Never mind 40 being the new 30, it seems 50 is the new 15.
A few nights ago I went out with some friends. They bought along a couple I had never met. They were my age (in fact possibly even older) but spent the entire evening kissing, touching and feeding each other bits of raw fish. It will come as no surprise to you that they were not married. In fact they have only known each other a few months and were clearly at that early romantic stage I have a dim and distant memory of.
Another friend has recently decided that rather than stay at home with her husband, she wants to go out partying, drinking and dancing. If the evening ends with a snog from a relative stranger so much the better. And another friend who is almost fifty has just married a 20 year old.
The one thing all these people have in common is that they have no children, well apart from the man who just married one.
I have often wondered what the effect of not having children is and I guess one is a certain reluctance to grow up. I am not being critical, not growing up sounds like much more fun than being responsible and dull, but I wonder how long it can go on for? Do you suddenly look in the mirror and realise that dancing to house music when you’re 60 just looks insane?
My husband was telling me about a friend of his the other day who is single and has never had any children. His main aim in life seems to be to get tables in London restaurants where there is a huge waiting list. “I guess that’s the difference,” said my husband. “I’ve got a perfectly good table at home.”
Maybe if you don’t have children your priorities are totally different. Things like restaurants and parties and luxury holidays all become very exciting (and obtainable). As well as giving you more financial freedom, I think in some ways not having children gives you the freedom to be whatever age you want to be. I have a childless relation who is able to get away with dressing and looking like a woman in her mid-fifties, whereas her real age is 30 years older. If I try to dress like Olivia and Bea when I am 85 I will just look like a nutter, and they will be the first to tell me so.
Which brings me to my final point, having children is a great leveller. There is no one in the world who will bring you back down to earth quite so quickly if you even try to act like a teenager. Because that’s their job, not yours.
The 50 year old teenagers
4 thoughts on The 50 year old teenagers
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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.
Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.
Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.
In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group.
Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.
Bibliography
More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004
Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)
All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006
Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007
Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006
Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007
So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)
More, More France; Gibson Square 2009
To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)
The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009
Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011
The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013
Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016
The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016
Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018
The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019
That is the case with my friends who do have children. They are all in their mid-forties but out most nights. I will turn 30 later this year and find it hard to keep up with them. I am hoping that perhaps when I’m their age i will have just as much energy as they do because at the moment my life is all about doing homework with my children and making sure they are in bed by 8. And after that it’s usually time to tidy the house, read some Donna Tartt and collapse in my bed. I am looking forward to getting older…
Current me (at 36) would have been unfathomable to 20-something me, who always went out to eat and spent money on whatever I wanted, because I had no children.
When my first child was born, I thought “Why doesn’t EVERYONE do this?” Nothing could have prepared me for my new feelings as a parent.
gh
I don’t think having children has anything to do with it. Yesterday I had an argument with my mother and I HAD TO TEACH HER NOT TO ACCOMMODATE STRANGERS SO MUCH. She’s been in midlife crisis for over a 5 years now sometimes she’s unimaginably mature, sometimes I am pulling my hair to make her understand something that she taught me. I can’t catch a break.