To wonder why up to 35 is now considered young

[thedaywewillremeber]

I’ve just seen an article where young people are referred to as being up to 35. Aibu to wonder why this is when it used to be 25 maximum that was viewed as a young person.

@BikeTyson

Damn, I’m middle aged at 36? I don’t feel massively young (toddlers will do that to you) but I’m not middle aged! I only just passed the point 2 years ago where I no longer had to work for more years than I’d been alive so far before I could get my pension.

Actually the years left to pay a pension is a good indicator left of age I have 12 years until I can claim my pension, I would say anyone with 25 or less years to claim their pension can be considered old. So assuming the pension age is 67 that would be 42

I was thinking about this the other day as it struck me I don’t feel ‘young’ any more. I’m 31, married, selling our first owned flat (bought when I was 27) to buy a house, I’m financially independent from my parents and I’m expecting my first child any day. I don’t by any stretch feel ‘young’, which is weird because if you’d spoken to me 18 months ago when I was 29 I think I’d have definitely said I did feel young.

Having said that I’m 100% not middle aged either! Still go to music festivals, working to establish myself in my career, need to put more in my pension, parents still refer to us as ‘the kids’, go on girl’s holidays without DH, and yesterday I ate ice cream for breakfast

Can’t the term for the age between ‘young adult’ and middle aged just be... regular adult? Cause that’s what I feel like!

Maybe a new word is needed.

That. I only got married at 34. I’m several years past 35 but now have a toddler and am trying for DC2. In no way do I feel middle aged but certainly I wouldn’t put myself in the same category as uni students.

I wonder if younger middle age and older middle age would make sense as there is a huge gap between being a young adult and being old.

Middle age = whatever age I currently am plus 15 years.

I think property prices and uni fees have had a massive knock on effect. People live at home or are supported in some way by their parents for much longer so they get "babied" inadvertently.

This leads to an effect of young people actually having more disposable income for luxuries, travel and leisure, and an understandable feeling of entitlement to those things. A mortgage and babies at 25, formerly the norm, must seem quite unappealing now.

With that, societal norms have shifted. Sorry to TAAT but I'm thinking about the Shirley Valentine thread recently when it used to be considered nigh on on compulsory for women to have a perm, a big bottom and frumpy clothes once she hit 30 or became a mother. Now anything goes and a good thing too! One of my cousins married recently and his bride was 37. My mother was really shocked that she wore a full on strapless gown and veil "at her age" (she looked absolutely beautiful btw). "Old brides" were formerly expected to wear a matronly skirt suit they could wear again.

With all of the above, and women making better career progression, people are having children later too. Over 40 used to be really unusual to have a baby. Now it's not at all. I had my youngest at 40 and I feel that has kept me feeling young as my life is still full of dollies and Disney.

Well this has just cheered me right up as I hurtle towards 36 in a few weeks

Tbh I'm for the philosophy you're only as old as you feel. Been up with LO since 4am so yeh im really pretty rough and body aches right now so I feel about 95!

But i will happily take 35 as young (holding on to my youth!)

Things have changed a lot. My Grandmother was in her 50s when I was a child, she could barely walk with arthritis, she was always an old lady.

I went to FILs 50th birthday not long after I met DH. I realise everyone seems old when you're young but they were old

I'm 50 now and run 40 miles a week, cycle 50m and went paddle boarding withba group of similar aged friends for my birthday party

However, you're still a veteran at 35 (as a woman) as far as England Athletics is concerned and not many professional footballers play beyond 35.

I'm not sure there was ever a 25 year cut off for being young though. Surely middle age never started until 35 (I.e. half of your three score years and ten) so what was the bit inbetween?

I'm 37 and never really thought of myself as middle aged. Then again I have three children 15,12 and 9 so feel ancient half the time. My mums 55 so always think of her as being old even though she's not. I think her having me so young has messed up my view on what's old and what's not. My Nan is 82 so I'm lucky to have her still around as well and my children are very lucky to have a great grandmother.

It’s always been that way. Young and old are relative terms. When I was at school I thought my teachers, fresh out of college, were old ladies. When my D.C. were at school some of their teachers looked the same age as the students to me. When I started work I thought my 40 something colleagues were practically geriatrics because they were the same age as my parents. Now I look back on my 40 year old self and marvel at how young and slim and energetic I was.

