 Good evening, hello. I'm Genevieve Jacobs from ABC radio, triple six ABC Canberra, and I'm delighted to be here to chair the panel discussion on the myths and miseries of middle age. This is part of National Psychology Week. It's a joint venture between the Department of Psychology here at the ANU and the Australian Psychological Society. And I want to begin too by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people, the first custodians of this land where we sit this night, and his culture is among the oldest ongoing cultures in human history. We celebrate and acknowledge their presence, and I also acknowledge any elders who may be present this evening. I want to begin the panel this evening by saying that I'm 43 years old. I have no idea how that happened, but in a broader sense tonight is all about unravelling the meaning, the mysteries, and the myths of being middle age. Although I have to say I was a little bit bemused by the flyer that went around to promote this event. You've got the men growing ponytails, buying sports cars and going out with 20 year olds. The women are condemned to overdosing on valium and mourning the empty nestlings. I really think there's an opportunity for that to go the other way around. Either that or I want to be a bloke, one of those. And now look, don't tell me too that you're not all wondering how middle aged you are, because otherwise really what else are you doing here? And the people who have been taking the bookings tell me they've had many a plaintiff phone call saying, if I make a booking, that doesn't mean I am middle age, does it? But seriously though folks, middle age is a time of great challenge, of great transition, from youth and vigour to the likelihood of health problems, facing the reality of the ageing body, for women the end of the reproductive years, and sometimes the heartbreak of having left it perhaps too late to have children wishing that you've had more children. It's a time when you can be on top in your career with all the stresses that that can entail, or perhaps on the other hand, suddenly on a job queue and wondering what on earth there is for a 53 year old. It's also frequently a time for wondering just what course your life has taken, whether what you've done is enough, what your legacy will be. The fact that you are halfway through life itself, I think prompts that discussion about what do I do from here on in? What do I do to make the rest of my life more meaningful, more truly me? And perhaps that can serve your job, your career, perhaps even your marriage. Is it too late to make it all mean more in the time that's left to us? For some of course it's a time when life is finally just absolutely terrific. You're on charge, you're on top, you feel absolutely confident, really sure of yourself. So what are the myths and the miseries of middle age? Let me start by introducing you to our panel this evening. To my right, Associate Professor Michael Plato. He's a social psychologist with the Department of Psychology here at the ANU. He's looked widely at how social context determines which identity we present into the world. In other words, perhaps how that devoted company man turns into the hell-roaser with a Ferrari when given half a chance and early retirement. Dr. Christine Phillips is a senior lecturer on social factors and health at the ANU Medical School. She deals with the physical and medical realities of aging or why that rager in the Ferrari is going to do his back in with the new girlfriend. Mrs. Susie Keiser is a PhD candidate and her research focuses on occupational stress in middle age. She's looked at how stressful things can be when you're in the midst of the career, perhaps also in the midst of child rearing and under pressure on all sides. Dr. Ross Wilkinson has examined relationships and attachments through life. He's with the Department of Psychology here at the ANU. He asks whether middle age is what it used to be. Once a time for nurturing, now also a time for asking just what have I achieved? What is my legacy? Dr. Tim Windsor has been involved with the Path Through Life Project at the Centre for Mental Health Research here at the ANU. He's looking at middle age as a developmental stage where the transitions that happen in family and at work can influence your personal life, your growth, your direction. Professor Don Verne on the end is from the Department of Psychology. He's spent years looking at stress and its relationship to illnesses, many of which are the province of middle age, its uncertainties, the changes that it brings both physical and emotional. Now Don is extremely well positioned to take on this topic because as he told me yesterday on the radio, his middle age is absolutely not old. That would be somewhat about five years beyond him. So we're going to begin our panel discussion tonight and there's also time for questions right throughout the discussion. We've got two microphones positioned here and here. So if you'd like to ask a question, please just raise your hand, catch my eye and we'll get the microphone to you. Please note though that I did say questions, not statements, not rambling discursive discussions. But there's also a fair bit of territory that we need to cover this evening. So do be patient. If you haven't heard me raise something that interests you particularly, then there's every likelihood we will get to it. We're going to try and cover health and wellbeing, psychological issues, stresses, relationships, the whole gamut. So let's begin. And I want to start by asking the panels what they think it means to actually be middle aged. Susie. Okay. I guess when we talk about any age, we're really taking into consideration a number of factors. So sure, chronological age, but also life stage, health, capacity to work, societal contributions, norms and expectations about what we all think middle age is, as well as psychological processes. And I think Don raised something really interesting yesterday. He said that it was he defined middle age as being on a sliding scale five years above anything that he was. So I think that may also be a sign of middle age. Don, would you like to respond? Not you. Well, probably being the oldest on the panel, I can take the prerogative you see of using that sliding scale. Because one of the important things for me is that any age stage, but middle age possibly particularly is a state of mind as much as anything else. It's how you act about yourself, how you feel about yourself. It's how you define yourself within the context that you live in. And taking a fixed and arbitrary definition based on an age range, I think is a is an entirely incorrect way of going. So I happily admit to being middle age and probably, you know, well into middle age. But middle age is going to progress as I get older. So Don, at 83, 84... I will still be middle age. Does raise the question of how old you intend being, Don? Well, I've always said to my son that I intend to live long enough to be the sort of nuisance to him that I was to my father. Ross Wilkinson, what's middle age? I think it really has changed over time. I think there's been some pretty big shifts in the way we construct our lives post-war. If you look now, the average age at which people get married for males now is about 30 years of age. For women it's about 28. Back in my day, when I was a younger man, both of my sisters were married by the time they were 21 and had children by the time they were 21. So if you kind of think about now, if someone has a child when they're 30, well, by the time they're 40, the child is still only 10 years old and by the time they're 50, they're 20. So I think what we classify as middle age has kind of moved. We also know that we live longer as well, so that you aim to, that middle period is extended further. I think complicating it too is that with each generation, the kind of attitudes we have towards things like employment and relationships are changing. The average length of a marriage now is only about eight and a half years, if you look at the statistics. Now, when you think back to what you think marriage might mean, or what it might have meant for the previous generation, you can see that that might mean something for what you want to think about as being middle aged. Michael Plato, someone said to me today that 60 is the new 50, which is optimistic. What do you think being middle aged is? I think my ideas about these have to do with, kind of like what Ross was saying, I think that this is a very fluid and kind of flexible, but historically fluid and historically flexible thing. So rather than kind of saying to you, there's a definite psychological stage of these ages, these are the things that happen for all people at all times in all cultures. I think that's unquestionably wrong, that we have to understand the historical context in which we are. And it's not just about people living longer, it's about the economic opportunities we have to achieve goals and to start that family or to pursue other life goals, those opportunities. So our life progresses not in the absence of a social context or an historical context. Our life progresses and is always bound by and constrained many respects by the historical context