More Praise for In Our Prime
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
“In this brilliant, wide-ranging book . . . one persistent theme is that the very definition of middle age, or midlife, is a moving target. . . . A story packed with surprising twists, masterfully told . . . Cohen’s lively prose and thoughtful insights make this a joy to read.”
—Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe
“A fascinating biography of the idea of middle age . . . Solidly researched.”
—Gail Sheehy, bestselling author of Passages, for The New York Times
“Lucid, straightforward, and conversational . . . A thorough—and thoroughly fascinating—cultural history of aging.”
—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
“With lively writing, astute observations, and extensive research, this cultural history looks well beyond cougars and Botox.”
—Karen Holt, Oprah.com
“A lively, well-researched chronicle of the social and scientific forces that brought midlife America to its current befuddled state.”
—Laura Shapiro, The New York Times Book Review
“In Our Prime is a fascinating study. . . . A book whose appeal is likely to extend beyond the middle-age demographic to readers approaching or looking back on that key stage of life.”
—Jerry Harkavy, Associated Press
“Witty and engaging . . . this comprehensive and entertaining social history highlights the possibilities of the middle years—and shows how middle age reflects the attitudes and customs of each generation that passes through it.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A thoroughly engaging cultural history.”
—Christine Sismondo, Toronto Star
“A comprehensive look at middle age through the eyes of scientists, historians, psychologists, medical doctors, marketers, and many more.”
—Julie Carl, Winnipeg Free Press
“In Our Prime is a fascinating biography of the ‘idea of middle age’ in American society. . . . Comprehensively researched . . . A thoughtful inquiry.”
—Tom Lavoie, Shelf Awareness
“A cool, well-documented account that puts the concept of middle age into historical context.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Patricia Cohen creates a delightful concoction of social history, up-to-date social science, and first-rate journalism. In Our Prime is a compelling and well-documented account of why midlife has become such a prominent stage of life. The book is a real treat and is a wonderful source for courses in gerontology and more broadly the life course.”
—Frank Furstenberg, professor of sociology at the
University of Pennsylvania
“In Our Prime is a wonderful resource for students of all ages interested in understanding what it means to be middle-aged. Patricia Cohen’s book should be required reading for everyone wanting to know the real deal about midlife.”
—Margie E. Lachman, Fierman Professor of Psychology and director of the Lifespan Initiative on Healthy Aging at Brandeis University and editor of the Handbook of Midlife Development
“In this extraordinary, comprehensive book about middle age Patricia Cohen provides us with a wise and unique appraisal of recent scientific research on human development during midlife, and describes how it has dealt a death blow to false myths about the midlife crisis and other stages of development. This is just one of the many stories she includes in her review of the continuing changes in ideas regarding middle age during the past 150 years.”
—Orville Gilbert Brim Jr., former director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development and former president of the Russell Sage Foundation
“An informative and at times surprising biography of middle age.”
—Glenn C. Altschuler, professor of American studies and vice president for University Relations at Cornell University
“The notion that middle age is essentially a cultural construction is not one that will be surprising to historians. But New York Times journalist Patricia Cohen makes this case with breadth and verve. . . . In Our Prime is a serious and useful survey in the subject likely to remain a standard of its kind for some time to come.”
—Jim Cullen, George Mason University’s History News Network
“Before allowing yourself another distressing look in the mirror, I recommend Patricia Cohen’s magisterial new book on the social construction of middle age. Cohen moves seamlessly from the origins of the concept to the newest scientific findings, all the while sustaining a fascinating narrative.”
—Juliet Schor, author of Born to Buy: The Commercialized
Child and the New Consumer Culture and True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy
“With intelligence and wit, Patricia Cohen has written a wonderfully readable book that details the untold history of middle age and its surprising journey through the popular culture and the research lab. A brilliant analyst and keen observer, she connects the story of middle age to the story of America’s emergence into the modern world. Anyone who is, has been, or will be middle-aged will want to read this book.”
—Barbara Strauch, author of The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain and science editor at The New York Times
“Patricia Cohen has written the liberation anthem of middle age. She shows us that there is nothing inevitable about spending middle age in the panicked pursuit of youth; we do it because the ad men tell us to. It is a cultural fiction that middle age need be approached with dread. In this carefully researched and skillfully told history of middle age in America, Cohen shows us that our middle years can be years of prestige, autonomy, and confidence—the best years of our lives.”
