What Will the Midlife Crisis Look Like for Millennial Women?

Millennials are preparing for their midlife era...and it's bringing up a lot of questions. 

For example...

• Does every generation feel this way at this age?
• Why do we feel so much younger *and* so much older than we actually are?
• What do I actually want to be when I grow up?
• I've done all the things I set out to do. Now what?
• And, perhaps most importantly...do women even get to have a midlife crisis?

Anita and Zara are getting into all of it...and exploring the wild identity shift that comes when you're 40-ish. Women in midlife are almost always denied main character treatment, but we're here to change that. 

Caregiving (for both our kids and our parents) complicates our ability to fall apart in midlife. We don't really have a roadmap for what a midlife crisis actually looks like in a woman, but we're setting the stage for what may come.

Key topics: Millennial midlife, middle aged millennials, pop culture, gender, marriage, aging, beauty, career, success, ambition

Thanks for listening to The Millennial Sandwich! Don't forget to follow, subscribe and connect with us on social media 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to the Millennial Sandwich, a space for real conversations about millennials in the middle. Not just of our own lives, but also of a caregiving sandwich. I'm Dr.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Anitha Chandra, a geriatrician and expert in elder care. And I'm Zara Hanowalt, a parenting journalist and expert in American motherhood. And even we don't have all the answers. Join us as we figure out life in the middle. Hi everyone, welcome back. It's just Anita and Zara today. And we actually asked all of you what you want to hear more about from us, and we gave you a few options, and the overwhelming winner was what will the midlife crisis look like for millennials and specifically millennial women? And obviously, we don't exactly have the answers here yet. Millennials are just starting to

Who gets to have a midlife crisis?

SPEAKER_00 0:45

enter midlife. We are not yet 40, so we're not technically quite at the age where most people start to quote unquote experience their midlife crisis, but we thought it would be fun to explore the context, explore how we were raised and how that might affect how we do midlife. So, Anitha, when you think of the phrase midlife crisis, what comes to mind?

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Um, I think of like a 50-year-old man buying a sports car and having an affair.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Exactly. That's literally exactly what I was thinking. Which is very interesting because do women even get to have midlife crises?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Well, first of all, I I like really don't feel midlife. I remember like when we were younger, seeing the 40th birthday and like the over the hill all of that M38 and year 38, where I don't feel I feel like I don't feel any different than I did eight years ago in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Well, I do and I don't. What's interesting is if you watch old TV shows, like my husband and I are watching One Tree Hill right now, and it is so clearly like the teenagers present one way, and then there's a complete gap between how the adults present, and it's the haircuts, and the outfits, and the way they speak, and everything is there's just such a stark divide between young people and middle-aged people, and then old people. There's another big divide. I feel like millennials have really kind of smoothed that out. Like, I didn't think I would be 38 and having two kids and still like wearing denim shorts, but here we are.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Wait, I feel like yeah, we're all looking at the same stuff and like understanding the same things.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's all these jokes about how millennials think we look younger than we actually do, but we present very, very young compared to other generations. And I mean, we're not like going to we're not going to a fancy dinner at 6 p.m. in like a full suit for the men and like Yeah. No. This is not 90s middle-age. This is a very different landscape. But I think that's interesting because I I do feel another shift, and I feel like that shift is just about my priorities and what I'm thinking about, and also just like my algorithm. My algorithm is starting to feel very middle-aged. It's a lot about perimenopause, it's about like colon cancer on the rise, it's about caregiving, obviously. I mean, I think we've kind of told our algorithms to give us more caregiving by doing this podcast, but it's the conversations I'm having with people feel different. It's just this shift that I'm starting to feel that I don't think has fully set in yet, but I'm starting to just feel like I'm entering a new chapter in life. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

And I think it's because we've kind of checked off a lot of the boxes that we were trying to get to our whole lives. So, you know, we have the marriage, career, the kids, the house, all of those things. And it's like, okay, well, this can't just be it, right? We have hopefully decades left to live meaningfully, and like, what do I want that to look like? In that way, I'm starting to think, feel like I can like finally take a step back a little bit and think, what do I want the rest of my life to look like?

