Women over 40 experience a completely new kind of midlife crisis: They work in insecure jobs, raise children and often look after their parents at the same time. It's no longer about the meaning of life, it's about your own existence.
Nicole Zepter
The moment I thought that as a woman I had achieved everything that apparently counts – a career, a child that I self-confidently raise alone – I let everything fall apart: I quit my apartment, my job and thus my previous one Live and move back to my hometown. I just turned 40. It is not a decision about the meaning of my life. It is the fear of a third burnout. I'm not looking for meaning. I am looking for relief.
The great uncertainty
I'm not the only one. Financial pressure, a lack of childcare, one's own parents who fall ill, employment contracts that are not renewed. While our mothers, the baby boomer generation, had almost paid off the house at 40, at the same age we often live with the insecurity of a 25-year-old. In many cases without a property, every second German now lives to rent. These are the evenings on the phone with your girlfriend when you quietly ask, looking at your account balance and tomorrow: Are you feeling the same?
I know many women who outwardly lead a successful life (career, child, great apartment), but who are on the verge of collapsing inside and have the feeling that they are trapped in the situation. These cases are hardly visible in everyday life, because exhaustion is often linked to a feeling of shame at not being prepared for life. Meike, 42, has been looking after her mother with dementia for several years, while her child, who recently started first grade, waits at home. She says: "I would never have thought that so many existential crises would come together in my forties. One generation says goodbye, another comes. I have the feeling that I don't use the little time I have for myself because I'm so exhausted. " She is so happy to be able to say goodbye to her mother, but the burden of the disease is draining. The stress at home is even more pronounced: "As nice as it is to have a child – it's a tough job that paralyzes your life. I even have the feeling that the women in my family are falling for the glue You are led to believe that you should be blissful as a mother. I am not. I am exhausted. " She adds that it is still a taboo to openly talk about how unhappy a mother can be.
She hasn't slept through it for a long time.
Kathrin, 43, no children, has had breathing problems for more than a year. She chokes up the air, gasps. It's probably stress, she says. She hasn't slept through it for a long time, two colleagues at work are troubling her. She is a manager and has responsibility for more than 15 colleagues. Her job finances her lifestyle, a trailer, expensive vacations. Deep down she would like to have a completely different job, but she wonders: "Can I still do this now?"
Susanne is 50, a single parent with a teenage daughter. In the early 40s came the marriage crisis and separation from her husband, the loss of the common home. She had to start all over again and fell into a severe depression. She remembers: "In my head the question was always: Can I do it all?"
Burn-out on the rise
The achievement of security, a symbol for reaching the 40th birthday, no longer exists. Instead, life really strikes again. With 83 sick days per year, women suffer from burn-out more frequently than men (55 sick days), and sick leave due to burn-out has tripled in the past ten years. We don't slide into saturation, but into a crisis that feels different from the typical midlife crisis: It's not an individual problem, but a social one.
The American journalist Ada Calhoun has written a book about the state of women in midlife. It's aptly called "Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis" and immediately made it onto the New York Times bestseller list. What is special about it is the look at our generation, Generation X, which includes the years 1965 to 1980. "This generation works very, very hard," says Calhoun in an interview, referring to the achievement of being at work, being a mother and still doing more household chores than your partner. "And yet she did not achieve what she wanted." According to Calhoun, this leads to shame for not being good enough and frustration at never meeting one's own standards.
She spoke to women between 40 and 50, who, according to the social assumption, can achieve anything, and especially experienced exhausted women who are overwhelmed by everyday life and in constant panic about money. "Instead of their concerns being heard, they are told to do more or to plan more time for themselves." What remains are women like the mother that Calhoun describes at the beginning of her book: Out of frustration that the son does not put the iPad down to help with packing his suitcase, she smashes it with a hammer. What had discharged as frustration led the mother to collapse: "It was terrible. My first thought when looking at the broken glass was: I have to find a good therapist. Now, immediately."
"Least parented generation"
It seems as if we are not up to life, although we have the best qualifications. Most of us have been able to study – something many of our mothers have not been able to do. We are free to decide about our relationship, Generation X was the first so-called single generation. We also grew up in a time of great uncertainty. Traditional family structures broke up and led to high divorce rates in the 1980s, which in turn led to social insecurity. And to parents who were no longer at home when you got home from school. We know the image of the key children. In the USA, one speaks of the "Least Parent Generation", the generation that has received the least parental attention. Today, however, we spend more time with our children than any other generation before. That doesn't always lead to acceptance. Often the stunned gaze of the parents remains, who grew up in stable jobs and classic roles. Both parents no longer exist today, and even with traditionally distributed roles, both parents often have to go to work in order to maintain the standard of living.
This is not because, as Calhoun describes, we put too much money into Pearl Jam CDs. The standard of a normal life is higher today than it used to be. This means that a family needs more income to keep up with the middle class lifestyle. Real estate prices have risen, our generation has experienced global economic crises, we live with fixed-term contracts and a rapidly changing labor market, which leads to CVs with significantly more breaks. Almost every third household in Germany has no reserves, and quite a few still borrow money from their parents at the age of 40. And yes, women still earn around 20 percent less than men. They work part-time to an above-average extent and still rarely have management positions. Women take care of the household, care, support and volunteer work, working around four and a half hours a day without pay. Women often have more workload than our mothers, who worked as housewives at home, while our generation also has a job more often.
Is there a solution?
"We need more solidarity with one another, more sisterhood," says Meike. "The more honest we deal with our crises, the more energy we can unleash." It is exhausting to pretend that everything is "great". It is also comforting that it is not an isolated incident: "The crises are coming for all of us." Susanne went to the forest for three weeks, lived there alone in a tent, without a child, in order to think about her future life. She decided to live abroad and went into therapy. Kathrin has changed jobs and is hoping for less stress. And even if it wasn't easy at the beginning, I am glad that my 40-year-old made a radical change. Today, at 43, I live an everyday life without adrenaline. That makes one thing above all: satisfied. And I know again that there is something else than a life that is shaped by external expectations, work and status. Calhoun puts it this way: Just because we have the ability to achieve anything doesn't mean we have to achieve anything.
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