After decades of being decried as immature, overgrown children, millennials are finally hitting middle age. But instead of the stable mid-adulthood we’ve become accustomed to seeing in previous generations, millennials seem to be taking things in a rather different direction, embracing a second wave of young adulthood while also trying to figure out how to navigate the total instability of their lives and the world around them. This could be easy to write off as yet another refusal to grow up and be “real adults” – but the truth is that there’s a lot more going on under the surface, and it’s not all bad. So, let’s take a closer look at how millennials are looking back to find a way to move forward.
Returning To Young Adulthood… At Least In Our Minds
Given that “millennial” has been used as a general swipe against young people for decades now, it might be surprising to be reminded that actually the millennial cohort has begun entering middle age.
“Andy we used to be exciting, now we’re planning out our whole week like adults.” Parks & Recreation
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, middle age is generally defined as the span between 40 and 60 (though some people consider it to start as early as 35!) The oldest millennials were born in 1981, and thus have entered their 40s and the new era of middle age.
As we discussed in our recent video, one big reason millennials don’t feel as “middle aged” as previous generations is because they don’t quite look the part. Thanks to giving up bad habits like smoking and drinking and picking up good ones like healthy eating and self-care, plus the ability to better keep up with current trends thanks to staying connected on social media, millennials in general don’t look as old as movies and tv shows of the past led us to believe middle age would seem. But millennials have long felt lost on the “real adult” path because so many of the markers of growing up were either put out of reach – like owning a home – or just aren’t something they’ve felt compelled to jump head first into – like marriage and kids. While this has provided a lot of room for freedom and fun, it’s also contributed to a feeling of worrying that they’ll never be able to quite find their footing – that feeling like a real, proper “grown up” isn’t just something that’s been made more difficult to achieve in the “right way” but nearly impossible.
“I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I’ve been getting it wrong.” Fleabag
Every generation has nostalgia for their younger years, for the era when they felt most free, and millennials are no different. But because millennial adulthood hasn’t felt as delineated between “young” adulthood and “regular” adulthood and now “middle” adulthood, that nostalgia can also coalesce into a feeling of having done something wrong, possibly taken the wrong path or missed the exit that would have set you on the course for some other life.
Charli XCX’s new hit album Brat has created its own era, dubbed Brat Summer. The vibrant green is everywhere, and the fun, loud, brash music has hooked people of all ages. The sound is a callback to the millennial heyday of the late 2000s and early 2010s, the era when Charli herself began posting her first songs to her MySpace page. But it also contains something else that has struck a chord with other millennials, her looking back at the choices she’s made since that free and wild young adulthood and wondering if she really went down the right path after all.
“And they’re exactly the same, but they’re different now / And I’m so scared I’m missin’ out on something” I Think About It All The Time
This is a question that haunts everyone, regardless of their generation, as they age – but Charli’s songs pinpoint the juxtaposition that feels particular to millennials: the worry that while we were making the most of our extended youth, we didn’t – or didn’t have the opportunity to – build anything more stable to fall back on once our youth is gone. But while the question of ‘what could have been’ will always be there as we age, millennials’ middle age is shaping up to be different from past generations but not all bad.
Why it feels different
‘Middle Age’ used to be a time when adults were generally thought to be entering a more relaxed, stable period of their lives – in stable, well paying jobs with pensions, kids leaving the nest and thus freeing up the house. But that is, well, not so much the case for the millennial cohort.
“So you do a lot of investing?” “We like to dabble. I recently invested in some shirts I got at a garage sale. Left those at Wendy’s on the way home… The economy! Hahahaha!” Parks & Recreation
Millennials came up in a very weird era where what you were “supposed to do” to become a “real adult” was constantly fluctuating: get a college degree or no one will hire you! Too many people have college degrees, now you have to go to grad school. No, wait! Grad school is actually a waste of money and will make you overqualified so no one will pay you. Why are you going to school at all? You should have learned to code as a child and started your own unicorn tech company out of high school!! Have fun working in an open plan fishbowl for someone whose only skill is verbing nouns for a decade and a half until we fire you to replace you with robots that want you to eat glue!
