Why We Can’t Sleep summary

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 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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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.