Yes, we sooo need a life state between Adult and Elder. I am now playing with aging off so I age my Sims, and also kill them, manually. My rule is that once a child becomes a teen and their biological parents are YA, I usually age those parents to Adult. If the parents are already Adults I don't usually age them until said kids are YAs. Because in my game the Adult stage is longer (from 30 years old-to around 60-65ish? even up to 70) than the YA stage (18-30 years old). The same when the first kids become YAs. Then the parents become Elders. I do sometimes keep their natural hair color instead of the grey/white they get when they become elders though. I find that the transition isn't so jarring.
The problem with the way our Sim Elders age is not even close to what can happen in RL. I am just under four months to when I will turn 70. Most of my hair is still my natural color of red. I have plenty of white hairs, very slowly trying to take over, but for the most part, there is no guess as to what color hair I had when young. I don't even walk all stooped over, either. LOL Ah, me, those silly Sims . . .
Those are the reasons why a life stage between adult and elder would be nice. We all age differently, and at least that additional life stage would allow us to reflect that to a certain extent. I turned 50 this year and other than my best friend or my husband, I hardly have any white hair or wrinkles. I inherited that from my mom, I think. She's 86 now and her hair is a mix of her natural colour and grey which makes her look a bit younger than she actually is.