—Tina Rosenberg, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World
“Patricia Cohen deftly examines the shifting definitions of middle age. She demonstrates how TV, movies, and advertising have shaped us. Most intriguing of all is Cohen’s critical assessment of our huge self-help industry and its ability to manipulate midlife anxiety. In Our Prime is an important book, fascinating, gorgeously researched, and extremely readable.”
—Patricia Bosworth, author of Jane Fonda:
The Private Life of a Public Woman
Advance Praise for In Our Prime
“With intelligence and wit, Patricia Cohen has written a wonderfully readable book that details the untold history of middle age and its surprising journey through the popular culture and the research lab. A brilliant analyst and keen observer, she connects the story of middle age to the story of America’s emergence into the modern world, bringing to life the filmmakers and admen, scientists and hucksters who have shaped our understanding and experience of the middle years.”
—Barbara Strauch, author of The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain
“In this extraordinary, comprehensive book about middle age, Patricia Cohen provides us with a wise and unique appraisal of recent scientific research on human development during midlife and describes how it has dealt a deathblow to false myths about the midlife crisis.”
—Orville Gilbert Brim Jr., former director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development
“Patricia Cohen has written the liberation anthem of middle age. She shows us that there is nothing inevitable about spending middle age in the panicked pursuit of youth; we do it because the admen tell us to. It is a cultural fiction that middle age need be approached with dread. In this carefully researched and skillfully told history of middle age in America, Cohen shows us that our middle years can be years of prestige, autonomy, and confidence—the best years of our lives.”
—Tina Rosenberg, author of Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World
“Before allowing yourself another distressing look in the mirror, I recommend Patricia Cohen’s magisterial new book on the social construction of middle age. Cohen moves seamlessly from the origins of the concept to the newest scientific findings, all the while sustaining a fascinating narrative.”
—Juliet B. Schor, author of Born to Buy and True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy
“Patricia Cohen deftly examines the shifting definitions of middle age. She demonstrates how TV, movies, and advertising have shaped us. Most intriguing of all is Cohen’s critical assessment of our huge self-help industry and its ability to manipulate midlife anxiety. In Our Prime is an important book, fascinating, gorgeously researched, and extremely readable.”
—Patricia Bosworth, author of Jane Fonda: The Private Life of a Public Woman
From the New York Times reporter whose beat is culture and ideas comes a fascinating, revelatory, and timely social history of the concept of middle age.
For the first time ever, the middle-aged make up the biggest, richest, and most influential segment of the country, yet the history of middle age has remained largely untold. This important and immensely readable book finally fills the gap. In Our Prime is a biography of the idea of middle age from its invention in the late nineteenth century to its current place at the center of American society, where it shapes the way we view our families, our professional obligations, and our inner lives.
Patricia Cohen ranges over the entire landscape of midlife, exploring how its biological, psychological, and social definitions have shifted from one generation to the next. Middle age has been a symbol both of decline and of power and wealth. Explaining why, Cohen takes readers from early-twentieth-century factories that refused to hire middle-aged men to twenty-first-century high-tech laboratories where researchers are currently conducting cutting-edge experiments on the middle-aged brain and body.
PATRICIA COHEN has been a New York Times reporter for thirteen years. She has also worked at The Washington Post and Rolling Stone. Her stories have led to numerous television and radio appearances. She is also a regular participant in the “TimesTalks” series and New York Times podcasts.
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Photo credits: Frontispiece, page 3, page 192: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Page 15: Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, NY, 55.107. Page 32: The New York Times Photo Archive. Page 60: Nikolas Muray. Page 80, page 242: The New York Times. Page 99: Robert Walker/The New York Times. Page 123: Courtesy of Bert Brim. Page 140: Waisman Brain Imaging Lab, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. Page 163: Ladies’ Home Journal, May 1928, page 77. Page 180: New York Public Library Picture Collection, NY, Image ID: 807971. Page 211: Associated Press. Page 228: Ken Regan/Showtime
Lyrics from the song “Life Begins at Forty” are used by permission of JACK YELLEN MUSIC.
For Alexander,
who proved that middle age is the best age of all
A man in middle life still feels young, and
age and death lie far ahead of him.