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Yeah. Yeah, you know, what's interesting is I know we've both talked about this, that our dads, who are both cardiologists, we both had a lot of fear around them having heart attacks. Yeah. And part of why, and I'm knowing immigrant dads, I would guess you have similar stories, but every time I stressed my dad out even a little bit, it was, I'm having chest pain. Yeah. Stop doing this. I'm gonna drop dead. Stop it. I'm having chest pain. And he would say that all the time. And I was like, is he manipulating me? Is he, does he not realize how anxious this makes me? And now I'm like, was that his midlife crisis? Because they were working with heart disease all day long, right? They were thinking about it every single day. Was that just on their minds all the time when they turned about 50?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

I was gonna say, when I definitely around 50, I definitely noticed my dad's midlife crisis. Like he started dressing young girls, like there were just things that I was like, I I noticed. Funny though, I don't know when my mom, I don't know if she if or when she had a midlife crisis. Maybe she did. I don't know. I have no idea when my mom's midlife crisis was or what I bet if I asked her, she'd be like, I don't know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yeah, same. But also, you know, I think that that has become a little bit of a way that we excuse or at least explain men's bad behavior. To be clear, like our dads were that's not bad behavior. That's them being like normal doctors. Like, of course, we think about the things that we work with all the time, too. That's a natural thing. But when we're talking about the having

Do Women Even Get to Have a Midlife Crisis

SPEAKER_00 5:54

an affair or blowing money on a car you can't afford without checking with your wife, things like that, I think that the midlife crisis label was just kind of a way to be like, oh, they can't help it. It's their midlife crisis. And it for us, it's launching a podcast. It's like, for if a woman got herself a, you know, 25-year-old boyfriend, we wouldn't call that a midlife crisis. We would be like, she's a terrible person.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Right. Yeah, it's so different the way we talk about it. It's so different. And there's just so much of when we when we were growing up, everywhere we looked, all of the messaging was you can do anything. Girls can grow up to be anything. As long as you work hard, you can do anything. And for some reason, we heard that as you should be everything. Like, not even you can do anything. You should be everything. And we did. We did it really well. We are doing it really well. And I think a lot of us are just like kind of opening our eyes and realizing we're just all doing too much. Because yeah, they were right, we could do anything and everything, and we are, but that doesn't mean we should.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Yeah. Especially in the United States, we love to tell women they can do anything, but we really are not as interested in actually looking at the barriers or looking at what is in their way, just making their life needlessly difficult and removing those things. I think it's a lot easier to just you-go-girl it and to say you can crush the glass ceiling instead of being like, actually, is the glass ceiling glass or is it cement? Yeah. Because I think it might be cement.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

And the concept of doing it all, like what does that even mean?

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Doing it all.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

I mean balance. I mean, all of it. It's just nobody says this stuff to men, first of all. No, no. It's not even possible. And I don't even know why that needs to be the goal. When you were younger, say you were when you were like 22, what did success sound or look like to you?

SPEAKER_00 8:03

That's a good question. I think I always wanted more of a balance of family life. I think I always kind of, if I really thought about it, I remember in college hearing someone talk about working from home. And this was before working from home was a thing, but I was like, that's the goal. I want to do whatever I can to work from home. And then, of course, that became a lot more normal. But yeah, I think at 22, it probably looked a little bit more glamorous than it started to

How Success Looks Different in Midlife

SPEAKER_00 8:30

look as I got a little bit older. What about you?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

For me, it was totally like I'm gonna be the top whatever. There wasn't even an actual concrete goal other than just being the best something. Like I wanted to be married, I wanted to have kids, I wanted the house, I wanted nice things, and I was gonna be like the best. What like power couple situation? And at 20, I'd already, I'd already met my husband. So we were not married at 20, just to be clear. We met when I was 20. And yeah, it was all about like career success. Like the kids were part of the picture, but not the picture. And now success looks totally different to me and my success is time and you know, the ability to be with my family and the flexibility. And I would have never thought that if someone told me that at 20 or 22, that your goal is gonna be flexibility and time with your family and time doing what you want to do. I think that would have surprised me a lot.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Interesting. I don't know if it would have surprised me, but maybe. Maybe. But I think that's a really interesting piece. You know, you talked about how you've known your husband for many, many years. And I think that is such a big part of the midlife crisis or the midlife experience. As we enter middle age, men tend to be the richest they'll ever be. And that is the ultimate form of social currency for men. And women, and I'm not saying that I believe this, I'm saying this is a societally held belief that women lose value as they age because our greatest currency is our beauty and our youthfulness. And so I do think that that's another piece of this that not enough people are talking about is that marriages start to feel it starts to feel like, you know, you were maybe

