People heard it loud and clear when the baby boomers crossed over to
midlife – you couldn’t avoid it. Radio talk show hosts probed into the
transition, newspapers described boomer women coping with crow’s feet
and men reclaiming their vitality in tribal drum circles. For the
generation born after – in the ‘60s and ‘70s, raised by television like
no previous generation and with the divorce rate skyrocketing during
their childhood years — there is no media watch broadcasting their new
trajectory. Few have even noticed that this small, notoriously
rebellious clan – those born roughly between 1965 and 1980, which means
about 46 million Xers versus 80 million boomers — has entered middle
age. It’s a transition that, until now, has been captured, mulled over
and ridiculed for each generation for more than a half-century. But not
this time.
The problem is, with adulthoods repeatedly shipwrecked
by economic disasters, Xers might have neglected to track the crossing
over. Susan Gregory Thomas, author of the resonant memoir ”In Spite of
Everything,” says that many Xers “are always living in a state of
triage, always in a survivalist mode. We’re not thinking long-term.”
- Salon.com
(And yet the article ends with: "It's time to rise up and get angry!" It's hard to make your angry voiec heard when you've been going to food banks after being unemployed for two years. Or even to get angry, because, as the article starts, you're just trying to survive.)
(Also: see all those damn articles about how tragic it is that thirty-one-year olds now have to move back home, OHNOES) (some of us have no homes to move back to, by now)
descensus Averno facilis est