When I was young, people in their sixties were old. In fact, many of The Ex’s family died of cancer or heart disease when I was in my twenties and they were in their fifties, long before they could retire or take up the Old Age Pension as it was then known. My English grandparents had what was called a good innings, my grandfather dying aged 72 and my grandmother aged 80, but they had both seemed old when we saw them for the last time eighteen years before, when we left England. But things have changed. Although indigenous health is still a matter of national shame, there have been – in the course of my lifetime – such remarkable improvements in health care for most Australians that old is now redefined to mean something much later than sixty or seventy. This increase in longevity means that the concept of middle age needs to be redefined too.

Both in their eighties and living active, satisfying lives, husband-and-wife authors Patricia Edgar and Don Edgar argue in Peak, Reinventing Middle Age that it’s not just a matter of semantics. They say that this shift in demographics has created a challenge for policy makers; for welfare and taxation regimes; and for attitudes to education and employment. They suggest that increased longevity means that all of us as individuals need to rethink our responsibility for looking after ourselves beyond our fifties and sixties. We need to rejig our ideas about our contributions to society, our needs and our expectations because – apart from anything else, if we don’t, we may outlive our financial resources. But the Edgars reject the idea that an older Australia means a dependency problem, and they also reject the prevalent media preoccupation with inter-generational conflict. (The argument, for example, that youth unemployment is exacerbated by older people ‘hanging onto’ their jobs, or that housing affordability could be improved if the oldies all downsized or got out of the capital cities with a sea- or a tree-change). They make a compelling case for the need to start a national conversation about these issues of middle age as a matter of urgency.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/05/31/peak-reinventing-middle-age-by-patricia-and-... ( )