Gender Differences in Midlife

SPEAKER_00 10:25

this goddess to your husband at one point. And then all of a sudden the world looks at the two of you and it's like he's the shining star. Yeah, and you're just the wife that's holding him down. And there's that narrative about the midlife crisis, right? Of like, I'm gonna go and cheat on my wife because she's aging and she's boring. All she ever does is fold the laundry and like do all the stuff to keep us all alive. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's such a big piece of this that every generation has felt, and we're probably gonna feel it differently. But I I do think that that's gonna be a thing for millennials too, because I think that's just the way the world works is we allow men to age and we actually give them more and more attention and glory as they age. But women, the minute you hit 35, you're like you're invisible. I remember you asked me, or you said something about how we feel like we're not the main character in our own lives anymore. And are you surprised to feel that way? Because I'm actually not.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

I I think a little bit, but probably because I watch so many movies where the the woman becomes she's the main character and she turns into this person who she wants to be. And yeah, I I I think a little bit surprised.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah, when I think about the main character, you never see women over a certain age and you never see mothers in that main character role. It's very, very, very rare. And so I think you absorb that message that you're not worthy of being at the center or the person who your story is the one that people are investing in. I think you really absorb this message that once you hit a certain age and once you become a mother or a caregiver or both, your life is, as you've said, like you're in the background of everything. You're in the background of everyone's life and you are, you're living for everybody else's needs. And I think that message really comes through. And I think that's why I wanted to have this conversation because nobody really gives middle-aged women or women who are kind of, I think we're like cuspy, you know, early adult, middle-age, we're somewhere in the middle there. But nobody really gives us time to talk about our own identity. I think there's a lot of attention given to that matrescence piece to stuff that, you know, we've worked on in the past 10 years, but there are really not enough conversations about what happens when you're like halfway through your kids' childhood almost, you're deep into your marriage, you're taking care of your parents, and you feel like your identity and your experiences and your priorities are just not important to anybody.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

This is the most I've ever felt. Like I don't really know who I am. In some ways. And I at this age, I feel confident in a way that I didn't feel 10 years ago. I feel not embarrassed to be myself and less shy. In in some ways, I'm like, okay, I've come into myself. This is who I want to be. And I'm also like, but who am I? Like, what do I want to do? What do I want to be when I grow up? I still don't know the answer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

And I think that's maybe what the millennial midlife crisis is going to look like. It's interesting, and we're gonna do an episode that's more targeted to career, but I think that we will experience the midlife crisis differently as a generation. I think that's men and women, but more women, because we've never really known a period of stability as adults. People love to comment on how millennials can't commit

The Millennial Career Crisis

SPEAKER_00 14:09

to anything, or we're job hoppers, or we are entitled and we think that we deserve the cushy setup at work, but we've also had to be really nimble because the workplace has weathered so much. We came out of college right after the 2008 financial.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Yeah. And that was that was huge for us as we were working towards our dream careers and seeing that no career is actually secure. Yeah. And it used to be like you you picked one career, one company, you stayed with them, and loyalty was rewarded. But that's so not the case anymore. I mean, even companies just change who they want to be on a whim. Like all birds went from making shoes to now they're like an AI company and they're like, Yeah. And now and the CEO, I think she said something like, Oh, yeah, nobody's even gonna remember the shoes. I mean, if they if a giant company can just decide that they're not doing what they started out to do, like how are we supposed to feel secure in any job? A job is a job. I think that mentality, even if it's your calling, even in medicine, yes, it's my I it's my career. I can't unbecome a doctor, but my job's a job. Like it's not that's it's not my entire identity.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

We had so much messaging around pick a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life, especially during the girl boss era, which is when we were really forming our professional identities as millennials. It was like if you don't wake up excited on a Monday morning, you're in the wrong line of work.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

And also, how can you really lean in when you're being pulled in multiple directions in terms of caregiving?