“We can’t lose the millennials. We need them.” “Why?” “Because they work 80 hours a week for free beer and T-shirts.” WeCrashed
Given all of that, it’s really not a big surprise that millennials began to uncouple their sense of self from their jobs and instead seek out other avenues of fulfillment. As the job market became less and less stable, so too did the economy.
“So, stamps went up again.” “Oh, unbelievable.” “I get the forever ones, but who knows how long these are good for.” Happy Endings
And so millennials were shuttled into a very different version of adulthood from the generations that came before them, which contributed to the idea that they were flailing or failing all together. But the reality is that, no matter what weirdness life has thrown their way, millennials have generally found some way to make it work.
“I didn’t have time to shower, so did I rub some dryer sheets on my pits and splash some water on my hush in the bathroom of an Au Bon Pain? Yes, I did.” Happy Endings
This general uncertainty, combined with larger changing societal ideals, also meant that those other markers of adulthood, like having kids, got put on hold. So while for previous generations, reaching middle age meant your kids were almost out of the house, many millennials didn’t start having kids until they were into their 30s, and so still have pretty young children as they start to approach middle age. According to Time, “In 2022, for the seventh year in a row, the birth rate among U.S. women in their early 30s was higher than the rate among those in their late 20s.” So far from an empty nest, millennials who did have kids are in fact entering middle age with a very full nest.
Millennials have instead focused their energy into other areas of their lives, like building stronger relationships and community networks, both in real life and online.
“It’s not been an easy road for me. But… knowing that you will always be there for me at the end of it, makes everything okay.” Schitt’s Creek
And they’ve embraced many things that it was previously thought one must give up to be a “real adult,” from fashion trends to hobbies to coloring books. The shift away from the focus on the nuclear family and towards a more community based mindset means that instead of feeling isolated and stuck in relationships that revolve solely around their function as a parent or spouse, millennials have continued doing their best to form new bonds with people that see them as full human beings. And while for a long time expectations held that getting married and having children were just the things you had to do to be a so-called “normal,” happy adult, actually new studies have found that for women, foregoing marriage and kids actually leads to both a happier and longer life. Paul Dolan, a professor of behavior science, has said, “The healthiest and happiest population subgroup are women who never married or had children.” Therapist Ann Russo told Thought Catalog, “Choosing to be childfree and single can provide an incredible sense of freedom and self-discovery. It allows individuals to focus on personal growth, pursue their passions, and establish a strong sense of identity. By prioritizing their own needs and desires, millennial women have the opportunity to create lives that align with their values and aspirations…”
While this is all different from previous generations, that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing (well, except for the economy stuff…) Millennials might not feel as stable, but they also don’t feel as locked in to one single path forever – sure, there will always be questions about what you should have or could have done when you were younger, but there’s also the freedom of knowing you can change things up going forward. Middle age is no longer a period where you have to be set in your ways, it can be the moment when you really decide to shake things up and finally have the confidence to go after what you want and be the person you really want to be.
“We have so much talent and excellence right here, and I felt like we didn’t have enough spaces to showcase and celebrate that in this neighborhood.” Insecure
CH 3: We’re All In This Together
While many go on and on (and on) about how there are so many divides between generations, millennials and gen-z continue to find that we actually have quite a lot in common. Many gen-zers were surprised to learn that Charli XCX is in fact not a hot new gen-z artist but a millennial pop icon over a decade into her career. For all of the disagreements about optimal sock height or which words are cringey, we can find a lot of common ground both in art and in the idea that we shouldn’t be forced to accept some old school, predetermined plan of what our lives are “supposed” to look like (and that we need to work together to correct and undo a lot of the failures that resulted from the greed of some members of the generations before us.)
Adulthood in general is a tough time, and the new frontier of middle age is sure to provide the millennial generation with a whole new host of hurdles. But it’s also an opportunity to keep moving forward (and sometimes backwards before we figure out how to get moving forwards again…) and continuing to carve out not only a life we can be proud of but a world we’re happy to live in.
“It’s like, for the first time in my life, I don’t know what’s gonna happen next.” “None of us do. I mean, that’s kind of the beauty of it.” Happy Endings