For decades,the mid-life crisis has been about men's experiences. So when US journalist Ada Calhoun was commissioned in 2017 to write a piece forO Magazine on why women in their 40s and 50s are are so anxious and exhausted,she did not expect it to reveal the “silent crisis” Generation X women are having behind closed doors.
“[The article] came out a pretty dark place. I didn't think it was a generational thing at first,but the more research I did,the more I realised I'm not alone,"Calhoun says,two years later.
After receiving hundreds of messages and personal stories from women all across the US in the weeks that followed,the 43-year-old felt an"obligation"to follow up the piece with a book,Why Women Can’t Sleep:Generation X Women’s New Midlife Crisis,released in Australia this week.
"A lot of women message to say,‘I feel seen by this in a way I haven’t been before by the media.'They could finally put a finger on a feeling they couldn't name,it made it more read and less like they had imagined it."
The book explores how,despite having more lifestyle options and career opportunities than their mothers,many women born between the mid-1960s and 1980s are being kept up at night by"overwhelming"pressure,rage and demands"hitting them all at once".
Loading
For Calhoun,it all stems from the"have it all"ethos instilled in these women from a young age.
Women in their 40s and 50s are likely to be working full-time (and being encouraged to"lean in"at work),caring for young children and ageing parents as part of the"sandwich generation",going through perimenopause and worrying about everything from insecurities to job stablity. Add to this the unrealistically high expectations they have been fed for years without the right support.
“There was this expectation for this generation that morphed from ‘you can do anything’,to ‘no,you have to do everything’,"she says."There’s a mandate and if you don’t we are letting down womankind and we are failing. I have heard it over and over again from women ...[they] aren’t complaining because they feel they don't have a right to so everyone assumes they're okay. I think women tend to be highly functional in mid-life because they have to be. We are actually doing a good job covering."