The truth behind the midlife crisis

By Eleonore Voisard and BBC Motion GalleryFeatures correspondent

Studies have shown that people between the age of 35 and 55 experience a dip in life satisfaction. But not all experts believe in the concept of a ‘midlife crisis’.

When most people picture someone in the throes of a midlife crisis, they imagine an ageing man with a bit of a gut and a receding hairline, buying sports cars and grappling with his mortality. Richard Shweder, professor at the University of Chicago, says that for those with a more secular worldview, the stereotype isn’t too far off from reality. In a world full of choice, the realisation that you’ve made the wrong one can naturally compel you to reverse course and seize the day.

But according to several researchers, the midlife crisis as many know it describes the experience of only a narrow range of people – namely, white men in the West with relatively high social class – and excludes the various other crises experienced by others. Now, the researchers want to do away with the concept altogether.

Alexandra M Freund, a professor at the University of Zurich, says there’s no reason to believe there are more crises in midlife compared to other times in life. If anything, there are fewer crises than in your adolescence or young adulthood, when your lack of life experience makes it much more difficult to cope.

’Midlife crisis’ has become a catch-all term because people understand it, according to Susan Krauss Whitbourne of the University of Massachusetts, but it can be more accurately thought of as a replacement for saying, “I’m feeling depressed or I’m questioning my life.” This, researchers agree, is a sentiment found in ages on both sides of the 35-to-55-year-old norm.

This story originally appeared on BBC Reel’s Psychology of You, a series uncovering the mysteries of our minds.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o67CZ5qopV%2BsvLO3y6KdnmeRp8Gqr8ueZmtoYmV9cn%2BQZquhnV2pv7bAx2aZnqCZo7FuwMeeZKahlKG2p7GMnKmiq5mo