and the economic context and the political context we live in and the cultural context. So I'm kind of not answering a question, actually, you can see that. But what I'm saying is that I think it's fluid and dynamic and as I think Don was saying, it's also our psychological representation and that representation, that understanding that we have about our life at any given point in time is going to be bound by these historical and cultural events. So whatever we might say today, and I didn't know I was middle aged until Don told me I was middle aged. So again, but it's so our understanding of it is going to be very, that is each of our, not the professional understanding, but each of our own subjective experiences of middle aged is going to be bound in some ways by the cultural and historical context we find ourselves. So that's kind of a roundabout answer probably. Tim Winsor, are you middle aged? Will anyone cop to being middle aged on the panel? I found a cusp, I'm on the cusp, but while I agree with what all the other panelists have said, I'm actually going to try and answer your question. Because when we do, when we do research, sometimes we have to be quite subjective and we have to make a judgement in order to break up our data into little chunks that we can make meaningful comparisons between. And the modal entry age of midlife is typically regarded as being around 40 and the modal exit year is between about 60 and 65. So until Don tells us how old he is. Okay, Christine Phillips, is there a medical definition of middle age? No, there is a question. Let me answer something that other people have said around numbers. I think middle age is probably a time when we become very fearful of numbers. That's the time when people say, I won't disclose my age. I'm 47, so I am middle aged. My 15 year old son came up with a beautiful way of thinking about this. He said, after you turn 46, you should stop using numbers. So you should be 47 and then 40 great. And then 45. And I thought that was a lovely way of stepping away from the idea that once we hit middle age, we are fearful of those numbers. On your point about the question about is there a medical definition? No, there isn't. But there are some biological verities that kick in around about 50. Everybody who's turned 50 and had their brain present from the government of their bowel cancer screening test, probably is having to think, that means the government thinks I'm middle aged. Anyway, this is when mortality starts breathing down our necks. We access free mammograms at the age of 50. We have to start to think about prostate cancer screening. And menopause starts to kick in. And the age of menopause does not appear to have changed. No matter how much we've got older, we still hit menopause, historically, at the same age. So biologically, these transitions occur in our body and we start to contemplate the changing of our bodies. And that's not a bad thing at about the age of 50. Surely that's going to vary, though, from person to person. I mean, I would assume that there are some tremendously unfit 30-year-olds and some 47-year-olds who could take them any day. Absolutely. But I wasn't using fitness as a sign of whether you're middle aged or not. I was actually thinking of the biological transitions that occur. And menopause, I think, is a pretty classic transition. And it occurs in the early 50s. And it occurred in the early 50s centuries ago, as well, it would appear. We don't have accounts of people going through menopause in their 30s in the past. And we do not anticipate that in the future, people will have menopause in their 60s. They're going to probably stay where they are at the moment. Can I ask you a question? Is that all right? Yeah. I mean, the question is historical. So from my perspective, kind of placing this kind of in a social, historical, cultural context, I wonder, though, so I have no doubt that women might reach menopause around the same time. Were they considered middle age or were they considered old? Okay, so I think that, again, seems to kind of address some of our points here. So yes, it's not a question that women biologically would reach menopause at a particular age. But what we understand to be middle age may change historically and culturally. And the way that we would view a menopause as a woman obviously changed, considered a 50-year-old woman who's going through menopause now sees herself as having 30, 40 years more of active life as a head of her. That's right. Yeah. So it's a social construct that's quite different. Don, to you, there's a strong connection with stress and illness that begins to be quite marked in middle age. How does that manifest itself? Well, I think the connection starts much, much earlier because stress starts to biologically affect the body and psychologically affect the mind at pretty much any age range. We know, for example, that adolescence is not anywhere near the stress-free period that a lot of people once thought it was. We know that early adulthood brings with it its own stressors and I could just, you know, keep talking about that and I won't. But the important point is that stress begins early and accumulates and its biological effects accumulates. The thing about middle age is that the sorts of cumulative effects that we see of stress don't manifest themselves as illness until middle age. So that, you know, by the time we get to be 50, 55, 60, the cumulative effects of stress on the cardiovascular system are starting to show themselves. We're starting to become hypertensive. Occasionally, we will go worse than that and develop coronary artery disease and even go on and have a heart attack. The evidence, I think, on cardiovascular disease is really quite persuasive. The evidence in other areas is perhaps not quite so persuasive, but there's still some evidence in relation to some of the cancers and so on. So I think the big issue there, Genevieve, is that we don't realise necessarily that what we're building up is a profile of risk and it's not just a simple stress risk. It's a risk where stress interacts with things like risk factors, with our tendency to smoke and to smoke more, our tendency to eat unhealthy diets and so on and so forth. But the big thing is that often a lot of these things don't become manifest until we're 60, 65 or whatever. It's one of the big problems with getting young people to adopt healthy lifestyles. They don't see the salience of doing that because they know that it's going to be 40 years down the track before anything nasty is likely to happen to them. So I think it's a rather insidious picture when we talk about stress. And of course, there's also a great deal going on in our lives in this middle-aged period and we see the classic picture of the stressed middle-aged executive who then has the massive heart attack. This is a cumulative effect. Absolutely. And the stressors may change over time. The sorts of stressors an adolescent is going to have may well be very different. Ah, in all probability, very different. The kinds of stressors that an adult experiences. And middle-aged, as we've already alluded to, brings with it a range of stressors in and of itself, particularly late middle-aged, because then you're starting to look at that big transition into, God, I shudder to say it, old age and retirement and things of that sort. And that in itself can comprise stressors. You touched on a really big one, I think, early on. And that is the unexpected unemployment of many people in middle-aged. Absolutely tragic and can have quite tragic consequences. I think the number of case reports of the 50-year-old, 55-year-old, coming home, having just been retrenched from what he thought, and I think it's typically a male thing, was a secure job. And then having it in fact that night. Now, you know, it's a bit difficult to extrapolate from case anecdotal evidence to anything that would pass a scientific evidence. But I think the clinical picture is really clear there. But, Christine Phillips, I guess you would agree that this is the time when the bad habits begin to catch up. Ah, yes it is. Yeah, it is. It's the time when you think, well, if I keep smoking, every time I go to the doctor, they're going to give me a lecture. And a lot of 25-year-olds aren't going to listen to that. But by the time you've hit 45, those lectures are becoming very, very strong. Plus, you've started as well to feel that you can't breathe as well. And the habit of overwork I think starts to implode. It starts to cause people to implode in their 50s. What are the physical effects of overwork? What do you see? Well, depression is one of them, obviously. That's the furthest one down the track. But people who overwork often have got no notion that they're overworking. They actually think that's just the way life should be. And they'll often present with a whole lot of other symptoms. Why do I feel so tired? Why do I have such pain in my stomach? Why have I constantly got headaches? Why have I got such a short fuse with women? Why do I feel so? And like, why am I weeping at work? Now, that's often interpreted as menopause. But often, it isn't anything to do with menopause. It's actually the habit of overwork. And they