and Schuster, 1982).
10 Generation Unbound author Isabel V. Sawhill sees three issues that could make a real difference in the lives of women: birth control, so women can decide “if, when, and with whom to have children”; wage equality; and measures in aid of work-family balance (child care, flexible hours, paid family leave). Isabel V. Sawhill, “Improving Women’s Lives: Purposeful Parenthood, Decent Wages, and Paid Family Leave,” Talk for Bucks County Women’s Advocacy Coalition, May 23, 2018. Provided to the author via email May 30, 2018.
11 Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 1, no. 2 (August 2009): 190–225.
12 In December 2017, Gallup reported that eight in ten Americans say they frequently or sometimes encounter stress in their daily lives, with women and people between the ages of thirty and forty-nine more likely than men or people of other ages to report frequent stress. The poll showed 49 percent of women reporting frequent stress, compared with 40 percent of men; and 56 percent of those aged fifty to sixty-four claimed frequent stress compared with, for example, 24 percent of those sixty-five and older. “Eight in 10 Americans Afflicted by Stress,” Gallup.com, December 20, 2017.
13 Roni Caryn Rabin, “A Glut of Antidepressants,” New York Times, August 12, 2013. Also: Daniel Smith, “It’s Still the ‘Age of Anxiety.’ Or Is It?” New York Times, January 14, 2012.
14 AARP Snapshots: Generation X Health. Retrieved August 5, 2018.
15 “Gen X Women: Flirting with Forty,” J. Walter Thompson Intelligence, Slideshare.net, May 19, 2010. Retrieved August 5, 2018.
16 Margie E. Lachman, “Mind the Gap in the Middle: A Call to Study Midlife,” Research in Human Development 12 (2015): 327–34.
17 There are some books about women going through crises in midlife. The cover of A Woman’s Worth (1993) by Marianne Williamson (the presidential candidate) shows a sepia-tone, topless woman hunched over. I opened to a random page and read: “Most women today are borderline hysterical.”
18 One interesting history of the concept of a midlife crisis is Susanne Schmidt’s “The Anti-Feminist Reconstruction of the Midlife Crisis: Popular Psychology, Journalism and Social Science in 1970s USA,” Gender and History 30, no. 1 (March 2018): 153–76. She argues that the usual way the “midlife crisis” idea is understood—as discovered by male social scientists and then popularized by Gail Sheehy’s bestseller Passages (New York: Ballantine, 2006)—is wrong. She says, “the midlife crisis has historical roots in debate about gender roles and work and family values, and the shape these took in the United States in the 1970s.” In other words, it was a conversation people were having; Sheehy reported on it; then a bunch of male social scientists whose work she had discussed along with her reporting and feminist critique said she had “popularized” their “discoveries.”
19 Elliott Jaques, “Death and the Midlife Crisis,” in Creativity and Work (Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 1990), 306.
20 Daniel J. Levinson, The Seasons of a Man’s Life (New York: Knopf, 1978), 199.
21 Susan Krauss Whitbourne, “The Top 10 Myths About the Midlife Crisis,” PsychologyToday.com, July 21, 2012.
22 Someone could write a dissertation on women insisting they don’t deserve to feel bad. In 1975’s The Romantic Englishwoman, the wife (played by Glenda Jackson) is asked in bed by her husband (played by Michael Caine): “Are you discontented?” Her reply: “I would be, but I don’t feel I have the right.” The husband steals the line for a screenplay he’s writing.
23 The song was also covered in 1998 by Ace of Base. After I broke up with him, my boyfriend when I was fourteen left many notes in my locker that sometimes included Ace of Base and Wilson Phillips lyrics. This did not rekindle the passion.
24 Richard Eisenberg, “Boomers and Gen Xers Skipping Health Care Due to Cost,” Forbes.com, March 27, 2018.
25 Viv Albertine, To Throw Away Unopened (London: Faber and Faber, 2018), 21.
26 Jim Tankersley, “Jobless Recoveries Are Here to Stay, Economists Say, But It’s a Mystery Why,” Washington Post, September 19, 2013.
27 Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, “5 Interesting Facts About Generation X,” AARP.org. Retrieved May 18, 2018. According to research by Experian, Millennials average $52,120 in debt (including mortgages, credit cards, and student and car loans); Boomers and the Silent Generation $87,438; Generation X, $125,000. Also see: Chris Matthews, “America’s Most Indebted Generation? Gen X,” Fortune.com, August 27, 2014.
28 Khalfani-Cox, “5 Interesting Facts About Generation X.” Retrieved August 5, 2018.
29 Jeffry Bartash, “Higher Rents and Home Prices Drive Increase in Consumer Prices in December, CPI Finds,” MarketWatch, January 12, 2018.
30 The average age of a college-educated first-time mother in big cities like San Francisco or New York City is now thirty-three. Quoctrung Bui and Claire Cain Miller, “The Age That Women Have Babies: How a Gap Divides America,” New York Times, August 4, 2018.
31 Clive Thompson, “You Know Who’s Really Addicted to Their Phones? The Olds,” Wired, March 27, 2018.
32 Sheehy, Passages, 345.
33 Ibid., xviii.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
