s to 60s,
00:10:25.080you can be in that sort of middle range. All right. But so for the most part,
00:10:30.540rough ballpark, 40s to 50s is generally midlife for most people.
00:10:35.000Yes, that is, I think, a very reasonable way to define it if we want to focus on chronological age.
00:10:40.900I usually say 40 to 60 plus or minus 10, which would make it 30 to 70 if I really want to broaden the definition, mainly because we know that when we ask people if they feel they're in midlife, people in their 30s will say yes, people in their 70s will say yes.
00:10:58.180Okay. So it's a moving target. And what's interesting too about the idea of midlife,
00:11:04.040particularly in American pop culture, we have this idea about midlife. It's pretty negative.
00:11:10.100Like, oh, you're over the hill. You got to have a midlife crisis. It's obligatory.
00:11:14.060But your research debunks a lot of these negative stereotypes we have about midlife.
00:11:19.820Let's start with this idea of the midlife crisis. Where did this idea that once you hit your 40s,
00:11:25.260you're going to have an existential crisis, you're going to go buy a car and divorce your
00:11:30.000spouse and marry someone younger. Where did that come from? That is something that we can trace
00:11:37.000to an article written by a psychoanalyst named Elliot Jacks in 1965. That's one of the earliest
00:11:43.880mentions that we have been able to identify. And he was someone who wrote about famous artists,
00:11:50.940but also people who were his patients. And what he found was people in their mid-30s to early 40s
00:11:58.060were concerned that they were on their way downhill, that everything was decline afterwards,
00:12:04.720and that they weren't as productive as they were. And they were feeling like they were afraid of
00:12:10.280death. So that's where we think it started. It got popularized in a number of ways, though.
00:12:15.620One of the most well-known ways that we see it popularized was with Gail Sheehy's book, Passages, where she called the transition at different ages, especially age 40, as a predictable crisis.
00:12:32.200So the assumption that everybody would be going through this.
00:12:35.020And it resonated with a lot of people because there are people who do have difficulties as they make a transition into the next decade.
00:12:42.360Didn't, I think another book came out around that time, Daniel Levinson's book, The Seasons of a Man's Life. And he talked about the midlife transition as well.
00:12:51.180Absolutely. In fact, Daniel Levinson and Dan Gould is another one. They all were talking about these different transitions, mainly going from 20s to 30s to 40s. And Gail Sheehy really drew heavily on Dan Levinson's work.
00:13:07.720But he also did speak about these transitions.
00:13:11.480But he said it was really a natural part of adult development, that as you are going into the next decade and there's periods of stability and change throughout adulthood.
00:13:23.240But he didn't necessarily say that it was a crisis.
00:13:26.700I think it was really not until Gail Sheehy popularized it that that became more of a common term.
00:13:32.860And certainly it's also popularized by Hollywood and novelists who love to portray the midlife crisis with these stereotypical views of getting a red sports car, as you know.
00:13:45.380Yeah. And see, I remember growing up in the late 80s and 90s, there's a lot of movies that came out made by baby boomers because they were hitting their midlife then.0.65
00:13:56.000That was about the midlife crisis. I remember City Slickers with Billy Crystal.0.93
00:14:00.000I think there's some other ones too, same sort of thing about these people, baby boomers hitting1.00
00:14:03.980midlife and they're having this crisis and they try to go on this adventure and try to figure0.76
00:14:07.120things out. And it's kind of popularized that idea even more. Yeah. It can be really funny and
00:14:12.700people do have issues in midlife. It is a difficult time. There's a lot of stress. And so it kind of
00:14:18.780capitalizes on that. And I think people can relate to it. And then another thing that happened that
00:14:24.000entrenched this idea of the midlife crisis even more is that in the 2000s, there was this research
00:14:29.820that came out that showed that people experienced a U-shaped curve of happiness. So they'd start out
00:14:36.180happy in young adulthood, they would get progressively less happy as they approached
00:14:40.720midlife, and then had their happiness go up as they left midlife. Tell us more about that research.