demand, particularly in this town, of people working far too hard. I am very happy to take questions. If you want to just pop your hand up. And I think we've got one up there. I'll just get the microphone up to you. Just catch my eye. And because it's a discussion with you as well as a discussion between us. And candor audiences are always very well informed. Yeah, go ahead, please. The face to the beautiful voice on the radio. Thank you for hosting this. One question I was wondering if, say, the research, which has been done here, would be more relevant to this context as in this culture. Would the same research in midlife crisis be relevant in, say, Southeast Asia or in African countries where the middle age comes much sooner than here? People live 60 years and they die. So does it mean that people in Africa would be having a midlife crisis at 30? That's a really fascinating question. The question is about whether middle age is different in different cultures. Who can tackle that? That's probably, yeah. Got Tina. I'll have a go. Yeah. Sure. I think the answer is probably that we don't really know. Midlife research is a relatively new area in the context of lifespan, developmental research. And I think one of the reasons for that is because while we, it's a little easier to make generalisations about the characteristics of development in early adulthood and then in late adulthood, whereas midlife is so much more characterised by diversity of experience. And so we may very well see cultural differences in people's experiences in midlife, but even within a culture there's such a great diversity of experience between those who might go through a sort of crisis like experiences and those who are really at the peak of their functioning. And indeed, even within the same person, someone might find themselves in one domain of their life. For example, work life, really operating at a peak level of high performance, but maybe in another area of their life like family, things might start to go a little bit pear shaped. So I don't think we have an answer to your question, but I think it's a really interesting one. And I hope that growing efforts towards cross cultural research in areas of development and ageing might be able to help us answer that. And I think that's accurate. I think it's completely accurate. What I wanted to add to that was just to kind of some conjectures without evidence and just kind of say we do understand as kind of my thing that's coming through here, we do understand there are different ways of understanding age. There are different cultures and different and that's really what your fundamental question is. And I think that there are cultures and we're aware there's indigenous cultures here and cultures around the world. I don't know the specific ones that you've you've indicated, but the point is that the different cultures see age differently. And so it may be the case that here I am in Canberra and I'm 47 and I'm I'm really stressed in my job and I don't know if I have the respect of my students or my peers or and I'm maybe in another culture by the time I was 47 I know that that's by that age I would be a respected almost an elder. I don't think that term very broadly, but and so and so I could sit almost secure in that. And so I don't I'm not persuaded that there is any fundamental psychological necessity that says you will always have a crisis now. OK, you will always want to run off. It is certainly in the case that, you know, impoverished people. Well, impoverished people anywhere, say impoverished people in Chad and impoverished people in Canberra are not going to run off at middle age and buy themselves an expensive car because they can't. All right, so there's fundamental, so it's not that we're always going to do something silly like that. Maybe it's not something, you know, caricature like that. So I think it's going to depend a lot on our circumstances or how we how we collectively, not just personally, we don't exist alone, not just personally how we collectively construe age and how we're treated at that age by others. Although I think it's a very important thing. Well, I wonder, too, whether the fact that the role of elder is not very clearly defined in our society is one of the things that prompts this degree of angst about middle age. We don't quite know where we're going and how we'll be treated when we are ready to acknowledge our role. I get my students here at the university, I get emails from them always to get this. They're saying, hey, Michael. I thought, whatever happened to dear Dr. Plato? You know, and so I think, is that because I'm looking for respect as a middle aged man? I don't, you know, maybe when I was 27, I thought, hey, Michael, was OK on the emails if I got them. But now I'm kind of saying that's the unclearity with which which which. I notice among my teenage children's friends a bit about certainty as to whether to call me Mrs. Jacobs or not. I don't mind being called Mrs. Jacobs by a 14-year-old. That's OK. We've got another question up here. Thank you. As I find middle aged retreating further and further into the past, I'm. Wondering to myself, what what all what all of that was about? Wondering, in fact, this follows the last question and a response to it. I think it's a little bit redundant, actually. It may have been treated, but it strikes me that to a large extent it's a cultural artifact that's imposed on us coming out of the way that we're expected to have careers and at a certain stage in life come to the conclusion this is about as far as I'm going to go. And that may be just depressing or it may be dreadful. It's not very long ago that we invented the notion of being a teenager. Not very long ago, people simply left school if they even went to school and went straight to work where we were expected to be little adults. And I wonder whether we're looking too closely at this that there are certain objective facts about early teenagers being puberty. There are the one objective fact about being middle-aged is men are poor as in women. But otherwise, it's just a continuation, a growth spectrum and it's very, very difficult to see where it begins and ends. Maybe it's a construct that we put around things to stop ourselves from being old. I think it's important to acknowledge the cultural definitions, but I think culture is our reality. We live in the culture and therefore just because it's a social construction doesn't mean it doesn't have real effects on people. And I think that's an important aspect to acknowledge. I think there's some things we do know just looking at statistics in Australia. You know, we talked about the miseries of middle-aged in the title. Well, we do know that the highest rates of anxiety and the highest rates of depression over a 12-month period occur in this group of people from sort of 35 to 55. And that means that there's a lot of unhappiness, there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of stress going on in people's lives. So I think, yes, it's true, it's a social construction, but it has real effects. So I think it's important to look at what those effects are and try and understand the processes that might be involved that affect individuals differently. Well, obviously not all the same, but I think there are major things that do emerge in this period of life just because of the kind of general changes that are taking place for us, both physical and social. I think one of the important things that Chris mentioned earlier, but I think I'll highlight it a bit, is mortality. When we reach middle age, we start to understand a couple of things. When we're a teenager, we're pretty immortal. As we move into middle age, we start to understand death better, both the fact that we're not going to live forever, but it's around middle age, and it's a middle age we call a big, it's really a big age, man, but in middle age, we start to understand that our relation, people we have relationships with are dying, and they do. Our grandparents, our aunts, our uncles, eventually our own parents, if things don't work out well, sadly, our own partners, even our own children can die in this period of our life. And when we're younger, we don't think about that so much. Our own health, of course, raises this issue even further. Like every time I wake up in the morning, kind of, I feel middle aged. After a while, I warm up a bit and I don't think about it anymore. But that's what generally happens to us. So I think, yes, it is a social construction, but some important things happen to us. We understand the world in a slightly different way, and that affects the rest of our relationships. And I think it's very important to see it, but it is about a network of relationships. Our construction of middle age is in a social context where we're living with people and we're also in what people call a convoy. A convoy appears going through this period. And one of the things I've noticed in terms of mortality is that when I listened to triple six in the morning, what I often hear is that yet another person I remember from my teenage years, some singer, rock musician, actor, yet another one has died. And I start to see my own life in that context of passing in permanence. I think