Viewpoint: Just what is middle age?
Crisis myth
Next, the lusting after inappropriately young women. Did I really buy that Lotus to lure young women attracted to chubby, greying men in tiny blue cars?
In fact, studies of age preference in lonely hearts ads and dating websites have told us a surprising amount.
At 16, boys seek women who are roughly two years older than them. This age gap narrows to zero by the time we are 24 and thereafter we prefer younger women, with the age gap progressively increasing to only 12 years by our own old age.
Thus, there is no obvious evidence of middle-aged men suddenly hunting down young women, although it is certainly true that men who remarry do tend to marry partners younger than their first spouses - as women who remarry also do.
And there is good evidence that marrying a younger woman extends men’s lifespan. Although this, strikingly, is not true in reverse. And finally, it is of course a simple arithmetical fact that there are no much-younger women in men’s 20s - they do not yet exist.
Third, the infantile behaviour. I am afraid this is the point where I will go all anecdotal and unscientific - with two assertions.
First, having watched a son grow up, I believe that, on average, boys often have fundamentally different interests from girls - wheels, running around, machines, making things, breaking things, hitting each other - generally “doing stuff”.
Second, I claim that men’s interests do not change fundamentally between the ages of eight and 60 - with the exceptions of romance and sex. Instead, all that happens in middle age is that we become once again free to indulge ourselves. We have more money, some time and less fear of ridicule by others.
All I know is that when I play Lego with my son I am not enjoying it in some ironic, post-modern way, I am enjoying it in exactly the same way I did when I was 10. So, these pastimes and preferences of middle age are not new-found, they are our same old pastimes and preferences.