Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Rethink...middle age
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Rethink...middle age
People are living longer and delaying life's milestone moments. How does this affect our middle years and should we be paying more attention to people in this phase of their lives?
For some, middle age can be a very challenging period in their lives. Today, people are postponing the milestones in life that traditionally signified a change in priorities. People are having children later in life meaning parents in their 40s or even 50s are looking after small children. Jobs for life no longer exist and housing is so expensive that many have no choice but to pay costly rents.
All of these phenomena have given rise to the so called “sandwich Generation” – simultaneously looking after children but also elderly parents. Many experience multiple roles- worker, parent, carer, spouse and friend – and juggling the demands of all of those roles can lead to burnout.
Academic literature on happiness has until recently suggested that our satisfaction with life as we age is hump shaped. When we're young, we're happy — and then that declines, bottoming out in middle age. As we pass middle age and get older, we get happier again. But is that still the case? Is mid-life a uniquely unhappy place to be?
Presenter: Ben Ansell
Producer: Tom Gillett
Editor: Lisa Baxter
Contributors:
Ben Akers - Co-founder and co-CEO of Talk Club
David Blanchflower - Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
Jane Green - Professor of Political Science and British Politics at the University of Oxford
Andrew G Marshall - Marital therapist, communications trainer and author
Les Mayhew - Professor of statistics at Bayes Business School, City University, London
Kate Muir - Journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker
Rethink is a BBC co-production with the Open University.
View all episodes
By BBC Sounds
4.8
99 ratings
People are living longer and delaying life's milestone moments. How does this affect our middle years and should we be paying more attention to people in this phase of their lives?
For some, middle age can be a very challenging period in their lives. Today, people are postponing the milestones in life that traditionally signified a change in priorities. People are having children later in life meaning parents in their 40s or even 50s are looking after small children. Jobs for life no longer exist and housing is so expensive that many have no choice but to pay costly rents.
All of these phenomena have given rise to the so called “sandwich Generation” – simultaneously looking after children but also elderly parents. Many experience multiple roles- worker, parent, carer, spouse and friend – and juggling the demands of all of those roles can lead to burnout.
Academic literature on happiness has until recently suggested that our satisfaction with life as we age is hump shaped. When we're young, we're happy — and then that declines, bottoming out in middle age. As we pass middle age and get older, we get happier again. But is that still the case? Is mid-life a uniquely unhappy place to be?
Presenter: Ben Ansell
Producer: Tom Gillett
Editor: Lisa Baxter
Contributors:
Ben Akers - Co-founder and co-CEO of Talk Club
David Blanchflower - Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
Jane Green - Professor of Political Science and British Politics at the University of Oxford
Andrew G Marshall - Marital therapist, communications trainer and author
Les Mayhew - Professor of statistics at Bayes Business School, City University, London
Kate Muir - Journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker
Rethink is a BBC co-production with the Open University.
More shows like Rethink
View all
Global News Podcast
7,887 Listeners
From Our Own Correspondent
376 Listeners
More or Less
855 Listeners
Newshour
1,072 Listeners
In Our Time
5,579 Listeners
The Documentary Podcast
1,801 Listeners
6 Minute English
1,748 Listeners
Learning English Conversations
1,033 Listeners
The Infinite Monkey Cage
1,955 Listeners
The Bottom Line
40 Listeners
Thinking Allowed
306 Listeners
Moral Maze
69 Listeners
The Life Scientific
232 Listeners
Start the Week
159 Listeners
Westminster Hour
45 Listeners
The Briefing Room
78 Listeners
13 Minutes Presents: Artemis II
4,173 Listeners
You're Dead to Me
3,223 Listeners
Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government
24 Listeners
Americast
789 Listeners
The Rest Is Politics
3,900 Listeners
The Rest Is Politics: Leading
855 Listeners
When It Hits the Fan
49 Listeners
How To Win An Election
25 Listeners
Rory Stewart: The Long History of...
78 Listeners