—Carl Jung (1921)
Contents
Part I. The Invention of Middle Age
1. The Prime Meridian
2. Now and Then
3. The Tick of the Time Clock
4. The Renaissance of the Middle-Aged
5. The Middle-Aged Body
6. Middle Age Enters the Modern Age
Part II. Middle Age Is Rediscovered
7. The Sixties and Seventies: The Era of Middle Age
8. Middle Age Under the Microscope
9. The Middle-Aged Brain
Part III. The Midlife Industrial Complex
10. Consuming Desire
11. Middle Age Medicine
12. Middle Age Sex
13. Complex Accomplices
14. The Arrival of the Alpha Boomer
15. In Our Prime
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
IN OUR
PRIME
Part I
The Invention of Middle Age
1
The Prime Meridian
“The Four Seasons of Life: Middle Age—The Season of Strength,” Currier & Ives, 1868
For the first time, middle-aged men and women are the largest, most influential, and richest segment in the country. Floating somewhere between 40 and 64, they constitute one-third of the population and control nearly seventy percent of its net worth. In booms and recessions, a trillion-dollar economy feeds and fuels their needs, whims, and desires. Better-educated and healthier than their predecessors, these early and late midlifers are happier, more productive, and more involved than any other age group. Women are part of the first generation to enter their 40s and 50s after the feminist movement, and they have options that their mothers and grandmothers could barely imagine. Life spans have increased as scientific advances have overcome many of the body’s once-unavoidable limitations. Viagra has recharged the sex lives of middle-aged men. Beauty treatments like Botox and facial fillers can erase the stigmata of facial wrinkles. New surgical procedures and recuperative strategies for worn-out knees and creaky rotator cuffs allow aging bodies to ski moguls and surf twenty-footers.
A century ago, circumstances—from the disillusionment that followed World War I to the emergence of Hollywood and mass consumerism—conspired to create a cult of youth. “The hero of our 20th century” was the adolescent, the historian Philippe Ariès declared in his seminal book Centuries of Childhood (1963), celebrated for his “purity, physical strength, naturism, spontaneity and joie de vivre.” Those circumstances have changed. Now, with an unprecedented number of Americans in midlife who can expect to live three, four, or five more decades, it seems the twenty-first century belongs to the middle-ager.
Yet if this is the best possible moment to be middle-aged, why then is this period of life still commonly greeted with resignation or regret, disappointment or evasion? No one is eager to show off the AARP membership card that arrives in the mail unbidden shortly before you turn fifty. Birthday congratulations are replace
d with jokes about hearing loss, plunging libidos, and afternoon naps. Middle age is a punch line.
Hundreds of self-help manuals, spiritual handbooks, and memoirs promise to guide anxious readers through the middle decades. Cooking with Hot Flashes, How to Survive Middle Age, In a Dark Wood: Personal Essays by Men on Middle Age are among the titles that offer advice on sex, exercise, diet, looks, childbirth, elderly parents, menopause, midlife crises, divorce, remarriage, religion, and memory loss. Countless online blogs and print columns supply personal recollections, counsel, and relentless cheerleading. Facebook and Twitter are flooded with middle-agers’ quotidian dramas.
Such anxieties and ministrations would have thoroughly baffled Americans living in the early 1800s because the concept of middle age did not exist; it had not been invented yet. Middle age may seem like a Universal Truth, a fundamental law of nature, like Earth’s rotation around the sun or the force of gravity, but it is as much a man-made creation as polyester or the rules of chess.
The notion that the term “middle age” would be a source of identity, shaping the way we envision our inner lives, view our family and professional obligations, and locate ourselves in the community and culture, would have been as alien to our ancestors as iPads and airplanes. For ordinary men and women, middle age was not a topic that merited reflection or analysis. Scholars did not devote years to its study. Periodicals and books did not publish essays on the topic, nor did correspondents and diarists devote pages in their letters or journals to its qualities. Advice manuals did not refer to behavior, clothes, or activities that were appropriate for people in their middle years as opposed to any other time of life. There were no medicines, organizations, leisure activities, treatments, music, or empowerment gurus designated specifically for people in middle age. Prior to 1900, the Census Bureau did not even bother to ask for a date of birth. You were young, you were an adult, and then you were old.
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