50 years: the heyday of maturity or the second youth?

More recently at this age, we began to prepare for retirement, and today we are preparing for a new, no less bright round of life. Why did everything change like that and what are our prospects in modern reality?

Life expectancy is increasing, so our old age will begin 25 years later than parents. And at 50, only the heyday of maturity awaits us. Those who want at this age to devote themselves exclusively to care about grandchildren are getting less and less. Sociologists talk about the change of paradigm, and the current 50-year-olds call innovators.

Before our eyes, they invent their canons, ruin old ideas about the important and correct. Why right now a turning point has come and who are they, the creators of the new reality?

Old story

The attitude to age is dictated by society, its history and culture. Let us look like in old Soviet films (for example, “It was in Penkov”, “Wedding in Malinovka”) is portrayed fifty -year -olds: these are village grandparents with a raid of comic. Why did they cause a grin?

There is an explanation, the psychologist Ekaterina Anthropova believes: when a revolution occurred in 1917, the youngest country appeared in the world with the youngest people who built a new type of state. Representatives of the older generations were perceived as "fragments of the past".

The USSR was the youngest in the world, and this was reflected even on the principles of the construction of the 1920-30s-the houses were erected without elevators: who can climb to the fifth floor with bags-well done, who is not-his problem.

The maturity was first deprived of such an important attribute as wisdom – new generations in it did not need it

Ironically, when perestroika began, the builders of communism were already elderly. And they were already declared that did not understand the retrograde. In addition, we had not only a political, but also a technological revolution: we all moved to live on the Internet, and the young masters it much faster than the elders.

Our contemporary does not have to listen to the mother -in -law to find out how to educate children, bake bread and housekeeping. If she earns well, she will hire a nanny and a housekeeper. And if not very good, then you will look at a few videos on YouTube and will find out everything. It is not surprising that people do not want to age, so they lose not only youth, but also authority.

Why do we need new 30

“Personal development, experience and body memory are the trinity on which people rely in maturity and what can share with the young,” Ekaterina Anthropova thinks. – Around there are many young boys and girls who are very tuning themselves. And often this is done not for pleasure, but from horror before your age. ".

Maturity makes it possible to ask yourself the main questions: what is the most important thing in life? Without which I cannot consider her? It is difficult to answer them in youth, but by the age of forty we already know ourselves well and we can get answers.

We also begin to understand our restrictions, to guess that we are no longer destined to become a rock star, an astronaut, model, nuclear physicist. We can focus on the main goals of life, but the horizon of possibilities narrows.

It is sometimes difficult to accept https://globalpharmacy24.com/drug/sildalist this, and we wave off frightening thoughts, refusing to recognize the power of time over ourselves

“If at fifty we try to convince ourselves and others that we are still thirty, this indicates a lack of contact with our internal processes,” says Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist Grigory Gorshunin. – Among us there are a lot of those who are afraid to change, start a new business, relationships, move to a new place, who postpone the decision to such an extent that it is already clear: there will never be new thirty, nor even new forty.

In my opinion, it will be useful for us to accept our age, look at life with a sober look, based on internal changes. Age imposes restrictions, but also gives new opportunities: at fifty we are more experienced, wise, less often we make hasty decisions ”.

Psychological maturity is due to the fact that we can take care of ourselves, become our parents. We cease to hope that the world will be great breasts for us. Growing up, we begin to share something necessary with others, with the world, and not just wait for us to do well.

Heroes of the New Age

Ekaterina Anthropova draws a collective portrait of today’s fifty -year -olds, whose youth fell on perestroika. “We can highlight the two main groups,” she believes. – The first is “capsulated” people: they listen to “retro fm”, recall ice cream for seven cents and sad. Among them are most of all those who have turned into social invisibility by fifty years.

The second group are fearless tanks, which in the nineties grabbed checkered bags and went to shuttle, opened the first business or found something new in the usual profession. Now they are a driving force that entails great changes in society ".

“In many socially important directions, they have already changed the rules of the game: for example, the involvement of young grandmothers in the process of educating grandchildren has noticeably decreased,” says sociologist Alexander Fateeva. – New grandmothers do not seek to say goodbye to career achievements, revise habits and replace a nanny for the baby in the family ".

This is proved by comparative studies conducted in more than 20 European countries, including Russia. Why this happens? The fact is that the "debut" of Russians as grandparents account for about 50 years. The difference between the end of active parenthood and the appearance of the first grandson is only three years in Russia. At the age of 45, Russians cease to educate children, and at the age of 48, grandchildren often appear.