00:14:46.160This is a very interesting period of time when there were many studies that consistently found this U-shape, which basically means if you compare people from 18 to 70 and you give them a questionnaire that asks them to rate their life satisfaction on a 10-point scale, with zero being the worst possible life and 10 being the best possible life,
00:15:12.400what they found was those who were in their 40s and 50s were lower than those who were younger
00:15:19.240and older. Now there's a number of things that I think are problematic with that work. So let me
00:15:25.760say what I think the problems are. So first, when we looked at the data, the differences between
00:15:32.680those who were younger or older than those in midlife were very small. So on this 10 point
00:15:38.300scale, we're talking about a few tenths of a point. So maybe 7.4 for those who are in midlife
00:15:44.480and 7.8 for those who were in early adulthood or later adulthood. So those are really small
00:15:52.000differences, although with the large samples that they had, and these were samples not only in the
00:15:55.980US, it was really all over the world. These were statistically significant differences. So it
00:16:00.780became really common knowledge that the low point, in fact, they said the nadir of life satisfaction
00:16:07.440is age 47. They pinpointed it to that particular age. So first of all, it really was a very small
00:16:14.540difference. The other point I want to make is that now they have retracted, the people who
00:16:20.820propose this U-shape have retracted it. And it's unfortunate why they retracted it. The reason
00:16:27.300they've retracted it is because it turns out that the younger people, those under 40, are the ones
00:16:34.140who have the lowest life satisfaction. So it really seems that it's just a difference in terms
00:16:42.120of where you rank yourself relative to the other ages at one point in time. And that in my view is
00:16:50.060not the best way to be looking at this question about whether midlife is good or not. First of
00:16:56.280all, there are huge individual differences at any age. So on average, it doesn't really tell you
00:17:02.080much about why some people are doing better than others. And the other thing is that when we follow
00:17:07.360people in our longitudinal study, we don't see people going down in midlife per se. We see pretty
00:17:13.520much what I would call consistent, stable life satisfaction. Most people maintain their levels
00:17:20.160of satisfaction throughout life. Those who are happy tend to be happy most of the time. With some
00:17:25.940blips when there are problems, certainly if you follow people on a daily basis, you can see their
00:17:30.980ups and downs. But we don't see this downward trend in midlife on average as they do in the
00:17:37.460U-shaped studies. All right. So being miserable in your midlife, not universal. But I think your
00:17:42.940research did show there's a small percentage of people who do experience what you might call a
00:17:48.000midlife crisis. I think it was like 20% to 25%. Correct. We asked this in the very beginning of
00:17:54.220our study. We asked people, and this is from earlier generations, not current generations.
00:17:59.700And they did say they had a midlife crisis, but as you say, it was only about 20 to 25%.
00:18:07.100And I think it's important to qualify that what they meant by a midlife crisis was not necessarily
00:18:13.300what Elliot Jacks originally had talked about, which was people thinking everything's going
00:18:17.320downhill. The kind of things that they talked about were more related to events that happened
00:18:23.580to them in midlife, such as getting divorced or losing a job or getting an illness. And those
00:18:31.020things can really happen at any age. If they happen to you in midlife, then you may call it
00:18:35.060a midlife crisis. There were some people who did talk about fears about getting older, but that was
00:18:42.080less likely than those people who are focused on these external events. All right. So this idea of
00:18:48.280midlife crisis, not really a thing. Some people experience it, but not very many, but it's not
00:18:53.980because you hit your 40s and you're automatically going to have an existential crisis. You just
00:18:58.140happen to have stuff that happens in midlife that can cause a lot of stress. Most people
00:19:03.200generally go through midlife satisfied with life. Nevertheless, this idea of the midlife crisis
00:19:09.580still exists. And one of the arguments you make in the book is that believing this idea or buying
00:19:15.020into this idea of the midlife crisis can hurt you. How can it hurt people if they buy into this idea
00:19:20.600that I hit my 40s, it's all downhill from here? I'm glad that you brought this up because I will
00:19:27.640say that as I'm reading articles so often these days about the millennial midlife crisis, I am
00:19:35.380getting concerned. I do think what's going on is that many people in their mid-30s and early 40s
00:19:41.940are experiencing a lot of stress because of the financial crisis that we're all going through
00:19:48.700and things related to housing. And this is causing a lot of stress. And I think people
00:19:54.600are labeling it as a midlife crisis because they happen to be in midlife. And it's a very
00:19:59.100difficult time because there are many people depending on them and they're having financial
00:20:03.140stresses. And so it is really important to address this because I think a lot of people are expecting
00:20:10.380to have a midlife crisis or thinking that what they're having is a midlife crisis.