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Yeah. I mean, you have not we have nothing to lean on. Yeah. Leaning in, it's like you have weights on your back and you're trying to lean forward. What's gonna happen? You're gonna fall.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Yeah. I know. We sometimes post about some of this, and older generations will be like, oh, there's such a victim complex, like you guys just don't want to work and all this stuff. But it is different. I mean, I used to think that medicine is one of those careers that is like, you have job security, you never will have to worry. And then the pandemic happened. And it turns out that that's not true. All of us are replaceable and can easily be replaced. I think that that we're just our eyes are opening to some of these things.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Yeah. The the saying is you're replaceable everywhere except at home. And I I really, really do feel that. And I really do feel like work is not worth me sacrificing that much time with my kids or with my parents, but it's also such a privileged way to think. And I know I'm very aware of the fact that I can not just think this way, but also design my work around my family in the way that I've been able to, because I'm really, really privileged. Yeah. Do you feel like having a side hustle is the new Birken? You know, that's that's an interesting thing because I actually think that anytime I see a conversation about stay-at-home motherhood, it's you can be a stay-at-home mom if you want, but make sure you have a side hustle. And as someone, I was a stay-at-home mom. So for context, I left my job right before my twins were born. And my plan was to stay home for like a year, and I ended up going freelance about five months in and built that up to what it is now. So I did exactly that. Like I had what initially was a side hustle and then turned into a full career. And I think it's a completely unreasonable thing to tell people to do because a stay-at-home mom has a full-time, incredibly intense job. It's the hardest job I've ever had, without question. And we're still expecting women do it all, even if the do-it-all

Having it All is Still the Expectation

SPEAKER_00 18:07

looks different. It used to be like have the office job and the corner office and the people who work under you and have the kids at home and never miss a minute and make sure there's a beautiful organic meal on the table, even though you're not going to leave the office until seven o'clock. You somehow have to figure out how to make that beautiful organic meal because it has to be homemade and have it on the table for your family. You like you can't be two places at once, but just figure it out. It's your job to figure it out. And now it's you have to have your own business and your family and complete autonomy over your schedule, and you have to go to Pilates and you have to get your matcha and you have to do self-care and you have to have your 10,000 steps every day, and you can never put your kids in childcare and you have to have a thriving business. It's like it's it's changed.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Just never it'll continue to change and it will always be unattainable.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Yeah. Yeah. I think for women, if there's a midlife crisis, it's probably around all that messaging. It's probably not quite as internal. Also, like we talked about with Claire Bidwell Smith, men tend to bottle things up and they have fewer outlets socially and even things like social media, right? I think the fact that we're talking about all this stuff is cathartic and it maybe prevents us from completely going off the deep end at some point. That's true. Yeah. You know, for women, the midlife crisis is probably more litigating your own choices and wondering if you're doing the right thing or you're prioritizing the right things. But it's still like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep it together because I have so many people depending on me. We can't, we can't go get a hot little car, right? Because our cars are the ones that we use to schlep everyone with the cars heats won't fit.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yeah. Yeah. I think for me, what really cracked things open was again, when my dad died. It was just, I mean, he spent so much time glamorizing retirement and talking about what he would be able to do after he retired. And it would it would be the reward for working so hard for decades. And he didn't even get to do any of that. He didn't even get to retire. And it really, I mean, multiple things, right? And I've talked about before that it was really hard to take care of older adults who are all older than my dad ever was. So that's one piece of it. But also just seeing that we can't count on anything, tomorrow, anything. And I know like you see that all the time, and people say, like, oh, you don't know, but until it really hits that close to home, I don't know that you can really understand that. It reshifted all of my priorities in a way. And that's when I started my event planning company. I mean, like, we had talked about it a little bit before, but I really went full on, like, I'm gonna do this because why not now? I don't know that I'm gonna be able to do it one day. And at the same time, that's this is exactly why they say you shouldn't make big decisions when you're grieving in the first year of grief. Because if you had asked me then, I would have been like, I'm quitting medicine and I'm gonna be an event planner and follow my passion and all this stuff. But now, almost three years out, I have a different perspective where I'm like, yeah, this is I'm glad I pursued something different. I probably don't want to leave medicine. And at the same time, I really want to figure out what makes me happy in life. And it's not just my career. If your career is the most interesting thing about you, I feel like you're doing life wrong.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Yeah, and I think that is such a widely held belief. That's another thing. When I became a stay at home mom, so many people said things like, Oh, but don't you miss your identity? And I was like, No, because my career was never my identity. I also work in a field, I'm a journalist, and I work in a field where we are. So drastically underpaid and so disposable that I think I was forced to divorce my sense of worth from my career very early on. I was talking to my mom about this actually. I think that was in some ways the best thing that happened for me career-wise, because now when things don't go the way I want them to go in my career, I'm like, okay, like you're braced for it already. Exactly. Like, yeah, nothing new. There's so much of this messaging around how your career is your identity and your worth and your fulfillment, which is also really privileged because most people aren't working for identity or fulfillment. They're working for money so that they can afford to buy food.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Right. And why do we ask kids when they're like three, what do what do you want to be when you grow up? And the and the expected response is a career choice.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Yeah. I mean, that's that it's so funny because my my son wants to be a baseball player and my daughter wants to be a pop star. And I have to hold myself back from being like, but what are we gonna? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

