According to research, this discovery is mounted on the fact that as women get older, their generally ageing gracefully.
In her study, Explaining Age Differences in Women’s Emotional Wellbeing: The Role of Subjective Experiences of Aging [sic], sociology professor Anne Barrett explains that the concept of age – or, rather, getting older – has the potential to trigger anxiety and lower wellbeing in young women.
Barrett, and her research associate, Erica Toothman (a sociology tutor of the University of South Florida), compared five components of ageing against a woman’s emotional wellbeing: age identity, ageing attitudes, self-assessed physiological changes, conceptions of the timing of middle-age and ageing anxieties.
What they uncovered is that women who fall into the broad 25-49 bracket experience “a higher negative effect” with age identity and ageing anxieties than compared with 50-54-year-olds.
Barrett and Toothman then analysed this key finding, discovering that, as Science Daily reports, “younger women had greater anxiety about ageing, particularly as it related to declines in health and attractiveness”.
Not only that, but while younger women’s wellbeing may lessen because they’re concerned about their health and beauty declining with age, these researchers suggest that older women maintain youthful perceptions of themselves. This, in turn, is believed to enhance their wellbeing.
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