that's a really important theme to consider. Yeah, sure. Sorry, could I just pick up on that, because I agree it is really important. And I think, well, a lot of the developmental research is now focusing on this notion of future time perspective and the growing salience of limits to future time as people get older. And one of the areas that that has been linked to is people's emotional well-being in the period that we might refer to as late midlife or young, old, adulthood is another word for it, but it's that sort of time of, say, around between age 60 and 70. And people in that age group actually have really high levels of well-being, much higher than younger people, despite the beginning of age and related losses. And one of the major explanations for that is that as people start to perceive their time as becoming more limited, they detach themselves from future orientated goals about their career and their life and what they want to achieve. And they focus much more on emotional meaning in the present and on establishing positive, close social relationships. And I think that's probably another feature of that period of life that can actually have significant benefits for emotional well-being. Being in the now. Yeah. Well, we'll go to another question in a moment. Rajiv, want to bring Susie Keesey in here on the question of employment, because that's one of the things that can have a profound relationship to well-being at this stage. Yeah, absolutely. When we look at employment and well-being at an overall general level, we know that employment is associated with better physical and mental health. But when you start to look at that relationship more closely, you realize that the nature of work itself can be associated with adverse health risks. And in middle age as well, I think it's really important to consider that role of work, given that it is such an important role and both, and the fact that both men and women have a strong psychological attachment to work. So it's not just, we're not just looking at the health risks, sort of in addition to what Donna said, that accumulated health risks in terms of cardiovascular risk, diabetes, musculoskeletal injury, mental health risks in terms of depression and anxiety and substance use, health behavior risks such as smoking, alcohol use, diet and whatnot. But we're also needing to take into consideration that the meaning of work itself has an impact on emotional well-being. So for men, for example, one of the strongest stem findings is that a job characterized by high demands and low control is associated with the biggest disease risk. And what we notice here is that that relationship isn't as strong for women. So one possible way of looking at that is, what is the meaning of work for men? Is it that core social role? Is it that breadfringer role? So I think, again, that psychological meaning of work is important to considering our health as well. I'm interested in what you make of the difference between men and women because we've seen women's career parts change dramatically in the last few decades and the meaning of work for women has increased significantly. Yeah, absolutely. So what we're seeing now is that women are accelerating their careers in their 40s and 50s and they make up about close to 50% of the workforce. So this is up about by a third since the 1970s. So what we're seeing is a generational shift and at a psychological level for women. What this means is the sense of purpose and identity is now being defined beyond that caregiving role to work. So I think in terms of self-esteem and self-worth, that's a really good thing that's happening for us. Well, in a society where women were defined by the reproductive purpose, once that reproductive purpose finished, really you were just waiting, weren't you? Yes, absolutely. I think we've got another question up here somewhere here. I want to focus on perhaps some of the miseries rather than perhaps the myths as well. I think one myth, not necessarily of middle age, perhaps a little earlier is that of childbirth where women all seem to be, I was eventually very surprised that it could really hurt that much. The thing I want to focus on is memory loss, which perhaps that defines itself outside middle age, I don't know, maybe it's a good boundary. But why isn't it that we're not told just how bad this can be? And how absolutely debilitating it is. Does anyone remember the answer to that? How bad childbirth is or how bad memory loss is? I'll cover memory, but I know nothing about childbirth. Childbirth is pain, and actually we don't hold memories of pain very well. One of the reasons that we forget about it is actually because it's a pale pain. Memory loss is, oh, that's a terrible thing you talk about. Well, I mean, one thing is very, very obvious from a lot of evidence that we have, and I think Tim could probably talk about this as well, but that after probably a relatively young age, maybe 50 or thereabouts, memory starts to decline. Our capacity to retain things and store things in short terms starts to decline, and it's a very individual specific thing, but I think it's evident in most of us. Unfortunately in some of us it's evident to a far greater extent, and that's one of the features that defines things like early onset dementia and so on, that we see people around us just not remembering things that were commonplace or things that happened a minute ago or faces that were familiar to them, and so we're looking at a dimension of memory loss here. It's not something that's in any sense uniform or standard. A long time ago I was at a conference and a pathologist gave a talk on Alzheimer's disease, and he said that we should all reflect on the three things that are good about having Alzheimer's disease. One is that you can hide your own Easter eggs. And the other is that you make new friends every day, and the third is that you can hide your own Easter eggs. And unfortunately it can sometimes get to that point, but one of the really good things about psychology is that if there's a problem we can think of ways of fixing it, and if we're looking at subclinical or quasi-clinical memory loss, there are all sorts of things that we can do, little aid memoirs to make sure that we don't forget things. I forget things a lot. The way I rationalise it is information overload. I say that I've got so much coming in that of course I can't, but there is one obvious explanation for it, and that is that in line with how old I am, there's a level of cognitive decline. It's an inevitability. It comes with the territory, and we can try to think of ways and means of helping ourselves along with that, but so far as I know there's no enormous biomedical breakthrough which is going to get us out of that hassle, but I think Tim, you've probably got more information on the natural history of memory loss over the lifespan. I can add a little bit to that, and one point is that it's not all bad news because while it is true that our ability to remember things on a short-term basis and our ability to process information does tend to decline with age, our store of accumulated knowledge just keeps growing, and so in that period of midlife, people really do develop high levels of expertise in the fields that they're specialising and they can use that high level of knowledge often to compensate for these perhaps gradual declines in their ability to use the mechanic aspects of their cognition. So that's one point, but in terms of another interesting recent finding from some research we've done at the Centre for Mental Health Research lately is that Professor David Bunce, a visiting person from the UK, has looked at brain scans of people in midlife and found that white matter lesions, which are associated with Alzheimer's disease, are more evident in people in midlife who do poorer on-cognitive tests than among people who do better on-cognitive tests, and this is potentially quite a breakthrough in terms of flagging opportunities for screening the dementia during midlife, so as these techniques continue to become developed, we might become better at actually identifying people at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease and dementia and then maybe incorporate interventions in those groups at an earlier time in life that could help to delay the onset of both normal cognitive decline and disease like Alzheimer's disease. And you're making a distinction there between dementia and Alzheimer's disease and normal cognitive decline. That definition can be made clearly. I just wanted to... Today, I saw you can correct me if I'm wrong. But I also want to... There's the kind of... There's the pathological disease progression of Alzheimer's disease that is quite severe, ultimately. But I think that, as I understand it, there's actually some evidence now that people who kind of... almost like doing mental exercises, if you kind of keep your mind active and that could be a variety of things, as I understand it, even potentially just doing word... Puzzles. Yeah, that one. Crosswords and so on. That tells you what I've been doing at Orcland, hasn't it? But this is going to kind of assist or at least begin to buffer against any natural decline that may occur. And so