00:20:53.380Well, we have a lot of ways to treat depression, for example.
00:20:56.820Or maybe you're experiencing hormonal changes and you think it's a midlife crisis.
00:21:02.080There are things we can do to address hormonal changes.
00:21:04.820So I think we can miss things that are treatable and important if we just label any maladjustment or difficulties in midlife as a midlife crisis and chalk it up to that.
00:21:16.400And so if you think you're just supposed to feel terrible when you get to midlife, you might not seek the help that could actually be beneficial to you.
00:32:52.900And I think there's been studies done that showed that individuals with a lot of crystallized
00:32:58.760intelligence, older people can often outperform the younger people who have maybe higher fluid
00:33:04.240intelligence, but because they don't have that crystallized intelligence, they kind of flounder
00:33:08.400a bit before they get the answer. And then, you know, the wise old people like, well, here's the
00:33:12.000answers already know it. Yes. In fact, probably the simplest example is on a vocabulary test.
00:33:17.780When you're in high school taking your SATs, you've got to study these vocabulary words and try to do well on the test.
00:33:25.740And if you compare performance of a young adult on a vocabulary test with that of a middle-aged or older adult, the middle-aged and older adult will outperform the young adult just because they have lived longer and they've read more and they know more.
00:33:40.240It's just a natural process of gaining more knowledge and experience.
00:33:44.120I think another thing that happens in midlife and why it might feel like your fluid intelligence
00:33:48.920isn't as good. I think in midlife, you just have a lot more to think about and use your
00:33:54.560fluid intelligence for. Because I'm thinking about in my 40s, I'm like juggling work and
00:33:58.960then I'm juggling kids schedule and I'm juggling paying bills and I'm juggling other responsibilities.
00:34:05.100And so my fluid intelligence or my prefrontal cortex has got a bunch of stuff in the hopper
00:34:10.260that's got to sort through. And when I was in my 20s, I hardly had anything going on. I didn't
00:34:14.400have kids. I didn't have a house. I didn't have much responsibility. And so it was easy to be
00:34:20.200quicker because I had less to think about. Exactly. I like to think of this in terms
00:34:25.160of executive functioning. So executive functioning is what we use to juggle schedules and to plan
00:34:32.840and to organize things. And so multitasking in midlife is huge. And so executive function
00:34:39.940is still pretty good in midlife. Again, it's on this downward trajectory, but the good news is
00:34:46.260that all of the experience of juggling and doing all these things in midlife actually is good for
00:34:54.620you in terms of maintaining your executive function. So the more activities you do,
00:34:59.060The more things that you do to draw on your executive functioning in midlife, the better able you are to maintain your executive functioning into your later years.
00:35:07.480All right. So having kids can help you and help midlife because you have to balance all that stuff.
00:37:50.100we did a study of inventors, so people who had received patents from the U.S. We started this
00:37:58.600study because we were really interested in looking at midlife functioning outside of the lab. Most of
00:38:04.420our cognitive studies are done where we bring people into our lab and give them cognitive tests.
00:38:09.400We wanted to see how cognitive functions were operating in real-world settings, and this was
00:38:16.180one example, the patents. And we thought that midlife might be the cognitive sweet spot because
00:38:22.380of what I talked about a few moments ago, the crystallized intelligence is on the way up and
00:38:27.660the fluid intelligence, yes, it's on the way down, but it still has a long way to go before it hits
00:38:32.220bottom. So we kind of saw this point in midlife where we thought it might actually be the best of
00:38:37.200both worlds. And we looked to see when patents were most common, at what age these patents were
00:38:43.180most common. And indeed, it was in early midlife. They were the most common in the early 40s.
00:38:49.300It was also the case that many people patented for the first time after age 50. So patenting
00:38:55.720continued into 50s and beyond. So it's not that all of a sudden your creativity dwindles.
