Validation for the ‘Jan Brady’ generation
Gen X-er finds she’s not alone and then lays out her cohort’s plight and shared midlife crisis
When Brooklyn author Ada Calhoun began working on her new book, “Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis,” she knew she didn’t want to add to the large stack of prescriptive selfhelp books and products already targeting this embattled demographic. The last thing Generation X women need — on top of career insecurities, money woes, health concerns and caregiver demands — is to be told to insert another jade egg into their vaginas. Or to light a candle that smells like Goop’s nether regions.
What Calhoun wanted was answers. And she didn’t want to be told to lean in to find them.
The book, which expands on a widereaching viral essay Calhoun wrote for Oprah.com, was born out of personal desperation. The dark sleepless nights and their accompanying “if only …” thoughts were mounting as Calhoun questioned everything in her life, from her precarious freelance career to her family’s financial choices. And then there were the physical signs of middle age, including the random, excruciating
menstrual cycles associated with perimenopause.
Calhoun briefly fell into the self-care and mindfulness trap, but like many of the 200 American women she interviewed for her book, the pressures of living in the moment and finding time to meditate just becomes another stress. Not only were many of the women Calhoun spoke to contributing half of their family’s income, but they’re also overseeing child rearing and home maintenance; some while also taking care of aging parents.
“And now it all has to be calm? The whole mindfulness thing to me is like, ‘What fresh hell is this?’ Not only do I have to do all these things, I have to be really mindful while I’m doing them. No, thank you. I’d like to just go on autopilot and knock it out,” says Calhoun. “I think it feeds into this idea that we can control the problem somehow if we just work hard enough.”
She did find some solace in the numbers and statistics that backed up her intuition. Although there have been many debates over the exact years that Gen X covers, for the purposes of the book, Calhoun defines its birth years as 1965 to 1980: basically those who were old enough to see the 1994 version of “Little Women” in theatres and had fierce opinions over whether Ethan Hawke’s slacker character in “Reality Bites” was boyfriend material.
It turns out this small, often overlooked cohort faces a disproportionate number of challenges. As Calhoun quips, Gen X is like a middle-kid Jan Brady, sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials. The more Calhoun researched, the more she found the myriad of factors working against this generation, investigating labour stats and historical economic records, the housing market and divorce rates.
“I think this book is really for women who maybe need some validating, who have a vague sense that things maybe are not fair or that the deck is stacked against them or that there are a lot of forces at work, but really need to see it in black and white,” says Calhoun.
Calhoun also examined social attitudes, and how this generation of women was told that if they applied themselves, they could become equally successful as mothers and CEOs, and still maintain sex-kitten status. She looks at the affects of cultural touchstones, such as the Challenger shuttle disaster, which many kids watched live, and the pervasive advertising themes of the era. Given how many hours Gen X latchkey kids spent in front of the television, Calhoun says, “A lot of that stuff got in us in ways that we might not even be aware of, so I think it’s important to not only show the numbers around the finances, but to look at the messages we got.”
While “Why We Can’t Sleep” sounds like bit of a downer, the book ends with a low-grade sense of optimism typical of a Gen-Xer. Calhoun says writing it got her out of a funk, but those looking for magic-pill solutions should look elsewhere.
“You can’t just spa-day your way out of this,” she says. “This is much darker and much deeper than a manicure.”
So what should a desperate Gen-X woman do? Calhoun recommends finding a good gynecologist, and seeking time with other women. Since the book was released, she has heard about midlife-crisis clubs, where groups of women meet to talk about the issues in the book. And she couldn’t be prouder.
“I think when you’re getting in a room with other women on a regular basis, really wonderful things happen,” says Calhoun. “The goal in the book wasn’t to say, ‘Oh, we’re all miserable.’ But to just say, ‘If you’re feeling bad, if you’re having a hard time, here are some reasons why that’s possible.’ ”