Premised on Advice from Grown-ups
When you watch The Graduate, do you identify with the parents? Do you grow impatient scrolling to your birth year in online drop-down menus? Is a night of continuous, unmedicated sleep one of life’s greatest pleasures? If so, Pamela Druckerman says, you might be in your 40s.
Druckerman thought that being in her 40s would be a “delicious secret.” But, it turns out, others noticed, too. Salespeople steered her toward anti-aging creams. Her daughter observed: “Mommy, you’re not old, but you’re definitely not young anymore.”
So she decided to write about this “confusing place in the lifespan.” Druckerman’s new book is called There Are No Grown-Ups: A Mid-Life Coming-of-Age Story.
Druckerman has lived in Paris for the last 14 years. Her 2012 book Bringing Up Bébé observed cultural differences in parenting in the U.S. and France. In her new book, she explores the French approach to aging. (Writing a book about being in your 40s while you are inyour 40s is “quite a ‘meta’ way to age,” Druckerman says.)
Being 40, she found, isn’t about meeting any big milestone — it’s an “accumulation of lots of small experiences.” Druckerman took careful notes on her own experience, and shares her observations on a decade Victor Hugo called “the old age of youth.”
Lack of Self-Discipline 