Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

by Ada Calhoun

Yes, women went into the workforce, but without any significant change to gender roles at home, to paid-leave laws, to anything that would make the shift feasible.

Over a diner breakfast, a successful single woman in Texas told me she thought she’d have a husband and kids by now. She asked, “What did I do wrong?” While her baby slept on her chest, a married mother of three in Oregon said she thought she’d have a career by now. “What did I do wrong?” she asked.

And can we really say women are in “crisis” if, despite how they feel inside, they’re able to crank out well-structured PowerPoint presentations and arrange elaborate gift baskets for teachers on the last day of school?

If I went on an Eat, Pray, Love walkabout, who would pick up the kid from school?

Many of us have delayed marriage and children into our thirties and forties.30 This means that we are likely to find ourselves taking care of parents in decline at the same time that we are caring for little children—and, by the way, being urged to ask for raises and lean in at work.

When a couple divorced in the 1980s, children almost always went to live with their mother, and a child’s household income dropped dramatically—according to one study, by an average of 42 percent.9 While some female-led households eventually came back strong, many never recovered anything like their former wealth.10

I will never, ever forget that chocolate is scrunchous when it crunches, that Mentos is the “fresh maker,” and that only I can prevent forest fires. Until I die, my bologna will bear the first name O-S-C-A-R.

What I, personally, wouldn’t give for my very own American Wife. She would cook my meals and clean my bathtub and make my appointments and enforce my son’s screen-time limits and drop by to visit my 101-year-old grandmother at the retirement home every week.

We give so much of our bodies to others already.” So much of womanhood just hurts: cramps, childbirth, mammograms, Pap smears, breastfeeding—not to mention eyebrow threading. “There’s so much wear and tear on us, yet we’re all expected to look younger than we are.