And it's because that was how I was raised. Funny because my kids will name like three things, and well, my son will say, I don't have to decide that now, which is interesting because I don't like, but he's also like a a 60-year-old man in a seven-year-old body, so that is not surprising. But also both of them will say, like, I want to be a doctor and something. And like, you guys, like, you do not have to be a doctor and the thing you actually want to be, but they see what they see, right? And also everyone in their life, like both parents and grandparents, and everybody is a doctor. And so they think that that's like, okay, when I go to after I finish medical school, then I'm gonna be a singer or whatever. I'm like, you don't have to, you actually don't have to do that.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Yeah, but that's also kind of become the millennial expectation that you have everybody has to be a multi-hyphen, hyphenate. Yeah. We're gonna talk to Hitha, but she is kind of the consummate multi-hyphenite. And I'm really interested in hearing how she does that. But also, that is not for everyone, and that's okay. If you want to have one job and you never want to pivot, if you never feel the need to pivot, quite frankly, you are lucky. I wish I was as lucky as you. And that's fine. You don't have to have like seven different jobs, even though that's what is being glorified on social media right now. If you want to have seven different jobs, that's awesome, but it's not for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

And I feel like I can just never make up my mind. Like I have so many personalities that some days I'm like, I want to do nothing. And then the next day I'm like, I'm gonna start a company. There's just, I just cannot, I don't know what I want. There's just so many options. And yeah, we're both really privileged to be in that position. Not everybody even has the time or space or money, whatever resources to think about these options.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Totally. Totally. I mean, for most people, it is literally just what do I have to do to keep the roof over my head and to family fed. And the fact that we are able to have this like existential relationship to our career is very, very privileged. But also I think it deserves to be talked about. As much as people say that millennial women have a victim complex, I do think

The Value of Talking About the Hard Stuff

SPEAKER_00 25:19

this is the thing that is going to maybe keep us relatively out of a complete crisis that upends our entire life is if we keep talking about it. And I do wonder in our parents' generation, maybe the women didn't have the midlife crisis because they were talking to their friends and because they had some other outlets, or maybe they just had to kind of keep it in because they had to take care of everyone. I don't really know. I yeah, we just looked like we didn't recognize. For a lot of women in our mom's generation, they maybe had more kids and so they spent more years caregiving their children. I was speaking to someone recently who had a lot of children, and she it was like 30 plus years with the kid in the house before she became an empty nester. And then immediately after that, her dad got sick and then immediately after that, her mom got sick and she was taking care of her. And she said something to the effect of, I don't know who I am when I'm not taking care of someone.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

And I do think that's that's a very real piece of it. But I think millennial women are maybe going to experience that a little bit differently because for all the reasons we've started this podcast, our caregiving years are compressed. Yeah. Often, not always, but you know, we're having smaller families. We had kids later, our parents are living longer, they're maybe not able to retire. They often need more support as we're raising our kids. And so maybe we're not spending as many years caregiving, but also I do wonder who am I gonna be when I don't have anyone to take care of? And will that day ever come? Because a lot of millennial women will go straight from taking care of their parents to taking care of their spouses, honestly. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I didn't even think about that. So now, what what does success look like if you if someone were to ask you at 38? I I think if I had to put it in one word, it would be autonomy. Having freedom over my days is maybe not doesn't make me feel successful, but it does make me feel really good. There's a balance now that I am one one more time, very, very privileged to have. I also think if my 13-year-old self would know that I've written for like Vogue and Cosmo and 17 and all of these places, I would think that's really cool. And I have to remind myself of that sometimes when I'm like, oh my God, my career's terrible. I'm failing. I think my 13-year-old self would be pretty proud. What about you?

