Middle age is the period of life beyond
young adultAccording to Erik Erikson's stages of human development, first enumerated in Childhood and Society , a young adult is generally a person between the ages of 20 and 40, whereas an adolescent is a person between the ages of 13 and 19, although definitions and opinions can vary. The young adult stage...
hood but before the onset of
old ageOld age consists of ages nearing or surpassing the average life span of human beings, and thus the end of the human life cycle. Euphemisms and terms for old people include seniors , Senior Citizens , or the elderly...
. Various attempts have been made to define this age, which is around the third quarter of the average life span of human beings.
According to Collins Dictionary, this is "
... usually considered to occur approximately between the ages of 40 and 60".
The OED gives a similar definition but with a later start point "
...
Middle age is the period of life beyond
young adultAccording to Erik Erikson's stages of human development, first enumerated in Childhood and Society , a young adult is generally a person between the ages of 20 and 40, whereas an adolescent is a person between the ages of 13 and 19, although definitions and opinions can vary. The young adult stage...
hood but before the onset of
old ageOld age consists of ages nearing or surpassing the average life span of human beings, and thus the end of the human life cycle. Euphemisms and terms for old people include seniors , Senior Citizens , or the elderly...
. Various attempts have been made to define this age, which is around the third quarter of the average life span of human beings.
According to Collins Dictionary, this is "
... usually considered to occur approximately between the ages of 40 and 60".
The OED gives a similar definition but with a later start point "
... the period between youth and old age, about 45 to 60".
The US Census lists middle age as including both the age categories 35 to 44 and 45 to 54, while prominent social scientist,
Erik EriksonErik Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T...
, sees it ending a little later and defines middle adulthood as between 40 and 65.
Health
Middle-aged adults often show visible signs of aging such as loss of skin elasticity and graying of the hair.
Physical fitnessPhysical fitness comprises two related concepts: general fitness and specific fitness ....
usually wanes, with a 5–10 kg (10-20 lb) accumulation of body fat, reduction in aerobic performance and a decrease in maximal heart rate.
StrengthStrength may refer to:Physical ability:*Physical strength, as in people or animals*Superhuman strength, as in fictional characters*A common character attribute in role-playing games.Conflict between persons or groups:...
and
flexibilityFlexibility may refer to:*Flexibility , the range of motion of a joint, which may be increased by stretching...
also decrease throughout middle age. However, people age at different rates and there can be significant differences between individuals of the same age.
Both male and female
fertilityFertility is the natural capability of giving life. As a measure, "fertility rate" is the number of children born per couple, person or population. This is different from fecundity, which is defined as the potential for reproduction...
declines with advancing age. Advanced maternal age increases the risk of a child being born with some disorders such as
Down syndromeDown syndrome , Down's syndrome , trisomy 21, or trisomy G is a chromosomal disorder caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 21st chromosome. It is named after John Langdon Down, the British doctor who described the syndrome in 1866...
. Advanced paternal age sharply increases the risk of
miscarriageMiscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation...
and many birth defects, including Down syndrome,
schizophreniaSchizophrenia , from the Greek roots skhizein and phrēn, phren- is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality...
,
autismAutism is a disorder of neural development that is characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism involves many parts of the brain; how this occurs is not well understood...
, decreased
intellectual capacityAn intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence. The term "IQ", from the German Intelligenz-Quotient, was coined by the German psychologist William Stern in 1912 as a proposed method of scoring early modern...
, and
bipolar disorderBipolar disorder, also known as manic depressive disorder, manic depression or bipolar affective disorder, is a serious mental disorder that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated mood clinically referred to as mania or, if...
. Most women go through
menopauseMenopause is the time in a woman’s life when menstruation ends. It is part of a biological process that begins, for most women, in their mid-fifties. During this time, the ovaries gradually produce lower levels of natural sex hormones—estrogen and progesterone...
, which ends natural fertility, in their late 40s or 50s. Rates of infertility among men also increase significantly with age, with an abrupt decline in fertility after age 45.
In developed countries, yearly
mortalityMortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in some population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 1000 individuals per year; thus, a mortality rate of 9.5 in a population of 100,000 would mean 950 deaths per...
begins to increase more noticeably from age 40 onwards, mainly due to age-related health problems such as
heart diseaseHeart disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety for different diseases affecting the heart. As of 2007, it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, killing one person every 34 seconds in the United States alone.-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...
and
cancerCancer is a class of diseases in which a group of cells display uncontrolled growth , invasion , and sometimes metastasis...
. However, the majority of middle-age people in industrialized nations can expect to live into
old ageOld age consists of ages nearing or surpassing the average life span of human beings, and thus the end of the human life cycle. Euphemisms and terms for old people include seniors , Senior Citizens , or the elderly...
.
Life expectancyLife expectancy is the expected number of years of life remaining at a given age. It is denoted by e
x, which means the average number of subsequent years of life for someone now aged x, according to a particular mortality experience...
in developing countries is much lower and the risk of death at all ages is higher.
Further Information
- Does Age Quash Our Spirit of Adventure?, a segment on NPRs "All Things Considered
All Things Considered is National Public Radio's flagship news program. It was the first news program on the network, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...
" on an aging study done by middle-age neuroscientist Robert SapolskyRobert Maurice Sapolsky is an American biologist and author. He is currently professor of Biological Sciences, and Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, and by courtesy, Neurosurgery, at Stanford University. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya...
- Ali Khan, Living Fully at Forty and Beyond
See also
- Youth
Youth is the period between childhood and adulthood, described as the period of physical and psychological development from the onset of puberty to maturity and early adulthood. Definitions of the specific age range that constitutes youth vary...
- Young adult (psychology)
According to Erik Erikson's stages of human development, first enumerated in Childhood and Society , a young adult is generally a person between the ages of 20 and 40, whereas an adolescent is a person between the ages of 13 and 19, although definitions and opinions can vary. The young adult stage...
- Old age
Old age consists of ages nearing or surpassing the average life span of human beings, and thus the end of the human life cycle. Euphemisms and terms for old people include seniors , Senior Citizens , or the elderly...
- Aging
- Mid-Life Crisis
Midlife crisis is a term coined in 1965 by Elliott Jaques and used in Western societies to describe a period of dramatic self-doubt that is felt by some individuals in the "middle years" of life, as a result of sensing the passing of youth and the imminence of old age...
External links