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.

I was definitely going on my thirties! I'm 54 now.
Surely it's a function of the average lifespan increasing?

Yay thank god I'm still young! Although in my head I'm still 18, it's refusing to believe the real number.

To a twelve year old thirty seems pretty ancient. To an eighty year old it feels very young. Perceptions of age are about how old you are.

25 was never a universally agreed 'young person' limit, and 35 isn't now. It depends entirely on your perspective or the perspective of the person writing. You read one article.

However, factors like people living longer and the change in the average age people leave home (due to it having become more common to do further education, or due to changes in the job market) potentially affect this.

Many parents treat there teenagers in such an infantile way that they’re still growing up during there 20s, parents have delayed the process of adulthood

Hit 30 and you’re youth is done! I’ve never considered a 30 something “young”. There is of course a difference between not being young and being hardcore middle aged.

When was 25 old??

I agree with @IncandescentSilver even though at 50 I fall in to a category that hurts, a bit!

Nobody thinks 35 is a teenager, nobody really thinks a 35 year old can behave with exactly the same freedoms as an 18 year old, but it is still young and you'll waste '35'' if you feel you're not still young at 35

I agree with OwlOne. I'm not 35 yet, but I don't want to feel like half my life is over since statistically in my country, women live to be 85, and many people in my family have lived to be in their 90s. 35 is still young in so many ways.

30 is young. But then I have liked the expression middle youth for...quite a long time.

I have friends in their early 30s who live with their parents and still get IDd. They certainly don't seem like people 'approaching middle age'.

In China, a 45 year old is an old person. Women retire at 50 and men at 55. A 35 year old is well into middle age.

A lot of people in their mid-thirties now would have been coming out if university around, or just before the 2008 financial crash. Then you have the fact that a lot of careers expect unpaid internships to have a chance of getting a job there (which also cuts out a huge demographic but thats another thing). As a result a lot of people I know spent their 20s working but not really establishing a well paid career - think bouncing from internship to masters degree to low paid job via a shift in career to another entry level job. Often while also working evening jobs in restaurants etc to fund the unpaid internships, or staying with their parents to save money. As a result when people entered their thirties they were only just establishing a career and probably were a lot younger than many of the senior people in the organisation.
Plus house prices have priced many (not all) people out of the housing ladder. So unless they received significant help from parents many mid-thirties people are still renting, some may still be in house shares etc.
Those two things combined have helped to create a sense of extended youth. I don't like the whole "boomers v millenials" rhetoric, but I do grit my teeth a little when my step dad talks about how much less responsible/childish young people are today (by young he includes the mid-thirties, so middle aged).

I think also youth is so idealised, particularly in women that it hurts to consider you no longer have it. I was really unexpectedly depressed when I turned 30 because I was no longer "young" even though I was in the best position in life I had been for a long time. But the phase "middle aged women" has loads of negative associations even though it really really shouldn't.

In my family people tend to live into their 90's and on sometimes even beyond that,so I tend to still feel pretty young and that I have a lot of time left. Genetically some people do literally age faster than others.

I think there’s a bit of Peter Pan syndrome going on and there’s a variety of reasons for this.
I’m 35 and was 26 when I had my first child and 32 when we had our last baby.
I was married , had travelled, completed a degree and post grad and really didn’t think it was that young at all. Now my friends are all having their first at 36/37 etc and it’s not because of circumstances (they have been with their dh’s as long as I have/no fertility issues) they just wanted to do other things and that’s totally understandable, we just chose different times to do things.
But I have noticed that some of them seem quite shocked at having their age referred to at appointments etc as being older ftm, I think 36/37 for a first baby while more normal is a little older than ideal (although of course that’s not everyone’s choice etc). I think because people look and feel younger (good exercise routine, lots of beauty treatments available etc) it comes as a bit of a shock when your in the situation like having a baby and health care professionals are referring to your age as old ..

@yetanothernamitynamechange, very good points!

@Lex01

"Average age of menopause is 52.

Perimenopause begins as early as 10 years before that.

So you could be in perimenopause by 41 - makes 35 not seem so young!"

35 is not 41. It's 6 years away from it. That's like saying 12 is basically an adult because it's 6 years away from 18!

It's a process though isn't it? 12 is well on the way compared to a baby. Puberty has likely started. We don't become adults one day between 17 and 18. We head that way year on year.

Same with menopause - it's all happening in the background whether we realise it or not.

Ironic that it was the boomers themselves who invented the phrase "Never trust anyone over 30".

https://medium.com/@MKaines/baby-boomers-critics-of-millennials-once-said-ignore-anyone-over-30-9b2f694b8decc_

It is young!
At 35 I had still not met my OH, still not had children.

In Ancient Rome it used to be until 40. Just saying. Though just like here, not universally agreed.

Because, finally, people are seeing sense and that it's not all about being under 25.

Because life expectancy has massively increased in the previous generation. My grandparents all died in their sixties. My parents' generation are living well into their eighties and nineties.
The markers of adulthood: permanent job, marriage, mortgage, kids etc all happen much later so until you have a couple of them, you are still considered a young person. On a recent thread a poster was told she was far too young to have a baby at 24!!! My mum was told she was knocking on a bit by starting her family at 22.

wrt menopause,i'm 50 and my only symptom was heavy periods which I take progesterone only pill for and that's sorted it. it hasn't made me feel OLD. I feel like a very young older adult, not an older young adult. It's not like you're queuing up waiting to die.

Also agree that a 35 year old has AT LEAST six years until she could possibly be in peri menopause but it's much more likely to be a decade more than a decade, 13 years probably. So stupid to say 35 is old because you could be in peri menopause as ''soon'' as 6 years.

It cannot go on markers like having babies and buying houses. What if you have not managed to do any of those things by your 50s? You will not be young