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Same. Yeah, same thing. Autonomy. That's really the big thing. Being able to decide for myself what I want to do with my days. And it obviously is a little different. I'm employed by a big health system, but I still the job that I have has a lot of flexibility. So yeah, being able to take my kids to the doctor before work or go to their school show or volunteer some days, like that stuff feels like success. That's when I feel like I'm doing it right. Yeah, I get to work and I get to be there when I want to be there. That feels like success to me.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah. And I think that privilege is absolutely a part of this conversation, but I also think you don't get professional leverage unless you're really good at what you do. And so the fact that we are able to have some leverage over our careers, I I think I think it's a sign that we're really good at what we do. And I think we can say that too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

And kind of going back to not feeling old or what looked like almost 40 or 40 when we were younger. People are living longer and better in a lot of ways. So it it I think for many of us, we're seeing that it is not too late to start over if we didn't happen to know what we wanted to do and we, you know, majored in something or we started a business and you feel stuck. I think so many of us are realizing it's not too late. It's not too late to figure out who you want to be and figure out how to get there. And in a way, that's kind of great. Seeing women be what they want to be at whatever age and knowing when I turn 40, I at least probably have 20 years of working, maybe for most people. That's a long time. And it's a it's a long enough time to figure out if you're doing what you actually want to be doing for that whole time.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Yeah. You know, I think that is a really interesting piece too, is there are so many women who I I know, who we know, who have made vice president in their 30s. And I think that there's a real plateau happening for a lot of women. I think they are feeling like there's nowhere to go from here. And I think that's part of the whole midlife millennial crisis, which I mean, let's be real. The midlife crisis is pretty much a social construct, but I do think it's worth talking about and worth examining so that we don't end up just like blowing up our lives because we think we're the only ones feeling this way. So true.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

It's probably what it looked like before because I bet women just didn't talk about it. And people made choices that maybe were not the best because they thought they were the only ones feeling that way.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Yeah. And I think also it was much more normal for boomers to like stay in their hometown and work at the same company. And I think millennials have put such a premium on travel and experiences. And I think that is probably a little bit of a factor, is maybe realizing your world is really small and feeling like you want to shake out of that. So I think that we're gonna experience it completely differently because we have lived our our young adult lives so differently, and we've, you know, had different relationships and we settled down a little bit later and we have made intentional choices around family planning and how many kids we want to have and what the perfect age gap is, and if having a third kid is gonna influence your ability to take trips or just like quality in general, like it was a lot about what's the highest paying job and how do we do that for as long as possible.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

And yeah, that's it. Like not thinking about what else makes life worth living. And I don't know about you, but I feel like in my

Rebranding the 'Moms are the Emotional Thermostat' Narrative

SPEAKER_01 31:29

house, at least, like in society, yeah, I don't feel like the main character, but in my house, I kind of do. I feel like I'm the one who's just I mean, I'm doing a hundred things, and my family has to just sort of like be along for the ride as I'm being insane. Like today I'm a doctor. Tomorrow I'm starting a podcast. I mean, I did recently, I was like, should I write a book? And and he was like, like, you should do whatever you want, but can you just like wait until you're 45? It's like you're doing 10 things. So yeah, I think I can't say I don't know if this is the case for everyone, but I'm definitely the one calling a lot of the shots for what like what we're doing, what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Yeah, I don't know if that's normal. That's really interesting. I think we need to rebrand. You know how everyone says that mom is the emotional thermostat of the family, and I think what that has actually done is created a ton of guilt in mothers because they're like, oh, my bad mood is affecting everybody and I'm like bringing down the vibes of my household. I think we need to rebrand it and just say moms are the main character of their households, and I think that's a better way to look at it instead of emotional house.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Yeah, I feel like if you want to be the main character, you have to play the part. But like if you want that, you you have to do all the things. Like, if I'm planning the vacations, I get to decide what what we're doing. I feel like that. I'm sure a lot of people don't agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

