Midlife Review

I'm going through one of my angsty moments, perfect for reading a book like the one at the left. Midlife Crisis at 30: How the Stakes Have Changed for a New Generation--And What to Do about It by Lia Macko and Kerry Rubin raises the question of why so many young women (aged 25-37) are experiencing a feeling of crisis in their personal and professional lives. The authors (both journalists) clearly see themselves as the heirs of Betty Friedan, both as the children of Boomer feminists and as would-be sociologists charting the contours of their own "problem with no name."

So far I'm finding the book interesting -- the personal anecdotes of their interviewees are particularly compelling -- but slightly frustrating and depressing as well. On the one hand, it's reassuring in a vague way to know that I'm not the only person wondering why the dreams of dynamic career, marriage and two children in a house of my own have gotten derailed or have run into each other. On the other, their tendency to focus (as did Ms. Friedan) on the relatively successful middle class leaves me wondering how useful their analysis will be in terms of my own experience. Yes, it is helpful to know that my behavior to date may be the result of things like the Divorce Insurance Policy (Gen-X women, growing up in an age of parental divorce, tend to act as if they will need to be able to support themselves by themselves even if married) and the Sequential Success Trap (the belief that one must first establish oneself as a successful independent individual before looking for marriage or children). And their argument that Gen-Xers need to rethink their situation in terms of larger social and structural dynamics instead of personal failure is worth making.

Yet as I've been reading, two things have kept me from feeling fully satisfied. The first is, as mentioned, their emphasis on middle-class women, most of whom have been successful in at least one area of their life, who are beginning to hit the wall as they turn thirty. The typical person they interviewed is a young go-getter who has done well in her field but is now wondering what has happened to the rest of her life. As someone who is (a) not successful in any of these endeavors (though I do have a long-term boyfriend, more than some of these women) and (b) older than the 29-year-old angstistas, I feel out of step with their assumed audience.

This brings me to the second thing. Rubin and Macko are not interested merely in analysis; they want to offer solutions. The thing is that I'm doubtful that either the systemic or personal solutions will work for me, given their assumptions about who "I" the reader am and where I am at this stage in my life. On the systemic level, the emphasis so far (I'm only half-way through the book, so maybe this will change) is on making the workplace more flexible and tolerant of women's life choices outside of work. On the personal level, it seems to be on learning to accept that while we may indeed be able to "have it all" we can't have it all at once. Yet what of those of us for whom the issue is not a conflict between work and family, but dealing with the aftereffects of bad choices and unfortunate results in both areas? And, worse, have less time for negotiating them than our 29-year-old sisters?

Their ideas about the power of the Sequential Success Trap resonate deeply with me, but unlike most of the women they describe (such as those who've been working 80 hour weeks in pursuit of promotion after promotion), for me it's not merely a matter of one success having pushed out the others. It's about the sequences having failed entirely. Instead of wondering how to leave a successful career to find a husband and start a family, I'm back at the first step of my career, and only a few steps further along in terms of family development. Instead of realizing at 30 that if I want a family I'd better get going, I'm wondering if it's already too late.

I have two basic responses to difficulties: I either perservere stubbornly against naysayers, or I resign myself to a worst-case scenario in order to lessen the pain of anticipated disappointment. Lately, I'm finding myself defaulting more to the latter, especially in these areas. First I gave up the idea of an academic career (under duress initially, but now I can't even imagine being seen as a competitive candidate), and now I'm finding myself giving up much hope for anything more than a decently paid, not-too-boring position, let alone one that is interesting and challenging. Similarly on the family front; I'm still hopeful about marriage, but first the idea of having two children (boy and girl, ideally) spaced three or four years apart fell away, then the idea of more than one child, and now the idea of even one healthy child and a normal pregnancy is teetering on the edge. It's not that I've given up hope, it's that hope is a luxury that I'm preparing to give up in order to survive. If I expect nothing, how can I be disappointed if nothing turns out as expected?

Update: I've finished the book, which was easy to do because I ended up skimming the last half in an annoyed fashion before rolling my eyes and clapping it shut. Why? Well, the second half of the book is what passes for a "solutions" section. Or an inspiration section. Whatever -- either way it didn't work. Basically, this part of the book consists of a bunch of role models, women who were missing some part of the "All" in "Having It All" and found a way, by age 40 or 50 or so, of making it work. The thing is, I found very little about these women's lives with which I could relate, and, simultaneously, found that their "solutions" tended to take the form of narrative plots along the lines of "I looked at my situation, and found a way to persevere and create a better life for myself. Yay me!" Oh look, this woman at 30 had three children and no job, and now she's a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Oh look, this woman at 30 had made her fortune as an artistic innovator, but had no children or husband; now she's the happy mother of two and is still charging ahead in her field. Oh look, this woman at thirty decided to leave her lucrative banking job in order windsurf professionally, and now she and her husband (who she met at a competition) are expecting their first child. (I made most of these details up, but the gist is basically true.) There are no stories of single childless women in dead-end careers here -- just stories of people who'd succeeded in at least one part of the "All" and later succeeded in the remaining parts as well, and not simply made do, but triumphed and became famous/wealthy/influential. That's not inspiring; that's a fairy tale. For all that it can happen, they forget (again) that it is not guaranteed to happen, or even likely to happen, for most women.

