The myth of the midlife crisis posits that when men hit middle age (a moving target, but approximately forty to sixty years old) and begin to face their own mortality, they make desperate life-changes in an attempt to recapture their youth. These supposed crises typically involve the purchase of sports cars or motorcycles, divorce and the pursuit of younger women, and an attempt to re-engage with youth culture in order to be “cool” again. It is often portrayed as the point in a person’s life when they feel time is running out to fulfill their deepest dreams and ambitions, or when they realize they have become exactly what they rebelled against in their youth. It is a revaluation of their life that is accompanied by a host of symptoms.

Middle age is typically a time of physical and (the beginnings of) mental decline, but this is a gradual process, rarely accompanied by a sudden realization of one’s youth forever lost. There is also much to value at this point in a person’s life: financial stability, increased professional regard and influence, grown or growing families, and more leisure time. It is a time when many people are able to slow down, travel, and enjoy life after working hard through their twenties and thirties. Nonetheless, there is likely some truth to myth, and influential psychologists like Erikson have documented a certain emotional tumult and difficult decision making that may occur during this period. This has likely been exaggerated though, and once picked up by the popular media, the midlife crisis took on a life of its own.

There are alternative explanations for most of the typical elements of the mid-life crisis. First of all, such revaluations of one’s life course occur in nearly every decade of a person’s life – uncertainty and change of direction is not unique to forty- to sixty-year-olds. Purchasing a fancy car or motorcycle, embarking on large-scale trips, and other costly ventures may have as much to do with the increasing buying power and leisure time associated with this part of a person’s life. Affairs with younger women can also be expensive and time-consuming and enabled by this increased income and leisure.

Some of the assumptions regarding the midlife crisis are simply false. Most divorces, for example, occur in the third decade of a person’s life. Most damning is the fact that cross-cultural studies have shown that the increased dissatisfaction with one’s life that precipitates the midlife crisis are not universal. In fact, in some cultures, there is often an increase in general satisfaction with life among forty- to sixty-year-olds. This indicates that the phenomena is mainly limited to Western, or even just American, males. While this does not disprove the theory – I do not think anybody has claimed there is some biological cause for it – it leaves it much more culturally exclusive and less universally applicable. I would also argue that it is, in large part generational, as the modern idea of the midlife crisis was born with the powerful and influential baby-boomer generation, and may very well die with that generation. It is no coincidence that the myth has emerged most powerfully since the 1980s, as the boomers began entering their midlife period.

While surveys have shown that the majority of Americans believe in the reality of the midlife crisis, studies demonstrate that only a small percentage of the population – between ten and twenty percent – report having actually experienced one. While coming up with an agreeable and operationalizable definition of the phenomenon may be difficult, enough research has indicated the rarity of it. Unfortunately, The myth has been capitalized on and perpetuated by the entertainment and self-help industries, which are very often immune to the findings of scientific research. Numerous films, television programs, books, newspaper articles, and websites have and continue to blow the scope and likelihood of the midlife crisis out of proportion, giving it a cultural life of its own. Many of the tropes related to the myth have been created in the media and contribute to its self-perpetuating cycle.

I think the midlife crisis is as much about becoming out of touch with popular culture as anything else. One of the best arguments for the fact that similar crisis occur across a person’s life is the increasing references to the “quarter-life crisis,” which a new generation claims to be experiencing in their twenties. These are all simply labels, however, and attempting to define the parameters of such phenomena is all but impossible. As such, it is a convenient term for people to use when describing their own life course or interpreting that of others. Unfortunately, the midlife crisis has been made into something of a joke today: every fifty-year-old seen driving by in a red sports car or on a Harley-Davidson, or dating a twenty-year-old will elicit comments about their “midlife crisis.”