I do think that women have been so discouraged from doing what they want. And I think what you're saying is like, yeah, if you're gonna carry the mental load, it's gonna look the way I want it to look. And I think that's like that's a that's a good rebrand too. If I'm gonna do all this, I'm gonna have a say in how we're doing it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have seen so many, to be clear, my mom was not this way. My mom was all she was the main character of our house. But also, like, my mom is is a main character. But I see so many women who are just like, oh, it's fine, you know, whatever the boys want, whatever the kids want. Could not be me. Couldn't be me.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

I've always been this way. This is not, and I've always been labeled bossy, or there's like a word uh that doesn't really have an English translation in Canada that is like only really used for women with opinions. And it means loud, like it like literally it means loud, but it doesn't really mean loud. It means like overbearing, too much. Yeah. And I've heard that my entire life. My entire life. And I would hear that from, I mean, even my grandmother would say, like, oh, you're not gonna find someone to marry because you're so like you're so overbeat. You have so many opinions, you need to like quiet them down. Well, my family runs because I am the way that I am, and I'm fine with that. I think being fine with it too is growth, right? If when I was younger, I would struggle with some of that. And now at 38, I'm like, yeah, I am who I am. I mean, this is not in the boomer way, like, this is who I am, and I you can't change me. Yeah, not in that way, but like I am comfortable with who I am, and it's not hurting anybody, I feel like.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Yeah, but what if you had to think about what a midlife crisis might look like for you, what would you say it might be?

SPEAKER_01 34:53

I do feel like when I almost quit medicine and became a full-time event planner, that was pretty close. That was pretty close. Not saying that like I mean, it's hard work, but I feel like abandoning all of the things that I cared about and worked for for what I thought I wanted was pretty close. So for me, I think it would be it would look like leaving my career interests and doing something completely different. But I still don't think I can't see myself really doing anything disruptive. It would still mean like making sure everyone's fine and everything's fine. It's and is it okay if I do this? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Yeah. Yeah. It's a very, it's a it's a very selfless midlife crisis if it happens at all for women. Yeah, I uh I don't know. Like maybe mine would be like going to law school on a whim. Yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Yeah, exactly. Like getting another degree, writing a book, like doing something like insane and being like, oh, this is just my midlife crisis and just doing another thing, you know me.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Yeah, yeah. I think that probably is what it is. Although, I mean, maybe, who knows? Maybe in 10 years something will completely sneak up on us and we'll be like, oh, we knew nothing when we recorded that episode of the Millennial Sandwich. Yes. When we were 38 and felt like we were qualified to talk about a midlife crisis. Also, I think the lines around midlife have are probably gonna

The Definition of Midlife is Changing

SPEAKER_00 36:17

change as people start to live longer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

Where would it seem so young? I mean, I see when I see 65-year-olds, technically they're geriatric, and I in my head I'm like, you're a baby, like you're so young. Yeah. And it feels weird being like, I'm I'm the geriatrician seeing you. And even they kind of laugh and they're like, okay. Yeah. Because it doesn't feel old at all. Yeah. I feel like that maybe is what I think in my head is what I consider midlife in the late 60s.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Maybe you're thinking about quitting medicine and all that. Maybe that was your quarter life crisis.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Maybe. Maybe I'll live forever. Who knows? I don't know. I don't know. I don't think about I know like a lot of people this is not what this conversation is about at all, but I don't think about losing time. Like I don't feel I'm not scared of dying or getting old, but I do yeah, I I think I'm more scared of getting old than I am about dying. But even getting old and a lot, well, probably because of my what I do, I think is so beautiful and it's such a privilege to have each extra year you have, you know, no matter how that looks, I think that way. But it's like really hard for me to understand the fear of death when and it's very common for to be afraid of dying, afraid of lots of things like that, but I just don't feel that. I wonder if that shapes how we live our lives, too. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Yeah, I'm sure it does. We were talking about with our dads, I I think they probably both felt probably more my dad because he was the sole breadwinner in our house, but so much of that responsibility of like I need to make sure I stay around to take care of my family. Yeah. And take care of my very demanding daughter. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Well, that's also, yeah, that's probably why we see I mean, because societally we still put the pressure to provide or whatever on men. Yeah. And they probably do have more pronounced midlife crises because of that, because that's their identity from such a young age.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