The upshot? For all that Rubin and Macko made an argument for banding together to institute structural change in the first half, the message one leaves with is that if one works hard (and is lucky as all get out) you can indeed "Have It All." And that achieving It All is ultimately a personal endeavor.

Comments

[dale]

No, no, no. That's the worst of all possible choices. I'm all for giving up expectations, but for God's sake, not in just stuffing them in the freezer to numb the pain.

As C.S. Lewis once said, the problem is not that we ask too much of life, but that we ask too little. Life shouldn't be tolerable. It shouldn't even be worthwhile, on the balance. It should be intoxicatingly joyous, marvellous, achingly beautiful. & it can be. With or without kids or husbands or good jobs.

Er... excuse me. Every once in a while I get into the evangelist vein. You seem to bring it out in me. Sorry.

[Rana]

That's okay. You demonstrate the good kind of evangelism!

I expressed myself poorly, I think. I'm not giving up on life. Or even hope. But I don't do well with ambiguous paths -- I've always been someone who wants to know the destination, even if I want to be surprised once I get there. (So I want to know when I'm going to be at the movie theater, and how much it will cost, and what the movie will be -- but I don't want to read reviews beforehand.) So while I know on some level that I need to shift from a chosen, dead-end path to an unknown path, I don't do well with that level of ambiguity. Thus, I'm trying to move from the previously chosen path onto a new chosen path with lower/different expectations -- if I'm surprised by something good from the old path showing up, it'll be a bonus, while if I'm not, that's okay too. But if I set my hopes too high (and I don't trust my judgement to distinguish between "reasonable" and "too much") and persist in pursuing the old, unworkable dreams, then I know I will be unhappy and disappointed, even if the new path turns out to have its own charms.

It's an understatement to say that I've been surprised by the last few years -- not always pleasantly. So right now I'm trying to accept that my life may be radically different than I anticipated. I'm not mourning a life to come; I'm grieving for a life that no longer exists, the one in which I had all those goodies at age 34, the one on which I based my current (unworkable) hopes for the next few years. There may be a good life for me at age 37, but I can't tell. I do know it will be different than what I thought it would be when I was imagining it even a few years ago. If I don't let that maybe life go _now_, I'll still be mourning it when I'm 37 or 45 or 93 or whatever, and using it to judge my life in terms of how it comes short of the ideal, instead of appreciating what I will have instead.

Or at least that's the theory. I'm finding it surprisingly hard to do.

[sappho]

Hi. Sometimes you remind me of the man I live with. He graduated from the University of Chicago, and always assumed that when he was 30 his hardest decisions would be whether or not to take the private jet down to New Orleans or to Paris for dinner. Imagine his surprise when he turned 30 and didn't even have his Ph.D., or later, when he had the degree, and the published book, and still no tenure-track interviews.
HOWEVER, I have, for lo these many years, always seen it my place to remind him that he does have a good life--sans children, true, but he's got me (and I'm not chopped liver, as they say), and a job that pays his bills and then some and one that, on occasion, he even enjoys it (I think that may be true of even those folks who say they love their job--there must be days when they don't, as well as days when they do).
Now, of course it's not all the time. But, like all of us, he sometimes needs to look at his life and see it for what it is--full of opportunities for delight and joy (I enjoyed your pictures/vacation description a lot). What I'm saying is, I think you may be happier than you know, you are good at bringing things into your life that are good and nurturing, and while I know that the economic questions are big and ugly ones, still, they aren't the whole of your life...

[Michelle]

Rana, I think that you are so much more on the path than many people because you clearly recognize the obstacles, your problems dealing with them, and while you may not have the definite solution, you know what questions to ask. Many people don't even know *why* they are dissatisfied.

It sounds as if you're right about the book: you are not their target audience. I agree with both their systematic and personal solutions but those solutions do not address the issues you're dealing with. The children of divorce take is interesting, too, and I found myself nodding immediately while reading that as independence and self-sufficiency was drilled into me by my mother who spent the first 12 years of my life as a homemaker and then was forced into the workplace after divorcing an alcholic husband. But that mold really isn't me either, I realized, because if it was, I doubt I would have married at 21 before I even finished college. In fact, I'm not sure I know anyone in my "real life" that fits the target audience described (although I'm sure they're out there.)

