From boston.com via The Redhead Wore Crimson :
So why do Gen-X/Y women feel such pressure to have the perfect career, body, husband, and kids by the time they are at or around 30? Why has 30 become such a make-or-break moment?
As the generation that came of age after the most visible glass ceilings had been broken, Gen-X/Y women were raised to believe in futures without limitations. Yet, as journalists Lia Macko and Kerry Rubin reveal in their fascinating investigation, many women have distorted the well-intentioned empowerment messages of their youth and are quietly blaming themselves when they fail to overcome the very real obstacles that still exist in our society. Though many Gen-X/Y women are hitting the same roadblocks at the same time, instead of questioning what’s wrong with the system — as Boomer women did in their twenties — they’re questioning their own “choices.”
Searching for solutions, Macko and Rubin have enlisted the aid of the New Girls’ Club, a group of successful, satisfied women who’ve lived through their own crossroads moments, earned their battle scars, and now share their stories and strategies. While today’s young women may indeed be a generation in the middle of a Midlife Crisis at 30, they now have a dream team of mentors to help guide them through it.
Midlife Crisis at 30?! Must have missed it.
So why do Gen-X/Y women feel such pressure to have the perfect career, body, husband, and kids by the time they are at or around 30? Why has 30 become such a make-or-break moment?
I dunno. News to me. At 30 I had left my pursuit of the “perfect career and body”. I had husband and kids. Not even those were perfect. But they were pretty good. 🙂
I think there is a point here. We as a culture, and as women, can get caught up in choices. In thinking we can design our life to meet specifications or that we can live out our dreams easily. When there are some things that choices can’t control. And I think its good to have mentors, older women who have been where I’ve been in life, and can help me see further with their experience and guidance. I have a few in my life right now and I wouldn’t mind having more.
But I was completely unaware that 30 was “make-or-break”! Is life over if I didn’t have everything lined up by the end of my 20s?! 30 is so young…. how will I ever survive the next 40 or more years?
I guess I didn’t “make it” at 30 by some definitions. But I don’t think that means it breaks. Makes life sound like a rubber band or a china plate, if it can break, snap, or shatter. I don’t think that life is like a recipe you can make, an apple pie, or a construction project, building a shed in the backyard. Life’s not an object. Or what you can collect: career, husband, body, children. It’s organic. It’s not what you have. It’s who you are. Life lives. Before and beyond 30.