I think that... I think that while Alzheimer's is from many of us, a reality that we face or confront, I think that this idea that we're all kind of destined to have this considerable memory loss and that's it, give up is... I'm not persuaded that it's true. There's the heuristic little rules of thumb that Don was talking about to help us get by. But I also think that if we kind of actively kind of keep mentally active in a variety of ways, then that can help buffer it as well. And so we might retire and think, yeah, that's it, don't have to think anymore. But maybe we need to kind of keep up the mental exercise as well as the physical exercise. My husband has an uncle who is a retired judge and has gone back to learning classical Greek at 94. And he is sharp as a tag, absolutely. Can I make a comment? I have lots of people who come to me in their 50s and say, I can't remember things. I'm forgetting people's... My short-term memory is going. I'm really worried that I have Alzheimer's. And if you look at the way they're working and the way that they're thinking, actually, this doesn't look like Alzheimer's at all. It looks like somebody who is actually thinking and doing the kind of synthesising work that we've been talking about really, really well. So actually they are very good, deep thinkers. But they have lost some of their short-term memory. And that always leaps into people's heads. You know, whenever you forget where the keys are, you think, oh, I'm going to get Alzheimer's. You've forgotten that you've actually put together a very complicated puzzle or you've sorted or you've solved a very complicated solution at work because you've been using other elements of your cognition. But what you've noticed is that you've forgotten where the keys are or you've left the gas on and therefore you must be getting Alzheimer's. So there are signal things we pay attention to which we think mean decline in picking up the other areas where we're actually thinking very, very well. I just wanted to kind of bring together a couple of points. One is this idea of this cultural difference in the way we look at age. I think there has been a cultural shift now. So in the workplace, for example, there's this very anti-seniority kind of approach. Now that kind of taken to an extreme means that, well, older people are not valued really at all and if you look at the kind of evidence about that, well, what does that mean in the workplace? Well, one thing it means that your store of knowledge is disappearing from a corporate culture. There's older people who have been in there who know the systems and have learned over time. Well, that corporate knowledge disappears out of a system so people have to keep reinventing the wheel all the time. The other one is this kind of notion of like poverty. This kind of prejudice against older people even middle aged people like me can be seen by younger people as well they're kind of just less capable because, you know, they can't think as fast or do something as quickly and that's priced more. I think if you look, the paradox to me is that as a nation we're getting older but there seems to be an increasing age stereotype or prejudice that is actually occurring when you're over 40 it's like you're over the hill but there are many counter examples of people who try and start new careers. Sometimes it works out for Kevin Rudd it didn't kind of work out quite so well but there are other people who are quite successful at it who can change mid-career and start off again but for many others they're not in that position and I think this kind of notion that when you get that age it's hard to get a job to get another job if you are in fact retrenched because you're seen as well you're over the hill and maybe you can't think as fast and you're being seen as so that's an interesting paradox to me as a nation as we get older I just see more evidence of kind of age prejudice to some extent. I've got a question over here sorry the microphone's up there I've been hearing for the last 50 minutes nothing but gloom and doom about middle age so could you as panellists tell me the benefits there is about being middle aged because there's more of us than there have ever been before in history and I think most of us probably like it but I'd like to hear the benefits of middle age thank you look I think some really major benefits if we open our eyes to them one of the major things we talked about mortality before but another major thing is actually caring and we've been reached middle age we start to kind of go beyond ourselves and start to care for other people when we have children when we have our intimate relationships and to an extent I think we become a little self-centred about other people I think the other thing that comes through it's a kind of classical theme in psychology for this age group is creativity and generativity at this age we're thinking about well what can I contribute to the world it's not just about my career but I have a family I have responsibilities to those other people and what is the legacy I'm going to leave behind when they read out my obituary what are they going to say about me start to become the issue so I think that can be an amazing force for positivity people can see that as an opportunity to make significant contributions and I think in middle age that's where many significant contributions are made to our society to each other in our community and in terms of a kind of general creative message and move forward and look I think that for many of us at middle age I certainly feel like this myself there's a great sense of power you feel I know my capacity and I am fully able to achieve my goals and that's a sense that I think very few people have really genuinely in perhaps their early 20s and who else would like to comment on that Don, the good things about middle age there are lots of good things about middle age and I'm really pleased you raised it because when we first started talking about this forum we were going to talk of it as middle age misery or magnificence and I'm a little bit sorry that the magnificent bit got lost because I think there are some magnificent things about middle age the physical decline is something that although we can use all sorts of things including the good services of Christine and her colleagues to counteract we can't necessarily stop it but what are the good things about middle age there's wisdom accumulative knowledge there's a capacity that you don't see in the young because they want to act rapidly quickly they want to dive in and do things without thinking people of my age I think I hope we'll step back a bit and say hang on let's just think about all of this in terms of the context in terms of my cumulative experience what should we do and I guess I put my head on the block and say that decisions under those kinds of circumstances are often better in the long run than the impulse-driven decisions that young people are prone to make so this whole collection of knowledge of wisdom of experience and the capacity to apply that to complex life situations in such a way that other people can is one of the real benefits to me of middle age okay great question down here well this sort of I think carries on from your point historically I don't think middle age and I don't think getting older now this is kind of like a question for you guys because I'm not sure whether I'm right but I think there was always a real pride in becoming an adult reaching adulthood and then going on to reaching success and being an important member of society which was always someone old and your parents and whatever and then somewhere probably around the 60s and they say that the 60s you either love it or you hate it it all became about youth and it all became a very big focus on youth and getting into you know no one even wanted to reach adulthood and I now see this as one of the biggest dilemmas that we face and I'm one of the reasons for having a forum like this or going in this direction was to really think do we need to redefine middle age and adulthood and adopting responsibility you know recognising that is this group of adults in our society who largely become the establishment as much as that's a you know sort of term from the 60s but that's the thing it is for me you are the establishment all of a sudden there's no one else to blame you're the senior person you run the thing it's you and yet I almost get the feeling there's a real reluctance in society to be that and I guess I'm just interested in your views I also wonder whether the boomers because they make up such a huge percentage of the population are likely to change this and leap into the middle age and change that attitude about youth and hopefully bring you know adulthood back into fashion you know that it's fashionable again to be an adult Michael I might put that to you this idea of being willing to take on the identity of an adult being willing to own that I think there's a completely legitimate process a legitimate question and I think that but I think it's a collective process that we have to engage in that you're talking about it's all well for me to say well I'm an adult and I expect you to treat me like one whatever give