Here’s what the structure of modern life looks like for most. In the early years of a child, the focus is on learning and playing.

Once the playing is done, a teen starts their educational career. Then start a career. And save up for retirement. Those are the three main stages of life as we know it: Study, work, then retire.

It might look like these stages are natural to human life, but that’s a wrong assumption. These stages are, like most things in modern-life, made up.

This structure was created in the 19th century, when the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck implemented the first national old-age social insurance plan in 1889.

At the time, the world was going through the industrial revolution, and sending your kids off to school was just starting to become the norm. Bismarck’s government was trying to give more jobs to the unemployed youth by retiring workers aged 70 and above.