Googling up what I’d caught in a rather dull NPR spot earlier confirmed that men in the age range 50-54 are committing suicide at double the rates of 20 years ago.
Of course some of the stories blared about Baby Boomer suicide. Excuse me, but 50 to 54 are not BB’s. We were Generation Jones: invisible in the BB shadow, and our brief heyday during Punk/New Wave quickly eclipsed by Gen X. But I’m not going to kill myself because I’m not a prime marketing demographic.
We took it in the shorts during the Great Recession, but no more than everyone else did. In fact, guys in their fifties are at the height of their powers. I feel less stupid professionally than I ever did.
I’m guessing it’s got something to do with the recession. If you get laidd off as a 60-something-old, you’ve got social security as a safety net. Maybe not now, but at least in the near future. Chances are you don’t have any dependents and maybe more mortgage has been paid off.
But if you’re a 55-year-old guy and you lose your good middle-class job, you’ve got good reason to worry. Social security is a long way off, and you probably got at least one kid who is still depending on you financially.
Even apart from economic woes, I imagine that mid-life crisis stuff is in full swing during this time. The fifties is when people start looking old.
I’m gonna second Monstro’s guess that it is probably primarily economic. 20 years ago was the 90s. Without researching, I’d bet that economy was a lot kinder overall to the demographic.
Maybe women handle their old age in a different way than men do. They are used to seeing their bodies change in dramatic ways as they go through different phases of their life. And they will readily talk about their shit. At work, the ladies openly kvetch about menopause. They talk about wrinkles and gray hair and sagging, and trade beauty tips and sympathy. Do men do this?
As far as careers go, the recession was hardest on traditionally male occupations. Women are more likely to be employed in service sector jobs, which–though low paid–are not as hard to find. Women are also less likely to be in management. Whose ego is going to be hit harder by the prospect of working a McJob for the next ten years? The person who has done service jobs for most of her career? Or the person who is used to giving orders, not taking them?
Baby boomers are the offspring of post WW-II era parents. If your parents were adults at the beginning of the war then you came from a demographic group that lived through that and were children during the Great Depression. 1963/64 is the tail end of the fertile years of such parents. It overlaps younger parents starting their family.
And when you lose that office job you are a bit old to go out and start laying blocks. Even those of us who laid blocks until reaching 50 are looking for something less stressful physically.
Divorced, fear of facing the future alone? I only mention this because I personally know of a guy who was in his 50’s, got divorced a couple of years ago, was living in a little apartment all alone. No wife now, no kids, health problems starting up. All he had was his job to go to and come home to be alone. Recently found dead, suspected suicide, after no one had heard from him in a week! Depression killed him, really.
First off the rise in suicide rates among those in their 50s, even the broader 35 to 64 group, is not new. The male female difference is just where the peak is: for men the biggest increase has been 50 to 54s; for women 60 to 64. It’s been increasing for over two decades. The CDC’s speculation:
The change, whatever it was, happened with the Boomers and is persisting into those who immediately followed. Notably, the male Boomers who did not kill themselves in their fifties seem to not be at continued risk later on: male suicide rates in that age group have not increased much as the Boomers have entered that cohort (although a longer term drop has more than levelled off) Female Boomers OTOH have waited until their 60s to off themselves.
My dad was in WW-II in the Pacific so I count myself as a boomer. I was born in 1962. My siblings are 9 and 14 years older than me so I also count myself as an ‘oops’.
It could be that we see ourselves as not having done as well as our fathers did, despite actually working harder. Further, we are forced to admit that if we haven’t “made it” by this age, we are never going to. For many of us, the economic problems of the last few years have made it so that our highest earning years are already behind us with years yet to go before retirement. This is not a happy feeling.
I’m 56. To me, it’s more about feeling old. Aches, pains, hypertension controlled by medications with side effects worse than the disease. I’m not sure where I’ll draw the line, but when life is no longer enjoyable I see no reason to endure discomfort.