00:39:02.260Yeah. Another thing I've seen is that I think we often have this idea of entrepreneurship. It's
00:39:07.100like the young entrepreneur, like the Mark Zuckerberg or the Steve Jobs when he was in
00:39:11.28020s and he founded Apple. But when the researchers look at it, most successful startups are started
00:39:17.260by people who are in their 40s or 50s. Yes. So that, I think, has to do with their decision
00:39:23.740making and their experience, because they've learned from past mistakes and draw on those
00:39:29.900kinds of experiences. And there are different kinds of intelligences that are working. And so
00:39:35.960some of the more forward-thinking kinds of novel breakthroughs might occur earlier on. In fact,
00:39:41.920we found something to support that in our patent study. Whereas those in later life, they're also
00:39:47.780doing innovative things, but they're more drawing on changes to things that they've already worked
00:39:53.460on, going in new directions with things that have already been established. But those people who are
00:39:59.040in their 40s and 50s are really at the peak of decision-making and have a lot of experience.
00:40:03.720I also want to add that one of the things we looked at was multi-age, mixed generational teams, because many patents are not done by individuals, they're done by teams. And we found some preliminary evidence that those patents that were made by people of mixed ages, so having younger and middle-aged and older adults, actually were the ones who were the most successful.
00:40:27.180All right. That's interesting. All right. So this is good news. You're actually midlife. You're at your peak of creativity in certain ways, peak of good decision making. So the things you start will probably be more successful. I'd love to hear this. Let's shift over to our physical health. How does our physical health change in midlife?
00:40:44.640In many ways, things are going on. Now, the first thing people notice are the obvious outward
00:40:51.220changes. So people get reading glasses because of presbyopia, and they get gray hair and thinning
00:40:58.920hair, and they feel like they're slowing down, or when they get an injury, it takes longer to
00:41:04.680recover. So those are the things you can actually see. But on the inside, there's a lot of things
00:41:10.000that are also going on, things like bone loss, muscle loss, change in lung function, immune
00:41:16.460functioning, all of these things are declining slowly. A lot of these things we can do something
00:41:22.120about, and I think that's what's most important, is that the earlier we start to take note of these
00:41:29.260kinds of changes and do things to try to modify or prevent decline, the better off we're going to be.
00:41:36.700All right. So you're not doomed to get fatter, weaker, and creakier in midlife?
00:41:40.980Definitely not. But the things that we do know about in midlife, so if you are going for regular
00:41:47.700checkups and look at your biomarkers like cholesterol or glucose or blood pressure or BMI,
00:41:54.480what's I think really important to say is that those indicators in midlife are more important
00:42:01.860for your later life than what happens in later life because it's a long process. If you have
00:42:06.680have high blood pressure for 30 years, that's going to do a lot more damage than if you
00:42:11.040get it later on in life. So it's really important to focus on these things in midlife. It's really
00:42:17.500making a long-term investment in your health. And so if you're able to address some of these
00:42:22.100health issues in midlife, it's going to pay big benefits later on in life.
00:42:27.320All right. So exercise, eat right, get those checkups, because that's going to make your
00:42:30.340midlife experience more pleasant, get more out of it. But it's also setting you up for a better
00:42:35.840elderhood. Exactly. All right. Let's talk about this. What about friendships and relationships?
00:42:41.480How do those change in midlife? One of the things that happens in midlife is we get so busy with
00:42:47.160our day-to-day responsibilities that we sometimes lose track of our relationships that are outside
00:42:54.460our immediate family. And social relationships are so important for midlife, but even into later
00:43:01.420life. So if people can maintain friendships in midlife that carry over into later life, when
00:43:07.200it's actually even harder to make new friends, it's really important. And what we find is that
00:43:13.760it's important to get and give social support to others. And this can be in your family as well as
00:43:20.160with friends. But we find that one way to maintain friendships is to incorporate it into other
00:43:27.960activities. So doing things with your family and a lot of friends typically will be from
00:43:34.780your kids' friends' families. So if you can do things that not only are social with other families
00:43:42.000and friends, that's a really good way to do it. Or if you want to exercise with other people like
00:43:47.020your friends, that's also a good way to do it. We call it temptation bundling because really what
00:43:52.240it's doing is you're doing two things that are important. You're seeing your friends, you're
00:43:55.960talking to your friends, and you're also exercising at the same time. So it kind of
00:44:00.540does something for the busy people in midlife to try to combine them at the same time.
