If the generation everyone ignores goes through a crisis does anyone notice?
The average age for a midlife crisis is 47, psychologists say, but can happen anytime between ages 45 to 55, which in this day and age is Gen Xers, born between 1965 and 1980.
And their expression of a midlife crisis is taking a different path from previous generations. The habitually pissed off, mistrusting, authority-hating, grunge-loving generation who marked life’s milestones by sitcoms and cartoons is finding relief for their midlife anxiety in yoga and meditation or long walks on the beach. No swanky sports car for them. No new blonde trophy wife. The always stressed generation approaches midlife…stressed, and looking for stress relievers not things that will amplify their misery. They waited later to marry, later to have kids, and as the women enter their first phase of menopause, they’re carpooling to Friday night football games while caring for elderly parents, the dads grocery shopping, sandwiched again between generations.
“Therefore they’re divorcing later. What people are doing is re-evaluating their life at that point so I think that’s what is being called a midlife crisis at that age,” says relationship expert Jennifer Styers.
In the book, “Why We Can’t Sleep; Women’s New Midlife Crisis” by Ada Calhoun, describes the ever restless Gen X middle-aged folks as….sleepless.