You were saying your dad really glorified retirement. My dad did retirement. It was like, I want to, I want to drop dead at work. That was what he always said. And it didn't go that way for him, which is just so sad because both of our dads worked so hard and they didn't see late life the way they wanted it to look. Exactly. The retirement piece is so interesting. And my husband and I talk about this all the time. Where, you know, like my husband makes sourdough and he likes to golf and he does a lot around the house, and he's very active. Like, if I died, he would be fine. Yeah, same. Same. And that's probably not true for a lot of our parents. Yeah. Well, and it's, I mean, this is neither here nor there, but it I find it so annoying that people are always asking stay-at-home moms what they'll do if their husbands die, but they're never thinking to ask the husbands. Like, what'll you do? Like, do you know where the laundry goes? Do you know, do you know your kid's teacher's name? They never ask them that. No. Again, neither here nor there. But um, but yeah, I think like he has so many things that he enjoys doing outside of work. And I think that's very common in our generation is that men have hobbies and they have interests and they have domestic skills. And I think that that'll make retirement a lot easier for them. Yeah. You know, like we said, the caregiving responsibilities are compressed for so many millennials. I think the thesis of this episode is I don't know if if women have the luxury of having a mid-life crisis because they have to take care of everyone and their kids are depending on them, their parents are depending on them. I think that we have to hold it together and we can't really give in to the need to explore our personal identity evolution. But also we can and we should because for so long, I think we've been told that our purpose is just to take care of everyone else. But that's that's what we're trying to do with this show. We're trying to make people see that even if they're taking care of a lot of people, their own experiences within caregiving are still important. And they still, that's part of the reason why I don't really give specifics about what I'm dealing with with my family, is because that's not the point. When is what we are going through and what we're dealing with, and I think like we're trying to give millennial midlife women a main character moment.

SPEAKER_01 40:55

Even if it doesn't happen right now, if we're in that, you know, the we're setting the stage. Yeah. Think about it. Think about what makes you happy or what might make you happy. And hopefully you'll have the time and space to see if it does.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Yeah. Yeah. And if you decide that you want to like completely reevaluate a piece of your life, that's okay too. And I think if you feel guilty about it, just remember that if a man did it, it would be called a midlife crisis. So who were the midlife women you can remember watching as a kid? And did you feel like they were done justice or not?

SPEAKER_01 41:33

I can't even remember who's midlife because it every show made them seem so old, or at least like we were kids, so maybe they seemed old. Like I don't know. What I think about is um Stu Pickles a lot when he's always trying to, and I think what he's supposed to be like 34 or something. So he's not not midlife, but he's always trying to put pickles industry on the map. Like he's like, you know, trying to, he's still like trying to get there career-wise. Again, I only remember midlife crises as like something horrible happening.

SPEAKER_00 42:08

And yeah, like someone looking and being totally irresponsible. Yeah. I have a book recommendation that I think really gives a midlife woman main character treatment. It's called The Idea of You. They made it a movie. The book is much better. Uh, but it's about this woman who is 39, about to turn 40. She's divorced, she has a daughter, and she begins this relationship with this much younger boy band star. The movie was with Anne Hathoy, right? I think I remember that. And it's, I read it postpartum, and it was like, this is the first time a mother is the main character and is seen as desirable and a full human outside of motherhood. There's this really beautiful line where she's getting dressed to go out, and her daughter is like, You don't look like a mom. Her daughter is about 13, and she goes, Am I a mom? And her daughter's like, Yeah. And she goes, Then I look like a mom. I love that. Yeah. It's it's such good commentary about aging as a woman and feeling like you're becoming invisible. And yeah, it's a really, really good book. So this has been a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

We would love to hear how you guys feel about being midlife or what it looks like. And share with us if this is also how you felt or if we missed the mark, we want to know. We can keep having the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

Like I said, so many people wanted us to talk about this. So I would love to hear why you guys wanted us to talk about this and if midlife crises have been on your mind and what you think about them. We would love to just kind of keep the dialogue rolling. All right. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to the Millennial Sandwich. Don't forget to like, subscribe, give us a rating, and connect with us on social media.