me respect and that it's just it's not going to happen if it's just me it's not just an individual process and so this is these shifts and what it means to be a valued person what it means to be a valued member of society has to be a collective shift and these processes are difficult how difficult is it to say hey women should be valued in society how difficult is it to say hey indigenous Australian should be valued in society how difficult is it to say hey people who are 50 should be valued in society now I'm not saying that people who are 50 are discriminated against like the other groups I was just mentioning okay so but the point is that these are societal shifts and they are difficult and they are all collective action collective change collective will to bring about but there's no reason why we but having said that the positive thing is there's no reason why we can't let's you know seize the day let's do it let's take it let's take it to the streets you know let's let's be out there and reclaiming this for ourselves let's have a dinner reclaiming with light because I mean this view that we're also saying is what oh you know old folk you take so long to think about things you can't make well it's not that I'm not persuaded that it takes me longer biologically necessarily to make my decision it's that I'm wiser it's that I'm actually thinking about it I'm actually going about reflecting on all the consequences I'm taking responsibility I am being an adult I am being responsible and sometimes that takes a few more minutes to make my mind up and it doesn't mean I'm only feeble it means I'm reflecting and being responsible and that should be recognised and rewarded Christine you want to come in? I think I'm sorry if we've been negative about middle age because I actually think this is the vigorous time of life and society rests upon its middle age we have people who look after the young we have the people who look after our elders we have the people that drive society forward this is the time one of the problems is ourselves though we are reluctant to actually say I am this age I am our fight for youth you know every time we go and botox ourselves or we try to hide the lines that life gave us that indicate the wisdom that we may have every time we buy into that belief that we have to present ourselves in a way that belies the age that we have then we are also stepping away from that idea that middle age is a time of vigor and I think the enormous sales job that the plastic surgery industry has done for women has been really dangerous particularly for women in that it has really reinforced that notion that you can't age well that you have to age by hiding the signs of your biological age if we look at those stereotypes about aging and I mentioned at the beginning the one of the man the sports car, the 20 year old there's a sense that that's the last run at freedom, that's not necessarily wholly a stereotype we see that pattern repeated over and over again where people grasp for the last time at the signs of being young the outward appearance but if you think about when you were young that really wasn't a time of enormous freedom it was a time of self-doubt and yeah look a couple of points I mean one of the points I made right at the very beginning was that age is a state of mind or at least it partly is and I'm going to hold to that because I think in large part we define ourselves as who we are and if we define ourselves as old and decrepit even if we're 30 that's what we're going to be and if we're 65 or 70 and we define ourselves as relatively young and vigorous that's what we're going to be so I think we've all got to to be very aware that we will frequently tell ourselves what we're going to be and then if we don't find that a happy state to be in we've got to alter our own cognitions and tell ourselves that it's different that you know we really are doing damn well at 65 or 70 or whatever I think the other real problem unfortunately is that of social stereotypes you know we often hear organizations doing age profiles of their workforce why? I don't understand that you know why would they want to know what the the age profile is what relevance does that have except you know in terms of calculations of insurance payouts or whatever if they stopped focusing so much on age profiles and look more on experience profiles or productivity profiles or contribution profiles or whatever you wanted to call it then I think that a whole lot of this stereotype would be broken down and that seems to me to be a destructive thing in a way that groups and organizations and institutions and so on do I mean in terms of of the magnificence in middle age I think that quite frankly it is or it can be a magnificent period but we've got to work on making it so for us and I think if we give up and we accept the social stereotypes then we're lost so I think that you know we middle age people have to make those decisions for ourselves but then be very vocal about those decisions and we talk about the the sort of symptoms of middle age crisis and going out and buying a fancy car and so on some of you may have seen a picture of me in the camera times this morning next to my new Alpha Romeo that is not a middle age crisis and as it said and as I made sure the nice young lady who interviewed me yesterday said my wife told me I had to go out and buy an Alpha Romeo it wasn't me who said I have to go out I think that a lot of what we would view again in a stereotypic way as a midlife crisis is actually relatively ordinary people putting up their hands and saying recognise me don't reject me don't tell me because I'm over 55 that I'm also over the hill I'm of no use I can't contribute to society now they're doing it sometimes in rather bizarre and flamboyant and occasionally destructive ways but in a sense I would see that almost as a cry for help a cry for recognition a way of saying don't discard me don't put me on the trash heap just because I'm 55, 60, 65 they're doing it in interesting ways but nonetheless I think it's a real statement and I think we have to recognise it not so much as a grasping for teenage dreams because there's a number of people that pointed out that they didn't have those dreams necessarily as teenagers and if would have we did they wouldn't have been realisable but I think it's a statement of the need for identity the need for acceptance, the need for recognition and I think we as society need to recognise that and acknowledge it I do want to talk in a moment about the transitions that happen in relationships and marriages in particular but I think we've got another question up back here about longevity, reflecting on mortality middle age and there's an example given of rock stars isn't there a flip side to that I'm thinking of the longevity of people like The Rolling Stones and Leonard Cohen still doing three hour concerts Blondie Touring so it makes me think about longevity rather than mortality but my question is about whether anyone on the panel thinks that there is a tendency to medicalise and even pathologise the aging process if you pop a few pills like Chow T, Viagra, a whole suite of antidepressants, cosmetics that could stave off fix cure or slow down the aging process is anyone concerned about that yeah I think there's a couple of things to say about that there is this kind of you've got to remember that medicine can be tremendously beneficial and many of those medications you spoke about have been a boon to people and assisted people greatly but they're also the products of money making multinational corporations who are interested in the whole process and we know now that those companies are much more interested in creating drugs for so called chronic diseases because that means if it's a chronic disease you will have to keep taking that drug for 20 to 30 years and so you'll make a lot of money out of that in that sense so I think it's true, I think it's a response that goes on there are forces that drive that process but often they are in response to real issues diabetes is a kind of classic example hypertension, heart disease are actually all real things that people need assistance for and people's quality of life have been improved but your general point I would agree with that we cast this negative life light over getting older and tend to see these changes as somehow pathological rather than normal ageing partly because I think we have a problem with the whole concept of ageing because of kind of a youth culture that ageing equals bad and therefore it must be a disease kind of thing that's happening to me and so yeah that's how I would respond to that and I think this represents ageing well I think you're all doing marvellously I do want to talk about these transitions in relationships because it strikes me that middle age is often a time when marriages when partnerships dissolve and it seems to me that perhaps there are long running partnerships that have a certain function we reach this transition point and then sometimes they end and there's that concept of trading in the old partner for a long time and I wonder what the panel's response to that kind of transition Tim, your thoughts on that well it relates to some specific