I do think that it is very important to grieve for losses. That's how I felt about my childbirth experiences. I mourned for years for the aspects of it that I would never know. And it may seem trivial to people on the outside, but the daily things that I give up that were once a part of the vision I had of my family, all take their incremental toll. I like my life but it's not exactly what I pictured. It's actually been only a year (+/-?) since you were left teaching; your readjustment to a different focus and footing in life is bound to take some time. And it may be even longer before you can leave behind the effects.

AND, you know those biological clocks tick a lot longer these days.

[Mel]

Thanks for the write up on this book, which I've been hearing a lot about, but haven't read myself. I understand the difficulty about embracing uncertainty -- I think that's especially tough for people in/coming out of academia, which is such a highly regulated environment of tasks, evaluation, paths to desired outcomes. It seems like you're doing the right thing now -- a process of sifting out what are your own values and expectations and what are those of family/culture -- seeing where those match up, where they differ. And acknowledging whatever loss might be involved. Then, after that, you'll be freed up to move forward, in whatever direction that is. Have you looked at Cheryl Richardson's Take Time for Your Life? I have found parts of it really useful.

[wavery]

Rana,
Great book review and great insight into yourself. I identify with your love of a plan and I really identify with the difficulty of adjusting to changing plans and coping with uncertainty. I am an over-planner and I hate surprises. Hate things not going to plan to the point of ridiculousness. And like you, the plans I made with career choices have imploded on me. And I'm so paralyzed by it that I'm unemployed and stagnant to some degree. We're different in that I took care of the wedding thing long ago and I'm starting IF research at 30. That's not helpful to you, I know. I guess the point of my comment is just to acknowledge that yesindeedy, well planned out paths have blind intersections (my own blog plug) and I for one am also getting used to not getting what I want. Removing my rose colored glasses is a bitch. (It's probably poor blog etiquette to cuss on someone else's blog, please forgive if I've offended.)

[wavery]

I just reread my post, as well as the ones you've posted that brought me to your blog and I just realized how to say what I wanted.

The 'Stop bitching and change it if you're unhappy' is not constructive advice. It's simple and tidy but life is not.

There.

[Rana]

Ahh... I love my commenters! You guys are great. Seriously. There's a lot of wisdom here. *grin* How can I stay grumpy and sad with folks like you there to chide and support as needed?

wavery -- you've just joined a good bunch of folks. And cussin' is fine, if it's the best way to say what you feel or think. "it's a bitch" is damn mild compared to some of what's been posted here!

[Cleis]

Where are the people like the ones profiled in the book? I don't know anyone like that. Everyone I know who's my age (mid-30s) is in a situation much more like yours, or mine. Career changes, crises of meaning, decisions about partners and kids, why-don't-I-own-a-house-yet-not-a-soulless-suburban-house-but-a-
funky-old-house-in-an-urban-area-house?

I've been grazing in What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson. It's a little hokey, but the stories are about all kinds of people, those who find their path and those still looking, those with lots of options and those with few, those who are happy with themselves and those who are dissatisfied. It seems a lot more realistic to me.

Fake trackback:

http://www.voxlibre.com/r04_07260730.htm#lucky

"After reading this blog on the book Midlife Crisis at 30, I've been trying to mull things over. I want to offer words of wisdom to the blog's author, Rana, but I'm not sure I can relate. Somehow it seems stilted to have such an abundance of focussed goals...."

[maria]

I am catching up on some of my blog reading, and I was sopleased to find this thoughtful post here! You made me curious about the book, as well as had me feeling not so lonely in my experience of the impossibility of having it all (concurrently, sequentially ... whatever) as most of us experience this. And I am way past 30 -- and now 40 too!

These books with their selective narratives sometime do more harm than good ... and boost the careers and egos of their authors more than they help illuminate our common ground.

[Rana]

Yes. What's particularly annoying (egregious, even) is that the glowing life stories supposedly belong to _the struggling_. Um, no. Even when these women didn't "Have It All" they did have something, and often a something far more impressive than many of their peers'.

Of course, I've never been much of a one to be inspired by the stories of famous people making it -- I think it's part and parcel of my larger belief that people are who they are, idiosyncratic, and interesting because of that, and to assume that something as complex as a life can be emulated is to miss the point.

(It's not so much that I don't enjoy reading about the lives of people I find interesting, as that I can't see how it applies to "solving" my own life. Small details -- like how best to wash white sheets -- yeah, but not ones like how to have children in one's life.)

[PowerProf]

Great book review. I agree with many of your sentiments. Here I am at 32 and considering divorce (no children). Do I want to share my life with someone? Is that someone my husband? I'm just beginning to discover myself as I've spent the last 15 years on education/career. I'm not where I expected to be and adjusting expectations is hard. And - I'm wondering about the kid front; will there be one? I'm not even sure if I want one. Anyhow, sounds like I would like the first half of the book more than the last-- thanks for saving me some time!