“I have two grandchildren, but there is no need to nurse them daily,” says 55-year-old Alevtina, “my daughter and husband live separately, and they cope themselves. I come to play with little ones, read books, walk, do what we like ". The rest of the time Alevtina plays other roles: she is a wife, specialist, mistress of the house. She is three years old, but even then she does not plan to become a pensioner.

The appearance of grandchildren has ceased to be a central event in the life of many mature women. As for 50-year-old men, they are further to their retirement, and their social role in our society traditionally does not depend much on the family.

Love and money

We observe a large age -related shift, which has many reasons. Ekaterina Anthropova lists them: “Firstly, over the past 20-30 years, the quality of medical care has significantly improved, life expectancy has increased. Secondly, in the past half a century there was no starvation, we are larger and higher than our grandparents, and in general healthy. If the ancestors thought about how to find food, then we have a different problem: how not to eat excess.

Full of strength, fifty -year -olds are ready not only to work, but also to love. Recently, a clinical psychologist Vita Malygina, together with colleagues, conducted a study of sexuality in adulthood. It turned out that 99% of respondents from 40 years and older have sex.

Moreover, more than 95% of them do not just find time and time for sex (at least twice a month, and most several times a week), but they sincerely enjoy it, experiment and change partners. At the same time, the study participants (mainly women) work for more than 45 hours a week, study and find time for a hobby.

“Representatives of adulthood are tuned to eternal youth, but these are only traps that help to sell more goods,” warns Grigory Gorshunin. -It is clear that if we sell anti-aging cosmetics to women for forty to five years, then we will sell it more, because otherwise the goal is twenty years younger than is obviously unattainable ”.

Today there are more and more opportunities to change the body, extend youth (or its illusion) with the help of hormones and plastic surgery. But if we feed hope to stop nature and time, then sooner or later we will encounter disappointment. After all, we are not omnipotent, although we use technological developments that improve the quality of life.

However, there is also the opposite phenomenon: women cease to be shy about their gray hair and age wrinkles.

Career end: Step into the unknown

Experienced experts with a great baggage of knowledge, responsible and hardworking, often turn out to be unclaimed in today’s labor market. This situation is changing, but slowly. And what can we do in the meantime ourselves?

According to Rosstat, from 2005 to 2020, the number of labor markets at the age of 50 years and older increased by 13%. And they all try to stay in their places and in no case do not change work. The change of work with the “pre -retirees” (they include men 45-60 years old and women 45–55 years old) causes great concern, the study of Headhunter showed.

52% of them believe that it is difficult to find a job. Almost the same (51%) are sure that they will not be able to find work in the specialty with decent payment. And almost all respondents consider their age the true cause of employers’ failures.

Until the situation changes, we will have to take care of ourselves on our own. How? “Get ready in advance,” answers the psychologist, purpose of the goal -setting of Larisa Inozemtseva. – Approaching the retirement age, analyze your reality, ask yourself questions: what will I live for, with whom? This is the first step.

The second is to revise the limiting beliefs ("I cannot learn the new"). Often we do not want to change, because we do not know what to do if we stop managing our life. But we can become our own managers, if we learn to set tasks for ourselves, not necessarily large -scale, and find tools to solve them ”.

But many managers, heads of corporations and departments do not know how to apply themselves. The existential crisis, which many have at the age of 50+, makes us rethink achievements and goals. Perhaps you will want to devote yourself to your favorite lesson, which before there was no time left.

However, there is a category of “lucky ones” – sociologist Anna Shadrina identifies in the Russian Federation two groups of women who can afford to do the usual business before old age: “These are self -employed who have created their own business, and teachers of universities less prone to Aijism. More confident in the labor market, people aged 50 years and older with higher education and high qualifications feel ".

Do not stop

Mature innovators are engaged in health and career, and pensioners participate in the program “Active Longevity”, which offers not only yoga classes and Scandinavian walking, but also retraining and volunteering. This is a global trend: WHO and leading states of the world support the concept of a decent old age included in social processes. And with this, our attitude to maturity is changing.

“In the near future, we will look for answers to difficult questions: how to live after a partner’s loss, how to solve conflicts with children when they think that we make incorrect decisions and deprive us of legal capacity, how to cope with a worsening memory,” Ekaterina Antropova is convinced. – Problems of fifty -year -olds will be reflected in different types of art, and this will lead to the emergence of creative models of life at this age. ".

Mature women decisively express their individuality, they finally got the right to vote. There is still a glass ceiling in a career, age-related restrictions for women have not disappeared, and they are tougher than that of men. But shifts are already happening.