work that we've been doing lately where we've looked at the level of interrelations between couples in terms of their mental health and what we found was that partners who've been together for first time partners who got together very early in life and are still together in older adulthood or late midlife were very closely intertwined in terms of their mental health so if one partner tended to have very good mental health then the other partner was more likely to and vice versa however when we compared that group to a group of people of a similar age where at least one of the two members of the couple had been in a previous partnered relationship we found that there was actually very little interrelation between the couples who'd been previously partnered. Now that's not necessarily a good or a bad thing but it just shows that the two groups are very different and it's interesting as we think about the implications of the aging baby boomers and the fact that re-partnering is more common in that age group that the spousal dyad may become a less central context for emotional well-being at the population level into the future saying there that the husband and wife team might not be the core of society is that what you mean by the core of happiness? The matrimonial dyad or that's a good interpretation Christine Phillips to you on that one of the changes that happens in menopause is that the so-called caring hormones disappear and you know the impetus that women have for nurturing as a really primary role is lessened and I wonder whether that also has an impact on relationships and a bid for freedom perhaps on the part of some middle aged women? I don't know how much of that is biological. I mean there is a school of thought that says as estrogen goes you lose your sense that you need to nurture the partner in your life. I don't know how much of that actually is biological and how much of that is just a transition that people have. It is certainly true I think that I mean I've had women come to me and say I really don't care what other people think about me anymore. What a liberation what a fantastic thing to happen and I think that's been hormonally mediated. Maybe it is but it's certainly a liberation. We tend to I agree with you at the back, we really tend to pathologise menopause which in times gone by before year of contraception that was a huge liberation for women. Women would greet menopause as the time when they would stop worrying about unwanted pregnancies. So we tend to pathologise it very much now but the nurturing element is a tricky one. I know that I'm extending your question a bit. Because women in middle age actually find themselves caring up as well as caring down and so not only are they caring setting aside the partner, they are also the children, they are also particularly women but it's by no means limited to them they are also caring for their elders and once upon a time that didn't happen so much because elders didn't live for such a long period and so vigorously so many women people in the audience will be familiar with that phenomenon of actually finding that your parents frail and that you have to reevaluate that relationship with them and care for them and that is it's one of the great challenges and one of the great triggers of the wisdom that you get in middle age I think but also one of the great challenges of it. And I guess with the delay in childbearing for many women with that generation of women who have not had babies until the very late 30s lots of people aren't going to be finished parenting until they're 60. They may be very young and then parenting up as well. Yeah and with parents by that stage you're perhaps well into their 80s. Don I wanted to put to you something I know you've looked at sexual capacity can also change can also lead to all sorts of problems in long running partnerships and there's a really big potential impact there isn't there? I hadn't realised I'd looked at it but yes you're right. I mean sexual capacities change sexual desires change sexual performance change. Somebody mentioned a little while ago Viagra and obviously in middle age men for a whole range of reasons erectile impotence is a real problem and a problem which impacts enormously onto their self-image their self-esteem and so on. I think Christine also touched on something a little while ago in which the loss of fertility may mean a sexual liberation for some women because they can now engage in or could then engage in sexual behaviours without risk. Whether or not this I guess impacts over into actual social and interpersonal behaviours I don't know, I mean Ross might know the answer to this but are middle age people more promiscuous than adolescents? I don't think so but it may be the case. That's just better at hiding their activities Ross. It might be wider and smarter at doing this but at middle age is the peak period for divorce. We know around the mid 40s that's when most people get divorced but on the flip side it's also the peak period of remarriage as well so families do restructure need as important to recognise that. In terms of the infidelities thing I think well it's kind of a combination of factors. I find it interesting the rise of this idea of the cougar in the it's kind of a predatory middle aged female who becomes divorced and then there's after all these young men now I don't really understand why to some extent some people see that as more acceptable than the predatory male during the similar kind of thing but somehow that's also been a rising in culture. I think there are differences we know about men's performance you know peak performance sexually for men is quite a young age and then tends to drop off but there is this thing about women being you know more sexually at their maturity at a much older age now I'm not an expert on those kind of points but that's what we're told I don't know what the other panellists think is that I would speculate that perhaps partly that's because of that grad level of confidence that women have about themselves and their bodies. I think with that issue about young men being at their peak in sexual performance that's purely around erectile function sex is more than erectile function it's all that a 17 year old has to offer nothing else I would think that although if that's all you were judging yes that you would peak with quite young but most men of course actually become more proficient and the unit between themselves and their partner becomes more involved in sexual pleasure increases as people age I'll leave aside the issue of Viagra I think has actually been quite liberating Viagra has probably been quite a liberating medication that seems to me although it has again returned the idea of sexual performance to erectile function that's the thing that Viagra did reconfigure sex as erectile function now that erectile function is important for sex but by no means the only thing that's needed and you can have very satisfactory sex without a very strong erection. I think we've got a question. If I can pick up on your introductory remarks you said that a lot of people had phoned in and said just because they're registering here that didn't mean they were middle aged can I assure you that I registered here in the hope that I was still middle aged 66 Tim has assured me that I'm over the limit so can I as a a snuck in under force pretenses candidate ask really what sources of information are there for the elderly or the growing older people as to what is going to happen I mean sure I know I'm going to die I know that Alzheimer's is a risk prostate cancer is a risk other cancers are a risk heart disease but what sorts of information is there out there that would enable me to better direct my life and before I give anyone a chance to answer that I suspect Christine Phillips is probably the best one could I just comment one of the speakers said that there was a reluctance to hire people in their 50s because of physical failings or that I'd strongly refute that I would suggest that the main reason is that this is a person who's mature who has plenty of knowledge, plenty of experience and may well be a threat to the person who's thinking about hiring him who would like to take on that question about resources Christine well this is Movenba Movenba is the month that actually does talk about some elements of aging well for men particularly about mental health so many of the beyond blue resources I think are actually very good for middle aged men who are struggling with word to even find the words about what is not right with them some of those resources are really useful in terms of physical health but it's pretty simple it's around eating well enjoying your food eating more slowly trying not to have a lot of fat but not demonizing fat either exercise really important it's probably the thing we do least well exercise and finding the thing that you're passionate about and doing it I think they're the real things that will help you to age well that was really what I was asked because what are the sources of information that can tell you what is normal, what is not normal where you can expect to be going suggest that there is a I'm not sure how good it is because I haven't spent a lot