Women and Midlife: Transformation, not Crisis!

The male tendency for midlife crisis is common to the point of ridicule; we are all familiar with the embarrassing stereotype of the older man behind the wheel of a red convertible sportscar, with all the trappings of someone attempting to recapture his youth. Thankfully, women in their 40s and beyond are better at retaining their dignity! Nonetheless, women in this age group often experience significant changes in their thoughts and feelings about the work they do and the lives they live.

Is this a midlife crisis? Time magazine labelled it that in their cover article for the May 15th, 2005 issue, but I would suggest that it’s more a midlife realignment. Many, if not most, women spend their 20s and 30s involved with family and the career path that best supports their families. This generally means compromise in the choices they make; women with families and fledgling careers are eminently practical and often set aside personal dreams and ambitions in favor of more immediate needs.

Women in their 40s and beyond are vital, creative, and far healthier than any previous generation. With the demands of career-building and small children behind them, they now have time to look again at the aspirations they set aside, re-evaluate the meaning of what they are doing, and consider how their lives might be changed to better align with personal values and desires. Many of these women end up feeling wretchedly trapped, and don’t know how to find their way out of what has become a life of boredom and dissatisfaction. Many more, however, are choosing transformation, keeping the best parts of their past and shedding the rest like a butterfly sheds its cocoon.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the “typical” American changes careers more than three times during the course of their employed lifetime, statistics that are probably similar throughout the industrialized world. That’s career changes, not just job changes. What’s more, since the late 1990s approximately two thirds of all new small business ventures are woman-owned.

What does this mean? For one thing, it means hope for the woman who hasn’t wriggled out of the confining cocoon her life seems to have become. While she may not yet have found the zipper to open it up and let in the fresh air and sunlight, with their examples her sisters are showing the way.

It also means that it’s time for everyone, women and men, not-yet-40 or 40-and-beyond, to let go of long-outdated ideas about where anyone, especially ourselves, is “supposed to be” at any given point in life. The truth is that with the opportunities available to live longer, healthier, more active lives than ever before, we’re all going to experience more and do more than our parents and grandparents ever dreamed about. Midlife crisis or midlife realignment, it’s just the first step into the second, and some would say much more exciting, half of our lives!