The Stages of Life Have Changed

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist, Counselor, and Certified Life Coach.

What used to be the normal course of life is no longer normal. While life for people on planet earth has always been unpredictable, life in this Millennium has become unpredictable in very different ways. Sometimes understanding these ways can help guide action, so I’ll give you my take on the major changes in this Millennium and how they’re likely to impact those people who live to the end of this century.

Adolescence is lasting much longer.

It’s common every year at Thanksgiving time to talk about the pilgrims and that first Plymouth colony, but we forget that a very high percentage of the people on the Mayflower only lived a year or two after the ship arrived.

There was a time in the early 1800s when the average lifespan was a little past 40 years of age. There were certainly people who lived to be 100 back in those times, but there was a very large infant and childhood mortality. Many women died in childbirth before we discovered a thing called germs.

In places in the Midwest in the early 1830s, as many as 1/3 of the people in an area died every spring. We didn’t need divorce back then. You waited till spring, and one of you died. Typically, the remaining spouse remarried before the summer was over. A man with children and a woman with children were quick to get together back when it took two people to raise a family.

Before World War II, there were no antibiotics. You got sick, and you either got better or you died. People who recovered often had permanent long-term disabilities because of those illnesses.

From that perspective, adolescence used to last from about 16 to 18. At 18, you were an adult and expected to be self-sufficient. In rural southern areas, girls as young as 14 got married and had children. If you didn’t get together and have children by 20 and you only live to 40, there wasn’t time to raise your children to adulthood before you died.

In this century, this Millennium, adolescence has been extended to about 30 years of age. The average, most typical pattern, in this century has been for a person to move out of their parents’ home, forever, three times by the age of 30.

There’s a big difference between then and now. In past centuries, people were married with children by 18 and cutting down trees to build a log cabin, while clearing the land to farm. In the decade of the 2020s, the investment is not in land and children but in a college education and long-term debt.

This stretching out of adolescence has led to a lengthening of midlife and a redefinition of old age. Middle-aged now is anything that happens between the time that you end adolescence and the time you define yourself as retired, elderly, a senior citizen, or an old person. Some people use the term antique or vintage person.

Old age has changed significantly.

We raised the retirement age.

When Social Security first came into being, at the time of the Great Depression, the concept was that most people worked at hard physical labor, and by retirement age, they would not be able to keep on working. Retirement age was set at 65, based on the assumption that half the people would die by that age. The money paid into the system should have been adequate to pay benefits to those who lived longer, but we’re presumably unable to keep working.

That hasn’t turned out to be accurate. Not only are a higher percentage of people living past 65, but a larger number of people are living much longer than before. The result is that we’ve had to raise the retirement age and the amount people contribute, and still, there are shortfalls.

Additionally, because of the sneaky tax the government calls inflation, Social Security is no longer adequate to support you in retirement. Even with Social Security and a pension, every year after retirement, prices go up faster than your cost of living, and your ability to support yourself shrinks. At least half of all retired people now work either full or part-time, largely to make ends meet.

More people are living past 100 years of age.

As a percentage of the population, the age group between 90 and 100 years of age has been the fastest-growing segment of the population. I read recently that Japan now reports over 100,000 people who are over the age of 100.

The lifestyles of people in that past-retirement-population are vastly different. Some work because they need the money, some work because it gives their lives meaning and purpose, but some are unable to work because of their health issues. The burden of caring for older people with cognitive decline, dementia, and other impairing conditions is putting a huge strain on people in the middle of the age distribution, who now must care for both adolescents and the elderly, for many years longer.

Are there solutions to the problems we are experiencing as a result of changes in the life cycle? I believe there are things we can do, both as individuals and as a society, to make life easier and better across the lifespan.  More on that in future blog posts.

Does David Joel Miller see clients for counseling and coaching?

Yes, I do. I can see private pay clients if they live in California, where I am licensed. If you’re interested in information about that, please email me or use the contact me form.

Recently, I began working with a telehealth company called Grow Therapy. If you’d like to make an appointment to work with me, contact them, and they can do the required paperwork and show you my available appointments. The link for making an appointment to talk with me is: David Joel Miller, LMFT, LPCC 

Life coaching clients must be working toward a specific problem-solving goal. Coaching is not appropriate if you have a diagnosable mental health problem. Also, life coaching is not covered by insurance. If you think life coaching for creativity or other life goals might be right for you, contact me directly.

Recommended Mental Health Books

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