of time looking at it but I know that there is a government website that has links to a lot of different sources of information for older Australians I think it's through the Department of Health and Aging they probably have a link to it if it's not actually administered by them and then I suppose there are groups like I'm not sure there's a one stop shop but I know groups like Alzheimer's Australia for example have very active education programs that have a mind your mind initiative about how to promote healthy lifestyles to help with the delay of cognitive decline so there are a couple of possibilities can I just add to that Christine is probably too modest to say this but surely the most the most valuable resource is a good experience middle aged GP I think we had a question here we'll just get the microphone to you I'd just like someone to speak to the psychological aspect because people don't come to middle age with a psychological clean slate and when you're younger obviously your defences are stronger to keep any sort of emotional baggage if I could use that awful word at bay and that seems to dilute as you get older and sometimes you can be it's almost like a domino effect that all the unresolved things of your earlier life suddenly the floodgates are open because you have no more resistance to repressing them and obviously that would impact on middle age how it impacts on relationships work even how you feel about yourself in fact particularly how you feel about yourself I'm just wondering if someone could address or lots of you could address those sorts of issues the microphone perhaps on the question of the intact self-image I think that for I'm not I don't know the data fully about that but I have to say I'm not fully persuaded that that's a necessity that's going to happen I can imagine that it happens to people I'm sure it happens to people I don't think that it has to happen and I think that and I don't think it has to happen when those kind of floodgates open I don't think it has to happen in middle age if it happens it could happen older that there are things that you know because it depends on what those experiences have been in your life and what resources what social support you've got and so on that are going to help you manage where you are all these things are going to help you manage through your life and the variety of different kinds of identities that we have I mean there is some evidence from a variety of approaches to the question or and I don't want to use this in a path... this is not a pathological sense so don't misunderstand it the more identities that we have I don't mean that kind of like multiple personalities kind of as a stereotype I mean the more kind of I am Michael I am male I am American I am a psychologist okay so these are my identities and the more of these things that I can draw a greater kind of ability to cope with stressful situations and so on and so part of it is going to be not just who you are as a unique core individual with nothing else but almost the whole range of things that you can draw to support yourself and so on all these different identities it's not that we just need one in fact I would say we need lots of different kinds of identities that would help support it some of those identities eventually drop away seeing you and yourself as a young person that's right and so we move into new ones and so now we move in from young to middle age and this gets back to my consistent argument that what we need is a construction and understanding collective understanding that middle age and old is good and if we move otherwise what we're doing is we're moving into a new group a new identity that everybody told tells us in fact we may have believed when we were younger is the bad one and oh my goodness all of a sudden I'm in the bad group now I feel bad and there's no way out and that is collectively pathologizing age and we shouldn't be doing that we should be collectively either celebrating it and saying you have wisdom and you are an elder or just saying hey you are this is life and this is where we are and so we're not moving from the good group to the bad group we're just moving on one size doesn't fit at all and you can have so many identities that you can hide behind but when they start to crumble maybe I wouldn't call them hiding behind I know you don't agree maybe middle age might be a time to heal if you are in that reflective stage in your life it might be an opportunity to heal your relationship with others relationship with self really focusing now on yourself and personal growth in that way rather than perhaps obligations to others I think we've got time for perhaps two more questions we've got one here I love what people have been saying throughout this has been to do with sort of milestones that you reach at middle age and yet at the same time everyone's been sort of saying that we don't really have those defined milestones anymore you get married straight out of school your career doesn't finish at 65 and your marriage doesn't last from marriage to life anymore we just don't live in that kind of very defined society that I can see and I think what a lot of people have said about physical problems and emotional problems there are plenty of youthful diabetics there are plenty of young depressed people so maybe what I'm asking is how much of the problems that people encounter with middle age and with sort of accepting aging and entering old age have to do with the fact that we don't live in a society where you can tick the boxes of I've achieved all the milestones appropriate for a 65 year old now I don't have to worry about it anymore I mean do we sort of live in a society where the concept of being in a particular age group doesn't matter is that why people we're all comparing ourselves to youth and then some of us are as young as a 16 year old or as a 25 year old but we don't really have that sort of sense that there are points that you've reached in life that are relevant to you that are less relevant to a 16 year old or a 25 year old yeah I think there are it's a very interesting point you raise I think one of the things that I think we should try and bring out is that it's important not to be arguing that rather than any other age in that sense middle age is any better than people who are young and I do a lot of research with adolescence and one thing riles me up and that's a kind of stereotype about adolescence as being trouble, young, stupid, rebellious all of that kind of stuff and I see it as a stereotype just as I see the stereotype of middle age people as being kind of out of it they can't use Facebook they can't be competent what would they know they can't even use a DVD so what you see is this kind of grouping kind of thing that I'm this age and they're that age and I belong to them I'm middle age so young people must be young and stupid older people are just beyond it and I think that that's kind of a very negative way of constructing it so I think that's a really good point the other kind of points you were making is that issues are lifelong issues no matter what age you are they just kind of can manifest slightly different at different times in your life depending on the context as Michael was saying I guess we're talking about middle age as a kind of generic context but every individual is living their life in their own way and their context are all different so we are speaking in generalities I think that is very true it's very hard to kind of try and speak about every particular person's life trajectory in that way but I think there are just some things that come through more strongly in middle age than they do when you're younger or they do when you're older themes such as mortality themes such as caring themes such as managing relationships with your partner, intimate relationships falls apart how do I get a new relationship going all of those things tend to just happen more for that age group but of course they can be similar themes when you're older there's no reason why you can't start new relationships when you're 80 of course and you do it when you're 18 but they just manifest in slightly different ways so I guess we're all human so these issues are important for all of us I want to know what 18-year-old boy does not want a Ferrari the only difference is Don can afford it and that's very important so if you're trying to say oh look at that old guy over there he's got a Ferrari, he's just trying to be young no no, he's always wanted one he couldn't get one when he was 18 we live in a world so middle age positively for many of us, not for everybody and I appreciate that very much but for many of us we are now at a position of financial security and so on and so we can go off and we can buy the things the Ferrari's, it's not a crisis I kind of can buy it end of story because I'm secure okay can I just correct one point I can't afford a Ferrari I can confirm I've got two 18-year-old sons who would love a Ferrari let's end it on that note it's been a fantastic discussion could you please thank Susie Keeser Ross Wilkinson, Michael Plato Tim Windsor, Christine Phillips and I'll blake on the end can we thank Genevieve as well who is a fantastic facilitator