00:44:06.420Something my wife and I have noticed with our friendships as we've gotten to midlife
00:44:10.020is it seems like it was a lot easier to make friends when we were younger and our kids were
00:44:14.780younger. Like something about that stage of life makes it easier to make friends because,
00:44:18.760you know, young kids, they don't have a lot going on and you can just kind of throw them together
00:44:22.960and they get along. But when your kids get older, their personalities are more formed
00:44:28.400and they get along more or less with other kids. And everyone's got extracurriculars going on at
00:44:35.120different times. People are busy. So it seems like it just gets harder and harder to sync up.
00:44:40.220And it seems like if you want friendships in midlife, you have to be even more intentional
00:44:45.720about it. Yes, I think that makes a lot of sense. And in some ways, it's really upon us to really
00:44:53.760make a concerted effort to maintain the friendships that we had established, especially for the people
00:44:59.880that you really care about and that you really enjoy. You may not necessarily want to keep up
00:45:04.820with all the people that you had made friends with earlier on, but to the extent that you
00:45:11.780are interested in people that you had good relationships with, it does take more effort
00:45:18.560to maintain those relationships. Another thing that could cause stress that's related to
00:45:25.180relationships in midlife is that when you're in middle age, there's a good chance you have parents
00:45:31.580who are in their 70s and 80s, and they've got health problems and issues that you've got to
00:45:36.360tend to. But then at the same time, you have kids who might be in their teen years or just
00:45:41.740about in their young adulthood. And they're going to be stressed with that. So when you're in midlife,
00:45:45.880you're trying to balance both of these sets of relationships.0.74
00:45:49.840Yes, this is what we call the sandwich generation, right? The middle-aged adult who has kids who0.76
00:45:55.840are still depending on them and they require a lot of attention. And then their parents are
00:46:01.060starting to have health problems or aging in ways that require assistance. And there's a large
00:46:07.420percentage of those who are in middle age who are faced with this kind of squeezing between
00:46:13.840generations. And it can be very stressful because you're also needing to focus on your own health
00:46:18.720and well-being and your own work. That said, I think that this may be the time in midlife where
00:46:25.020you just have to address this need and realize it's not going to last forever. Your kids are
00:46:30.760going to grow up and your parents are not going to live forever. So it is a crunch time in a way.
00:46:35.820And I think one of the reasons that midlife is ideal in a way to be able to handle this kind of squeeze between generations is because of this notion of generativity.
00:46:46.820This was a concept developed by a famous psychoanalyst named Eric Erickson, and he called generativity the main task for those who are in midlife.
00:46:57.840So it's really concern for the next generation.
00:47:01.300And midlife people are really good at it.
00:47:03.640It may take its form as parenting, but it can also take its form as mentoring younger
00:47:30.420I'm the person in charge, and I have all these talents and these skills and this experience, and I'm in a position to do a lot of good during this time.
00:47:38.900But what we find is that social support can go both ways.
00:47:44.320You can give social support and receive social support.
00:47:48.280And the ideal situation is a balance, giving and receiving.
00:47:53.080In midlife, it turns out that the balance is tipped towards giving.
00:47:58.760As you get into later life, it may flip and you may be able to reap the benefits of all your giving and be able to receive more social support.
00:48:08.600Okay, so besides just thinking about, okay, this is just going to be a short period of time, maybe change your mindset about this period where I can be generative about this.
00:48:17.500Any other tactics you've found that are useful to help people manage this sandwich generation crunch?
00:48:23.160One thing to keep in mind is that research shows that giving social support is good for your health. It's not only that it's benefiting the people you're giving the support to, it actually benefits your own health.0.99
00:48:36.380So if you think of it as I'm being active and I'm juggling a lot of different things, but I'm doing something that's purposeful and meaningful, I think that can really go a long way towards helping people feel that this is really something that is good for me as well as for the people that I'm helping.
00:48:55.020Yeah. I also think too, just making sure you carve out time for yourself. If you're starting
00:48:59.340to feel really overwhelmed, just take a step back and maybe find some other people that can help,
00:49:04.080you know, fill in while you take a, you know, a weekend off just to take care of yourself.