I’m 32 but wish I was a midlifer – they have it so much better

Since turning 32 last month, all I can think about is how cool middle-aged people are. No, seriously. Newspapers publish pieces titled “Middle-aged women are blowing up their lives” and op-eds about why they’re popular with younger men. Take the new series of Tina Fey’s Four Seasons (currently No 3 on Netflix), which follows three couples in their 50s. One couple is only just deciding whether to have kids (via a surrogate), another discovers the joys of smoking weed, and a recently single woman has no difficulty meeting handsome suitors.

I used to be terrified of middle age. I presumed I’d be deprived of the hedonistic pleasures of my 20s, and living too far from the friends I’d cemented during my thirties. For decades, academic papers found that wellbeing bottomed out in middle age, dubbed the “U-curve of happiness”, while the young were optimistic, the old were at peace. Middle age was where you realised life hadn’t turned out the way you planned – but hadn’t accepted it yet.

But I’m fast discovering middle age now looks different to that, in particular because there are so many ways to do the things that were once the preserve of the young. In just the last week, The Sunday Times ran a piece on countryside raves for midlifers, and the New Statesman ran one on how, for over-40s, “day clubs” are the new nightclubs. I’ve recently started attending parties which start at 7pm to accommodate parents, and can’t help but notice how free of inhibitions middle-aged attendees seem. They dance like they spent long enough caring what others thought, and decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

Likewise, long backpacking trips were once associated with elephant trouser-wearing twenty-somethings, but midlifers have recently popularised the “golden gap year”. Indeed, data from the Civil Aviation Authority last month suggested the biggest rise in British solo travellers was in the 55-59 and 60-64 age brackets – both up 118 per cent over the last decade.

So middle age appeals because you no longer lose access to the perks of being young. But crucially, because you do lose the downsides of being young. For the first time in generations, the average 22-year-old is now more miserable than their parents. A lot of this can be put down to the unique pressures affecting Gen Z, including social media and a mental health crisis. But even from where I stand as a 32-year-old, middle age seems like an upgrade.

For one thing, there’s the reduction of economic precarity. Over the last generation, the percentage of 25 to 32-year-olds renting has almost doubled from 21 to 39 per cent. Anyone who entered the job market in the last decade has faced a succession of economic shocks – Brexit, Covid, the Ukraine war and now the Iran war. And that was before AI – which, as last week’s Milburn report suggested, now primarily threatens the jobs of the young because it automates the administrative roles that serve as the first rungs on the career ladder. It’s going to be a while until AI comes for the middle-aged, who are more likely to be in senior, strategic roles.

I used to be scared that my remaining single friends would pair off in middle age, like they were disappearing onto Noah’s Ark and I’d be left in the rain. But recent research suggests the opposite – single people become increasingly satisfied with their solo lives after 40 as they drop societal expectations. And the nuclear family is no longer a script for middle age, as per a story last month about 26 women living together in a co-housing community for over-50s in north London. And of course, if you don’t want to be single, there’s still reason to be hopeful. When I complain about the 30-something dating pool drying up or being full of commitment-phobes, I’m told by middle-aged women that post-40 there will be an influx of self-aware divorcés, who have learned lessons from the breakdown of marriage.

Ultimately, I think what I crave about being older is feeling less uncertainty. There’s so much that’s unresolved at my age about where you and your career will end up. My generation feels acutely the gap between where we were told we’d be in our 30s – established in our career with a house and kids – and where we are. Sure, technology has increased our choices, but with it, the agonising and indecision. Do we want to freeze our eggs before it’s too late, or our faces before the wrinkles set in? Does the option of working remotely mean we should move to Lisbon or Bali, or would that just make us feel rootless?

This all tallies with recent evidence that the U-curve of happiness may be less universal than once thought. This is partly because previous literature relied on comparing different age groups at a single moment in time. When researchers follow the same person over time, they find a weaker midlife slump. Recent data also suggests that older people are more resilient to setbacks and better at pursuing what really makes them happy. For young people, this is an encouraging prospect.

Before, middle age looked like possibilities narrowing. But now it feels like the point of opportunity. That’s the strange thing. Perhaps you think it’s defeatist that, as a 32-year-old, I instead want to be middle-aged. But I think it’s exciting. For the first time, ageing is no longer something the young need to be afraid of.