How “Act Your Age” and “Age Is Nothing but a Number” Are Both Right
Or, why I can't wait to grow up and be deviant
We’ve all heard the phrases “act your age” and “age is nothing but a number.”
One tells us to pay attention to the chronology of our lives and behave accordingly. The other tells us… don’t. They contradict each other.
These adages aren’t meant to be scrutinized scientifically, of course. They’re bits of folk wisdom that, by and large, are quite useful. Kind of like “you reap what you sow” or “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
So yes, there are times when you need to act your age. And there are times when age really is just a number.
When?
Let the neighborhood sociologist—a middle-aged man who tries to both act his age and remember that age is nothing but a number—tell you.
The Biology of It All
Our bodies go through all kinds of changes as we move through the human development cycle. There’s no need to dig into the details. We start small and weak, grow bigger and stronger, then eventually get smaller and weaker all over again.
Our brains are part of our bodies, of course, but they follow their own developmental trajectory. We begin as egocentric me machines—infants and toddlers who don’t understand right from wrong and have no sense that the people around us might want different things than we do. Doesn’t everyone want to wake up in the morning, watch Bluey, and jump up and down until they’re tired? Eventually, we become adult prediction machines, taking into account the social world we navigate: Oh God, what will my bandmates, neighbors, colleagues, or family think?
These are physical and mental changes firmly rooted in our evolved biology - the ancient code that we are compelled to live out. We need to act accordingly.
Take alcohol.
Drinking heavily is always bad for us, but doing so as minors—or as older adults—is especially unwise. In youth, heavy drinking risks permanent damage to growth and development. In older age, when our bodies can no longer process alcohol as easily, it’s time to abandon the habit of drinking or clubbing several nights a week. There is no shortage of Instagram videos about older people who can no longer handle the rigors of clubbing, and wish for a “nap” at 10 PM.
Or take sports.
It’s great for infants, toddlers, and adolescents to run and jump to their hearts’ desire. Sure, there will be bumps and bruises. But the health benefits, the embodied learning, and even the occasional glimmer of a future career—Look at how my kid does that twirl! They’re going to be a world-class gymnast!—far outweigh the scrapes.
But pity the grown man (it’s usually a dude) still trying to relive his high school glory days. But those days are long gone. If his physical activity is more than just efforts to stave off a dad bod, he looks pathetic—and will suffer more than his share of unnecessary sprains, pulls, and tears. Many sitcom episodes have this situation as its plot.
In both cases, the biology of it all means: you must act your age.
The Sociology of It All
The times when the adage “act your age” is actually correct are few and far between. More often, “age is nothing but a number” is the better advice to follow.
We understand what it means to be “18,” “21,” “50,” or even “100” based on the expectations attached to those numbers. You’re expected to behave a certain way, and others are expected to treat you accordingly.
When you turn 18—and especially when your numerical age starts with a 2—you’re expected to act like something called an adult. As far as I can tell, this mostly means sustaining yourself economically and securing a form of transportation and housing you can claim as your own. These expectations tend to weigh more heavily on men, to the point where failing to meet them can severely limit their ability to form physically intimate relationships with women.
When our ages begin with a 3 or 4, we’re expected to enter into a permanent union with someone and have children. If we don’t accomplish these things by those milestones, we often feel we’ve fallen short. These expectations particularly constrain women, who may feel—and are often treated—as failures for not meeting them.
As our numerical ages move into the 50s, 60s, and beyond, the expectations continue. We’re expected to discard or suppress our imaginations—no more make-believe. We’re expected to look serious more often, tell fewer jokes, and move around less. In short: stop being childish. If old 70’s sitcoms were any indication, people at these numerical ages were also expected to be curmudgeonly people pining for how things used to be and yelling at kids to get off their lawns. Archie Bunker may be the most famous incarnation of this archetype.
But these are all social expectations. They’re socially constructed—just as made up as the cartoons and toys we loved when our ages were still in the single digits.
This isn’t just empty hypothesizing or wishful thinking. We know it's true just by looking at history.
Consider that in 1950, the average age of marriage was about 23 for men and 20 for women. Or that in 1970, the average age for a woman having her first child was around 21.
We can interpret this raw data as revealing something about the expectations during that time in our history. A husband and wife with a child or two at 25 was not just something that occurred on occasion to two like minded souls who happened to find each other very young. It was expected behavior - what both the middle class white and poor black man and woman expected to happen. These were the expectations of numerical age in the United States in the middle of the Twentieth Century.
I expect someone in 2075 or so will comment with wonder on what the expectations for numerical age were during our own time.
The ages
I propose a different way of understanding age—one that takes into account the hard physical realities of growing older and the more changeable social realities of the expectations attached to age.
The word “age” still plays a role here, since there’s undoubtedly a chronological progression from development in the womb to the cessation of all metabolic functions at death. But in this proposed framework, age connotes a general epoch, not a precise number—kind of like “Industrial Age” or “Information Age.”
Here are these ages, with my own little spin:
Age of Discovery — Here, we are biologically young. Maybe our numerical age hasn’t yet reached deep into our 20s. Our bones and brains are supple. We are expected to use our imaginations—to dream, to wonder. Our social faux pas are laughed off as part of the learning process, as we discover how to live properly when we become that mysterious thing called an adult. Our elders model proper behavior, and school systems are put in place to teach us how to spell and when to cross the street. We are given books about adults who have succeeded, in hopes that we can discover a similar path. As a child, I was introduced to the life of Dr. Ronald McNair, a native of my hometown who became an astronaut. He came to my school to speak before he died tragically in the Challenger disaster in 1986. He dared us to dream.
Age of Development — This is when we must figure out the who, what, when, where, and why of ourselves. It’s about cultivating skills and forging an identity. Biologically, we might be as strong as we’ll ever be. We need that strength—whether we’re pulling all-nighters studying for exams or pulling all-nighters tracing the emotional and physical contours of the person we’re currently having sex with. In both cases, there’s a sense of movement toward a goal: a degree, a calling, or a long-term partner.
Age of Doing — Here, we become productive citizens—accomplishing and accumulating. We’re expected to do things, and generally, the more we do, the more we feel we’ve fulfilled society’s expectations. “You earned 70K? Oh please, I earned 100K before my yearly bonus.” “You helped your kid get a scholarship to State U? That’s nothing—I made sure mine got into Ivy League U.” These accomplishments are all social expectations, and when they’re met, they elicit approving looks—or jealousy—from peers. As a result, we feel proud.
These first three ages probably won’t give readers much pause. Even without numerical labels, they feel commonsensical. They are roughly chronological: you must discover before you can develop, and develop before you can do. We can loosely place them into childhood, early adulthood, and then adulthood/middle age.
The age of deviance
There is one last age. It’s the point in life when we stop talking about our numerical ages—yet become acutely aware of them as we complete one medical form after another.
As is my wont, I prefer alliteration. So I wanted this stage to begin with a “D,” if possible.
Maybe if I weren’t hurtling quickly toward this age myself, I’d label it—with no small degree of insensitivity—as the Age of Decline. Biologically speaking, I’m not aware of a single part of the body that gets stronger, faster, or more resilient after we reach a certain age. But a few observations push back against the idea that this age is only about decline.
First, expectations seem to have shifted. Moving past the age of accumulating and accomplishing no longer means buying a home in Florida and living out one’s "Golden Years." It’s now about bucket lists and doing things we couldn’t—or weren’t allowed to—do earlier in life. It’s also about doing things that older people didn’t used to do at all. Consider shows like The Later Daters or The Golden Bachelor.
Second, while we regress biologically as we get older, many people experience sociological growth. They've lived through changing ways of life and possess the insight to compare what was to what is. My sense is that most people in the Ages of Discovery, Development, and Doing are continually beholden to the expectations of others. They have to be: Discovery is about learning those expectations, Development is about linking them to a sense of self, and Doing is about leveraging them to accomplish socially validated goals. And during those ages, most people don’t yet have the distance—or the wherewithal—to question the expectations they live under. You can’t imagine living on land if you’ve only ever known the water.
If Archie Bunker represents a prior generation’s expectations for older people, then Jay Pritchett might be the emblem of today’s. On Modern Family, Jay learns to accept the evolving world around him—his gay son, the Hispanic culture of his wife (granted, it’s Sofía Vergara, so that’s not hard), and the new values shaping American corporate life. But Pritchett also brings the wisdom of experience to bear. He has progressed in a sociological sense. He chooses when to embrace new expectations and when to uphold old ones. In one episode, he tells his gay son he loves him. In another, he rails against the chaotic, “anything goes” ethos a younger business partner wants to bring into his company.
By choosing which expectations to follow and which to reject, Jay lives his life on his own terms.
And so, while some older people zip up their tracksuits and settle into a Barcalounger somewhere in a Florida retirement home, many others are rejecting their biological ages and living life on their own timelines—sometimes dipping back into earlier stages, and choosing which generation of Joneses they want keep up with.
I’d like to call this final stage The Age of Deviance—because it’s in this age that human beings are most free to deviate from the sociological bonds that once shackled them.
Ages and Mindsets
I believe this schema—Discovery, Development, Doing, and Deviance—more accurately reflects how age is experienced by most people. It serves as a useful heuristic for understanding how we live now, one that incorporates truths both biological (act your age) and sociological (age is nothing but a number).
For me, this schema is most powerful when I think of the stages as a series of fluid mindsets.
I’m still in the Age of Doing. And truthfully, I need to take advantage of whatever strength and suppleness my stage of development still affords me. I want a luxury car someday, and a nice plot of land in South Carolina. A part of me still craves the recognition that comes with professional accomplishments—a book deal, a research award. To accomplish and accumulate, I still need to work late nights and push myself.
But increasingly, I find myself shifting toward the Age of Deviance. This shift doesn’t require reaching a certain age, getting told by a friend to “act my age,” or receiving a troubling report from a doctor. It requires a change in mindset: moving away from the belief that I must accomplish and accumulate according to others’ expectations, and toward a desire to draw from my wealth of experiences and live life on my own terms.
Your neighborhood sociologist can’t wait until he grows up and fully enters the Age of Deviance.
It’s always enjoyable reading your pieces. As an old person I endorse your thesis.