Welcome to Middle Age!: (And Other Cultural Fictions) (John D & C T Macarthur FNDTN Ser Mental Health/DEV MF) - Tapa dura

The symptoms of middle age are often defined in terms of lower back pain, mortgages, and an aversion to loud late-night activities. This construction of "midlife", most often rendered in chronological, biological and medical terms, has become an accepted reality to European Americans, and has spread to non-Western capitals such as Tokyo and New Delhi. This study explores the significance of this pervasive cultural representation compared to other cultures where "middle age" does not exist. It examines topics ranging from the Western ideology of "midlife decline", to cultural representations of mature adulthood which ignore middle age. It also looks at the myths surrounding the life span from 30 to 70.

The idea of "midlife", and particularly the decline associated with the period, has become widespread in Euro-American culture. The symptoms of middle age are equally pervasive: back pain, mortgage payments, and an aversion to loud late-night activities. This pathology of midlife has even recently begun to be exported to all territories in the contemporary world system; people around the world are being invited to change the way they think about mature adulthood and to adopt the middle-class American version of middle age. Welcome to Middle Age! (And Other Cultural Fictions) is a welcome antidote to this epidemic, providing a refreshing examination of both this received idea of midlife and of alternative "fictions" that operate in cultures where middle age does not even constitute a life stage.