Is 40 the new 25?

I turn 40 years old later today. (Yes, you can leave your birthday greetings in the comments box below...all gratefully received. Cheques attached especially valued...!)

Anyway, in the past few weeks I've thought quite a bit about what it means to turn 40. Am I past it? Am I over the hill? Am I...dare I say it...middle-aged?

In a timely and opportune moment, I spied a small article in The Age newspaper last week which showed that an Australian woman aged 40 is likely to have 44.8 years of life remaining (unfortunately, the on-line version of this article doesn't contain the graphic I refer to) although the article highlighted the sobering prediction that these longer than ever lifespans are also more likely to end in Alzheimer's disease.

Of course, one never knows what lies ahead, but with an average life expectancy for Australian women into their 80s I conclude that 40 is not even the half-way point.

So then I discovered some of the life expectancy calculators at various financial planning websites (I'll let you google those for yourself if you are interested: 'life expectancy calculators') and based on my responses to the various questions asked, was given an age into the 90s.

Which is a big contrast to women's lives before our time.

My great-great-grandmother was born in 1825 in a small Scottish village overlooking the valley of the River Forth. By the time she turned 40, she was married, had moved to another village just nine miles away and had given birth to her seventh child, a girl who was named after her mother.

Just over two years later in 1866, that child died. My great-great-grandmother was to give birth at home one more time, to another daughter (also named after her) and although the baby survived the delivery my great-great-grandmother did not. The cause given on her death certificate is exhaustion after delivery (8 hours).

The baby died two weeks later of atrophy.

It makes you appreciate the advances in medical science, now doesn't it?

So at 40, my great-great-grandmother was nearing the end of her life, a life which had possibly been confined to an extremely small geographic area. A life without electricity, or telephones, or television, or (gasp!) the internet. A life in which advancements like aeroplanes, motor cars and space exploration wouldn't have been even dreamt of. A life in which there were no antibiotics to combat infections, and diseases such as smallpox were still prevalent (another of my great-great-grandmothers died of smallpox in 1872 in Glasgow). A life in which a lot about the world just wasn't understood (another great-great-grandmother died from lead poisoning before she was 40 from the water she drank running off lead-laden hills).

Most importantly, it was a life in which women were much more limited in their choices than we are today.

Compared with life before our time, turning 40 nowadays seems quite a young and fortunate age, indeed. In terms of my great-great-grandmothers' lives, it's more like turning 25.

Happy 25th birthday to me!