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Zusammenfassung von Why We Can’t Sleep

Name: Why We Can’t Sleep
Rating: 3.7 (56 reviews)
Author: Ada Calhoun

Ada Calhoun

Women’s New Midlife Crisis

3.7 (56 Bewertungen)

22 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

'Why We Can't Sleep' by Ada Calhoun investigates why Gen X women born between 1965 and 1980 experience a midlife crisis that previous generations have not. It examines the societal, economic, and cultural factors that contribute to their sleeplessness, anxiety, and burnout.

Themen

Kultur Weibliche Gesundheit & Mutterschaft

Inhaltsübersicht

Why We Can’t Sleep
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What’s in it for me? Discover the untold story of women’s midlife crises.

By now, we’ve all become very used to the trope of the male midlife crisis. The stereotypical man will wake up one day deeply unsatisfied with his life. He’ll buy a yellow Ferrari, grow a beard, or take up surfing in Hawaii as a hobby. Or, of course, he’ll leave his wife for a much younger woman.

But what about women? Women are depicted as reacting to these crises, but of course, they have their own. This is perhaps truest for women of Generation X, who were born between 1965 and 1980 – a time of great economic and political instability. These women were promised that they could achieve it all: a successful career as well as a thriving family and social life.

Reeling under the weight of these expectations, Gen X women are in the throes of a serious existential crisis as they reach middle-age. They are anxious and furious, and they lie awake at night. However, this is usually hard to see from the outside, as they seldom destroy their marriages or buy vehicles in lurid colors.

In these blinks, you’ll get a picture of what midlife crisis actually looks like for women, what causes it, and what kind of support women really need.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

why debt is destabilizing Gen X’s plans for success;
the extra responsibilities that fall on Gen X women; and
how accepting that life is hard can actually be empowering.

Generation X women were told they could achieve anything – but the dream didn’t measure up to reality.

Every girl who grew up in America in the 1980s is familiar with the Enjoli perfume ad. It showed a voraciously energetic blonde woman exchanging a smart business suit for some homey clothes while she cooks dinner for her family, then transitioning into a femme fatale in a cocktail dress poised to seduce her husband. And she seemed to retain her buoyant energy throughout!

This ad encapsulates the dream of “having it all” that American women born into Generation X grew up with, a promise that women can do and be anything. They didn’t have to be nurses; they could be doctors instead. They didn’t have to settle for being a secretary when they could be the CEO.

This promise was tremendously exciting, and showed the progress of second-wave feminists. These women achieved wins like passing the federal law Title IX in 1972, which proclaimed that girls could no longer be discriminated against in federally-funded educational programs.

But these new possibilities also came with tremendous pressure. The promise that girls could do everything morphed into an imperative. Girls must do everything. Now that women had these freedoms, there was theoretically nothing stopping them achieving their dreams except a lack of imagination or unwillingness to put in the work.

However, women born into Generation X have faced structural barriers to achieving their ambitions that have nothing to do with their individual qualities or drive. For one thing, they grew up through successive recessions which caused economic precarity and job insecurity, meaning that women who grew up in this generation are often saddled with enormous amounts of debt. For another thing, gender roles haven’t changed to mirror new possibilities that women have in the workplace.

Saying that women are free to do anything while ignoring the enormous challenges they face creates unrealistic expectations. It also creates a culture of shame. Many women raised in this era have internalized the narrative that their lives are full of endless possibilities. They blame themselves when they aren’t able to achieve everything they’d hoped for, much less live up to the Enjoli perfume role model they grew up with.

Gen X women face both gender and age discrimination in the workplace.

If Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is to be believed, every woman can be successful in the workplace if they just lean in and demand that they’re fairly compensated and promoted. So why do so many Gen X women find themselves in precarious or low-paying jobs in their middle age?

Women who were raised believing that the CEO’s office was theirs for the taking have been very disappointed to face enormous amounts of gender discrimination. This is despite all the hard-won feminist gains of the Boomer generation. In fact, by mid-career, men are 70% more likely than women to have senior executive positions. By late career that difference widens to an enormous 142%.