My mum recently referred to her cousin and his partner as ‘such nice young men’. Both those ‘young men’ are retired and have their 60+ freedom bus passes!

It’s all relative.

I think 35 as the end of youth about matches my experience. That was the age I got married at, and about when I started scaling back the boozing and clubbing. Got my first mortgage the year after.

It's because middle-aged became a pejorative term. The expectation that people would become 'grown adults' at 21 or even 25, behaving responsibly and supporting the common good, diminished.

The more senior boomers were only teenagers during their numerical teens, then buckled down. I think the demise of manufacturing, rise of service economy, the flexible workforce and then gig economy has a lot to do with this - it's how business wants cheap labour to view itself.

Adulthood and maturity, not eternal youth, was once the goal.

We live longer. When they brought in the state pension in 1911 the average age to die was 68, you were older by 55, now the average age of death is 82 I think, middle age is considered 45-65 usually though this varies. I don't feel middle aged to honest, I've got friends my age with newborns.

I ferl ancient after reading this. Am 42

My 78yo Mum has just had a young girl (34) move in next door. At that age DM had been married for 10 years, owned her home.(with a mortgage) and had a 7yo and 2yo, so she sees a single woman just buying her first home as very young

It's been 35 for ages. I remember in my first job I was asked to be on a young persons interview panel to make up numbers - I was the youngest person on the team. I told the recruiter I was a bit to old at 24 and he told me "young person" was anything up to 35! That was 15 years ago.

I'm 32 and assume I'll live 'til about 90.
I don't feel young 'socially' because I'm married with 2 children but I feel like my body is still young if that makes sense.

35-45/50 needs a catchy name!

I also wouldn't call my parents elderly yet (58 and 64)

I agree its because we live/stay healthy longer.

Who said it was 25 maximum?

Life expectancies are longer.

The retirement age has changed - someone who is thirty-five now has thirty-five working years ahead of them.

The average age of a first-time mother is 28.8. The average age for a woman to marry is 35. The average first-time house buyer is 33.

It's not @thedaywewillremeber

Up to 65 is now considered middle aged. 65-70 is late middle age.

It's not about a number, it's about how fit and active you can be.

The days of dividing life expectancy by two and coming up with a 'midlife' number are over.

I think the WHO defines 45 as middle-aged. However, I wouldn’t say that anyone over 30 is ‘young’ (speaking as someone who turned 40 a few months ago).

I remember when one of the younger work colleagues said Debs was old. Debs is 51 and was absolutely raging that Layla (21) described her as ‘old’. Properly offended and everything 😂

Am I being U to even wonder why this matters?

People age differently. I've noticed that some people age very quickly, and the attitude that an arbitrary age somehow isn't "young" but should be referred to as something else, or you should act in some more middle aged way, is one of the most surefire ways of ageing quickly. I think it also correlates fairly closely with poorer health expectations and life expectancy.

The classic example would be the woman who gets pregnant at 15 and by the age of 25 has 3 children and lives quite a hard life keeping all that together. Compared to someone who goes to university for 4 years, has a gap year or 2 working abroad and having lots of different experiences, then goes back to university and does a Masters, then finds a graduate job along with lots of other graduates and buys her first flat, and eventually meets the serious boyfriend with whom she will eventually marry and have children with. The former is going to age much more quickly than the latter and have experiences in life that may make her more cynical.

I also think you'd need pretty ill health not to still be young at 35 (or whatever).

Some people are also obsessed by age. I have a couple of lovely friends who literally cannot have a single conversation without mentioning their age in it somewhere, as in "now that I'm old". When in actual fact both are fit, active and in full health and still in their prime of life and in no way showing signs of becoming old. I think its particularly bad in Britain for making women over a certain age feel almost guilty for not adopting a pinafore and headscarf and hiding away. Other countries have noticably more women over 55 reading the news and not being pensioned off. Its very noticable.

65-69 "considered" middle age, I don't know many people of 138. The news/papers talk about elderly people/ pensioners, but surely today's older generation will be 67 before they become a pensioner. I had a friend retire at 50, and one of my DH's relatives retired in their 48's because they could afford to. 100 years ago, 20 would have been middle age, because of the hard life,poor health care,etc. I thought this was going be another "covid" thread, should we lock up the over 40's.