![]() ![]() And yet, many do: Nearly 60 percent of Gen Xers describe themselves as stressed out. Let's agree that this particular slice of Generation X women shouldn't feel bad. ![]() Insert your Reason Why We Don't Deserve to Feel Lousy here.įine. We deal with less sexism than our mothers and grandmothers, and have far more opportunities. (Syrian refugees do not have the luxury of waking up in the middle of the night worried about credit card bills.) Although many women are trying to make it on minimum-wage, split-shift jobs (and arguably don't have so much a midlife crisis as an ongoing crisis), women overall are closing the wage gap. America, in the grand scheme of things, is still a rich, relatively safe country. The complaints of well-educated, middle- and upper-middle class women are easy to dismiss as temporary, or not really a crisis, or #FirstWorldProblems. "Hey," I said, happy to have caught her on a break from her job, "do you know anyone having a midlife crisis I could talk to?"įinally, she said, "I'm trying to think of any woman I know who's not." She has three children and lives on a quiet, leafy street in Washington, D.C., with her boyfriend. I called my best friend, a reporter a few years older than me who grew up in the Midwest. A few of them are wondering what the point is. They're a Latina executive in California, a white stay-at-home mom in Virginia who grows her own organic vegetables, an African-American writer in Texas, an Indian-American corporate vice president who grew up in the suburbs of New York, and dozens more. Or to live on their own, launch a career, marry in their late 20s (or never) or choose to stay home with their children. They belong to Generation X, born roughly during the baby bust, from 1965 to 1984, the Title IX babies who were the first women in their families to go to college. They're just entering, slogging through or just leaving their 40s. When I reached out to strangers for this story, I heard the same toxic brew of fear, anxiety and anger.Īs I cooked dinner the other night, I thought about the women I had been talking to. "Yeah, my friends think it's a hilarious story too," she says, "but in reality, it was dark and awful." Her first thought as she stood over the broken glass: "I have to find a good therapist…right…now."įor a while, I thought it was just Type A strivers, but then I started hearing the same sort of thing even from my low-key friends. She told him, "If you don't help, I'm going to smash your iPad!" He didn't, and, as if possessed, she grabbed a metal hammer and whacked it to pieces. She told her son to start gathering his stuff he didn't move. ![]() ![]() With some luck, she could catch a few hours of sleep before their 5 a.m. The night before, she started packing at 10 p.m. While working three jobs and raising two kids, she decided to cheer herself up and planned a trip for her and her 11-year-old son. "I'd leave," she says, "if I had more money." A woman I used to work with tells me that she lets people believe her impressive LinkedIn profile is the truth, but that secretly she is underemployed and feels like a failure.Ī friend of a friend tells me that she's having a rough time as a single mother since her husband left her. I run into another and ask how it's going with her kids' father, whom, last I heard, she was fighting with. One spent a whole winter getting a babysitter for her toddler daughter in the middle of the day and then used the time to go to the movies and cry. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |