Big news.
If you're in your 40s and splurging on a Mustang, you're no longer having a mid-life crisis, new research shows. Instead, you're happy and you know it, so you're clapping your hands and buying a muscle car.
The University of Alberta study overturns the old belief that when it comes to happiness, our lives are a bathtub – we're happy in our youth and in old age but miserable in the middle, during the child-rearing and mortgage-paying decades. Today's over-40 cohort, however, are feeling pretty good about themselves as they bomb down the road, classic rock pounding out of the Mustang's rear speakers, while the early 20s crowd are dragging their feet on the sidewalk, counting the cracks in the pavement while Adele calls for the thousandth time in their earbuds to say she's sorry.
The results shouldn't come as any surprise.
Today's youth have been sold a load of malarky and the payment is now due. Most were raised with play dates, instead of "go play," individualized learning outcomes, instead of classroom expectations, and medals for showing up, rather than medals for accomplishments and excellence. A large cohort of parents, present company included, raised good, smart kids moving into young adulthood confident in their individuality but not as prepared as they should have been for how little broader society cares about their confidence or their individuality.
The research found today's young adults are depressed, glum about their career prospects and uncertain how to build meaningful lives in a world that seems to have no meaning. Their fantasy about a cool job making big bucks being handed to them with their high school diploma or post-secondary degree have evaporated, along with their beliefs that their classmates are their friends, not their competition in the workforce, and that riding their bike and recycling is all it takes to reduce greenhouse gases.
Their pessimism is justified.
Jobs, careers, pensions, vacation pay, sick leave and other benefits are 20th century workplace concepts. Outside of the retail and service sector, anything left that can't be outsourced offshore is temporary, contract and project work. The remaining permanent full-time positions are being occupied by everyone that was born before the Olympic Games in Montreal.
That's just one of the reasons that generation is in a better mood than their younger counterparts. The problem with the old bathtub measurement of happiness over a lifetime was that it didn't do a very good job of measuring when happiness started to improve. The reality is that it's always picked up for people in their 40s. For many, the transition from the dirty 30s to the fun 40s includes an end in sight to active parenting, equity in the home and both time and money to volunteer, take up a hobby and go on a real vacation.
The 40s and increasingly the 50s are the glory days for many people in the modern economy. Broadly speaking, they have learned from the mistakes of their youth but are still youthful, their health is good, their income is better and they have become comfortable in their skins. They know people will mock them about the Mustang but they know who their real friends are so they don't care so much what others say.
There are exceptions to these generalizations about the 40-somethings but they are mostly true, when looking at the cohort as a whole.
Furthermore, their future prospects look promising. As the baby boomers finish their working careers over the next decade, there will be plenty of opportunities for the kids who remember watching Happy Days across most sectors at the supervisory, management and executive level.
Perhaps their optimism is misplaced.
Perhaps the young people have it right and the increasingly globalized economy will complete its transformation, even in the wealthy nations, to the lowest-cost alternative, where the 99 per cent are impoverished workers with no money and less hope while the one per cent – more likely the 0.1 per cent – are the only winners.
Perhaps.
Right now, however, at least as one study shows, the kids are not alright and the older kids who still feel like kids some days and can hum a few bars of The Kids Are Alright are feeling quite fine, thank you very much. The sunshine is on their shoulders and the wind is at their back.
They're putting the top down, cranking the tunes up and pressing their foot to the floor.