The ambitions of Gen X women are thwarted by mountains of debt.

The Boomer generation lived in a world of almost unbelievable financial prosperity and stability by today’s standards. A middle-class family in America could live comfortably on one income, own their own house, and work at the same company for their whole lives.

That picture now seems as rosily idealistic as a fairytale. Gen X is considerably poorer than their parents, with no hope of making up lost ground. The 1987 stock market crash prompted a recession just as older Gen Xers were preparing to enter the workplace. In 1993, the hourly wage hit a new low, meaning that people started their careers at an economic disadvantage.

Even though Gen X women are more present in the workplace, they now devote much more time to childcare.

It’s astonishing how much common wisdom about parenting can shift in just one generation. The author remembers long afternoons spent watching TV in an empty house while her parents were at work, and roaming the streets freely with her friends. Her parents fed and clothed her and gave her shelter, but not much else.

Today, parenting seems to have become so much more complicated. Middle-class parents are expected to actively stimulate their children’s imaginations, engage them in creative play, make them home-cooked meals, and give them undivided attention.

Gen X women have to simultaneously care for young children and elderly parents – with little support.

Imagine you’re grappling with the enormous demands of caring for two small children at the same time as balancing a job and trying to keep the house in order. Just as your youngest child starts school and you’re finding a bit more time for yourself, one of your parents has a health crisis. Suddenly, you need to start supporting them too.

This is the experience of many Gen X women. As they’re having children later, in their 30s and even 40s, they often find themselves dealing with the enormous demands of childcare at the same time as their parents are growing frail and coming to depend on them. As with childcare, women are lumped with most of the work of taking care of elderly parents. Those parents are often divorced and don’t have support from one another, exacerbating the burden.

Gen X women can struggle to find that perfect partner or have children when they’re ready.

All this talk about the hardship of being a mother might make you think about ditching the whole child-rearing thing all together.

Some Gen X women have indeed made the choice not to have children, instead prioritizing other relationships, work, travel, and all the things that parents don’t have much time for. This movement is called Childfree by Choice. But it is very different to being someone who wanted to have children but wasn’t able to.

Hormonal changes can have an enormous influence on women in middle age, but medical support is lacking.

As recently as 1970, a member of the Democratic Party’s Committee on National Priorities argued that fighting for gender equality wasn’t a priority. His reason? Women’s hormones were so dangerous to their decision-making abilities they could never be entrusted with high-ranking positions. He argued that women couldn’t be pilots or presidents or CEOs because their hormones would “endanger the world.”

In response to blatant sexism like this, feminists fighting for equality asserted that women could function exactly as well as men can. That, of course, is true – women can be just as effective at any job.

Come to peace with your midlife crisis by getting real.

We’ve all become accustomed to broadcasting airbrushed images of our best selves on social media. Seeing these can lead us to assume that other people lead much better, more financially solvent, or more interesting lives than we do.

But the truth is, the vast majority of middle-aged women are under an enormous amount of stress. Acknowledging that, to ourselves and to each other, can break the isolation of the crisis.

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Worum geht es in Why We Can’t Sleep?

Why We Can’t Sleep (2020) explores the question of why American women from Generation X are experiencing a midlife crisis. These women were sold the story that nothing was stopping them from achieving their wildest dreams, when in reality they’ve faced enormous challenges to get ahead. Not only did they graduate into a disastrous job market, they also face gender and age discrimination and all too often end up having to care for young children and elderly parents simultaneously. Everything they’ve achieved has been against enormous odds.

Wer Why We Can’t Sleep lesen sollte

Women born between 1965 and 1980 seeking affirmation for their exhaustion
People interested in how parenting has changed over generations
Economists interested in the human toll of stock market crashes

Über den Autor

Ada Calhoun is the New York Times bestselling author of Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give and St Marks is Dead. Calhoun’s national news reporting has won multiple awards, and she is a regular contributor to prestigious publications like the New Yorker and the Atlantic. She also teaches journalism and creative writing.

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