What the authors could not possibly foresee was that there wouldn’t be just one crisis. There would be a series of cascading crises, starting the year after their book was published. There was the fallout from the dot-com bubble burst; then there was Sept. 11, followed by the Great Recession in 2008; then came the political chaos of increasing polarization, the specter of climate change and finally, the Covid pandemic.
Though it may come as a surprise to people who continue to use the term “millennial” as a shorthand for “annoying youths,” they — we — are no longer young. The oldest of us, in our early 40s, are standing on the cusp of the life stage known as middle age, traditionally associated with ever-less-reliable knees and existential angst about whether this is all there is. But if we’ve managed to dodge the angst — so far, at least — it’s not because we’re in the happy, well-adjusted place that William Strauss and Neil Howe predicted.
In August, The Times asked our 40-ish readers how they felt about their lives, now that they are — chronologically, at least — in midlife. Over 1,300 people responded in less than a week. One of our questions was about whether they had experienced a midlife crisis and how they would define the term.
Many people said they felt they couldn’t be having a midlife crisis, because there was no bourgeois numbness to rebel against. Rather than longing for adventure and release, they craved a sense of safety and calmness, which they felt they had never known.
"Who has midlife crisis money?"
The traditional midlife crisis, as presented in popular culture, at least, unfolds amid suburban ennui. Disaffected adults feel trapped by conformity and the circumstances of marriage, children and a well-appointed house with a lawn that needs mowing every Saturday. Everybody smokes cigarettes (or these days, picks up a vape) and has affairs. The men buy sports cars and get hair plugs.
In “Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life,” a best-selling chronicle of adulthood published in the mid-’70s, the journalist Gail Sheehy described how a typical life trajectory played out for her generation (she was born in 1936): People got married young, started having kids in their 20s and developing careers, and then were comfortably ensconced by their mid-30s. She described the ages from 35 to 45 as “the deadline decade,” when “the man of 40 usually feels stale, restless, burdened, and unappreciated. He worries about his health. He wonders, ‘Is this all there is?’”
But this version of midlife, as depicted in the novels and films “Revolutionary Road” and “The Ice Storm,” hasn’t jibed with the reality of many American adults for a long time, even though its familiar beats have lingered in pop culture. When the film “This Is 40” attempted to update the midlife crisis motif for the disaffected Gen X middle class in 2012, many reviewers did not find the protagonists’ financially cushy malaise relatable. More recently, “Fleishman Is in Trouble” considered the crisis from the perspective of elite New Yorkers, and though it was laced with real pathos, it faced some of the same critiques.
And for those reaching their 40s now, this story of midlife feels less recognizable than ever. (...)
Our predecessors in Gen X may have been buffeted by some of the same social changes and declining economic conditions as we have been, but at least they are also the only generation of households to recover the wealth they lost in the Great Recession.
When you’re not financially stable until your mid-30s and you don’t have children until your late 30s, you don’t have the time or the funds to have a meltdown. You’re in a brand-new life stage that hasn’t yet had time to grow stale. As Mark Blackman, born in 1984, who lives in Baltimore with two kids under 5, said: “Many of my similar-aged friends also have young children. It feels too early for a midlife crisis, or we’re still too occupied by child care for additional crises.”
Does this just mean millennials will hit the life stage that feels like middle age a little later as a result of their choices? Perhaps that’s the case for some. But our reader responses and interviews pointed to the likelihood that there’s something more going on here than just 40 being the new 30. As Elizabeth Hora, born in 1983 and living in Utah, said: “This is a joke, right? Who has midlife crisis money? That’s a boomer problem, not a millennial problem. We just increase our Lexapro.” (...)
Starting in the mid-’90s, researchers finally did do the rigorous academic work on the midlife “crisis” and found that it was not a “universal feature of human life” and that in fact, only 10 percent to 20 percent of people experience it. What they found was that there is no universal happiness trajectory that can predict our feelings at any given life stage. (...)
Dr. Lachman also said that some people even see middle age as a high point. “If you ask people to retrospect and reflect, they often see those years as the peak of their life,” she told me. They may be reflecting on the joy they felt when their children were young, or about the time before the losses of any typical life begin to add up — when their bodies still worked pretty well, before their friends started to die.
What used to stand out about midlife is that people tended to have a sense of power over their own circumstances. “In midlife, the sense of control is an important component of health and well-being,” Dr. Lachman has written. Even when previous generations had many life stressors, that feeling of control balanced them out.
But for millennials, unfortunately, that is exactly what might be changing — we feel we have lost any semblance of control.
Dr. Lachman also said that some people even see middle age as a high point. “If you ask people to retrospect and reflect, they often see those years as the peak of their life,” she told me. They may be reflecting on the joy they felt when their children were young, or about the time before the losses of any typical life begin to add up — when their bodies still worked pretty well, before their friends started to die.
What used to stand out about midlife is that people tended to have a sense of power over their own circumstances. “In midlife, the sense of control is an important component of health and well-being,” Dr. Lachman has written. Even when previous generations had many life stressors, that feeling of control balanced them out.
But for millennials, unfortunately, that is exactly what might be changing — we feel we have lost any semblance of control.
by Jessica Grose, NY Times | Read more:
Image: uncredited (credit source unavailable)
