Midlife Crisis Becomes An Issue for More Women Part 1

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By Sue Shellenbarger

The "midlife crisis" has long been thought of as something that afflicts men and often involves expensive toys and second wives. But the Wall Street Journal's Work & Family columnist, Sue Shellenbarger, says that as gender roles change, women are increasingly experiencing their own version of these upheavals. What follows is adapted from her new book, "The Breaking Point: How Female Midlife Crisis Is Transforming Today's Women."

Like most people, I had never taken the notion of midlife crisis seriously. I thought of it as a fleeting, laughable period of adolescent regression that leads middle-aged men to buy red sports cars and take trophy wives. Typing with my arm in a sling after a thrill-seeking ATV adventure ended in a crash, I attempted to make light of the subject in my "Work & Family" column in The Wall Street Journal. Lampooning myself for having one of the stupidest accidents of my life, I wrote, "The midlife crisis is a cliche -- until you have one."

I quickly learned I wasn't alone.

The column drew one of the biggest reader responses I had received in 12 years as a columnist. While some readers of both sexes were startled by the notion that a female could even have a midlife crisis ("I had no idea that women got this, too," wrote a Texas man), a far larger number of women readers experienced a shock of self-recognition.

Dozens told heartfelt tales of pain, upheaval, rebirth and transformation in middle age, and said they had no idea other women were experiencing the same thing. My comic tale had touched a hidden nerve. Clearly, millions of midlife women had reached a crisis stage -- a time when old values and goals no longer made sense to them.

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I began gathering more stories. Through newspaper ads, networking and e-mail, I identified 50 women who had undergone midlife turmoil, each of whom generously agreed to share her life experience. In 30 years as a journalist, I haven't experienced interviews as moving as these.

A startlingly high number of women have experienced what they consider a midlife crisis, broadly defined as a stressful or turbulent psychological transition that occurs most often in the late 40s and early 50s.

By age 50, even more women than men are reporting a turbulent midlife transition -- 36.1% of women, compared with 34% of men -- according to research by Elaine Wethington, a Cornell University associate professor, based on a subset of the giant 6,432-person MacArthur Foundation "Midlife in the United States" study of Americans' well-being at midlife.

Applying the findings to the 42-million-member generation of U.S. women who are nearing or in middle age, defined as about 38 to 55 years old, more than 15 million women will have, or are already having, what they regard as a midlife crisis -- about equal to the entire populations of Colorado, Massachusetts and Minnesota combined.

This pattern of female midlife crisis is emerging now because, to put it simply, women are different today. For the first time in history, women not only face more of the kind of stresses that tend to bring on midlife crises, but they also have the financial muscle, the skills and the confidence to act out their frustrations and resolve them. In a sense, women are having midlife crises now because they can.

The income of middle-aged women has posted powerful gains in comparison with men's, by many measures. Women's inflation-adjusted full-time earnings have risen 16.8% in the past 15 years, government statistics show, giving them the financial strength needed to act on midlife rebelliousness. Men's comparable earnings have declined 1.7% for the same period. Nearly one-third of wives now outearn their husbands, and the proportion of women earning more than $100,000 tripled in the past decade. All this gives women a sense of freedom at midlife. "My successful, satisfying career allowed me to be very independent, with a cocky attitude" that sparked to a full-blown midlife crisis, says a California saleswoman in my study.

Women also have the skills and resources to make career changes or start their dream businesses at midlife if they wish. The proportion of professional jobs held by women, from engineering, law, medicine and architecture to teaching, writing and computer science, has grown to 54.7% from 51.1% in 1990, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. Women hold nearly half, or 45.9%, of all executive, managerial and administrative jobs, from CEO slots to food-service management, up from 40.1% in 1990. Women today are better-educated than men, too, earning 58% of all college degrees granted, including 59% of the master's degrees, says the National Center for Education Statistics.

Read Part 2 Gender differences ,

Part 3 Ripples effects ,

Part 4 Looking back

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