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The Expectation Gap
Lia recently attended a Women in Radio and Television luncheon, where
Barbara Walters discussed a report about the perceived role luck plays
in professional success. High-achieving Boomer women thought most of
what they've accomplished could be attributed to luck, but
high-achieving Boomer men said luck had very little to do with it.
Both Connie Chung and Leslie Stahl laughed as they told the group of
women gathered there that they were granted their big breaks in
television because of CBS's affirmative action program -- "they needed
a token Asian, a blonde female, and Bernard Shaw," they joked.
The conversation, lighthearted though it may have been in retrospect,
underscores an Expectation Gap between working women of different
ages. Unlike the women at the luncheon (and our own mothers), we've
never been the only woman in the room, and no one has ever asked us
about our typing skills or sent us to fetch them a cup of coffee. In
fact, Kerry has had more female bosses than male bosses, Our
expectations of how far we could go -- and should go -- as women are
rooted in a very different set of cultural assumptions.
Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind and someone who knew a
few things about hubris and humility, once said, "Life does not have
an obligation to give you what you expect." The Boomer women at the
luncheon understood Mitchell's truism -- they worked hard, but they
saw there were things they couldn't control and could even laugh about
the role the unforeseen played in their success. That very important
detail seems to be lost on women of our generation. Up until now, most
of us have been operating on the assumption that we could be X -- if
only we were good enough. Sure, "right place, right time" might help,
but in our minds, success is about drive and merit. And we have that
part nailed. After all, we've been in Girl Power boot camp since we
joined our first soccer team.
But the Anything Is Possible mantra of our empowered youth, however
well intentioned, overlooked some systemic roadblocks still looming in
our future, leaving us with no one to blame but ourselves when things
don't go according to our carefully constructed plans. This is exactly
what's happening to college-educated twenty- and thirty-something
women, who feel as if all the rules changed at the same time. What's
more, the impact of these shifts was exacerbated when they coincided
with the unexpected unraveling of the New Economy. As a ubiquitous
ticker reminded us that the NASDAQ was tanking, our personal stock was
falling, too, in ways we hadn't expected, didn't understand, and
weren't equipped to handle. The whole world changed, and we didn't see
it coming. The Midlife Crisis at 30 is our collective attempt to
regain our emotional footing.
Total Systems Failure
First, there's the bait-and-switch in our personal lives. Single women
considered hot prospects throughout their twenties start to feel like
spinsters on the other side of 30. As friends start to couple up and
get married, it suddenly becomes a lot harder to meet good men. The
cool apartments in neighborhoods we're still struggling to afford no
longer feel glamorous -- they just seem annoyingly small and lonely.
City girls begin to long for real homes with more than two rooms. And
the same parents who once encouraged us to live independent lives are
now calling us to quote scary stats from a book they read about in
Time magazine, that 8 percent of women earning $ 100,000 or more marry
for the first time after 30; only 3 percent of that group marry after
35.
And, just when we needed a little help from our Friends, our pop
culture comrades moved on with their lives. Rachel had Ross's baby,
and Monica and Chandler were looking to adopt. Vogue devoted an issue
to motherhood, complete with a cover photo of a supermodel holding her
toddler son, and Gucci launched an omnipresent ad campaign featuring
the ultimate accessory -- a pudgy, smiling baby. At the same time,
Candace Bushnell was profiled in the Vows section of the New York
Times, Patricia Field was designing maternity clothes for Sarah
Jessica Parker, and the Olsen twins outranked our contemporaries on
both Vanity Fair and Forbes power lists. Bridget Jones and her
singleton posse were suddenly about as passé as shoulder pads and leg
warmers.
At the same time, many of us lost our jobs, and those of us who didn't
have been derailed in other ways that had nothing to do with the
recession. Young women regarded just a year ago as the office Golden
Girls were having a hard time pulling off the transition from protégé
to powerhouse. It's acceptable to be the outstanding "little sister"
with big ideas at 27, when you are promising, productive, and -- let's
face it -- relatively cheap labor, but to institutionalize the next
promotion in title and salary is another issue entirely. While
old-school rules of corporate hierarchy have loosened up, they haven't
gone away, and once you hit a certain rung on the ladder, they kick
back in with a vengeance in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle
ways. Thus, scores of hardworking young women, who signed up for a
decade of 12-hour days with hopes that it would all pay off soon, are
finding themselves slamming into a wall of corporate politics they
never anticipated. The safe meritocracies they thrived in since
graduation no longer feel so safe.
Although not everyone is gunning to make vice president or law partner
by 30, the pressure to be ensconced within some kind of clearly
defined career path by your early thirties is nearly universal. It may
be socially acceptable to spend time searching for a professional
calling during your twenties, but after 30, that grace period ends
fast. Women who have been trying on different careers since graduation
now describe feeling an anxious urgency to find one that fits. The
Expectation Gap kicks in around this time, no matter where you stand
on the corporate ladder.
Even those of us who steered clear of traditional workplaces during
our twenties aren't immune to this pressure. We spoke with plenty of
passion -- chasing Bohemians who are now feeling the crunch of society
-- assigned deadlines more powerfully than ever before. A funny
transformation of perceptions still occurs for women over 30.
Adjectives begin to change -- "aspiring"
actors/filmmakers/musicians/writers are recast as "wannabes" or
dilettantes, especially if they have yet to star in or produce their
first feature film, get that record deal, or publish their
generation's equivalent of War and Peace.
Our generation's Problem with No Name only intensifies after marriage
and motherhood. As "children of the gender revolution" -- the largest
group of daughters to be raised by working mothers -- we must be on to
new, creative ways to better balance our careers and our kids, right?
Wrong. Remember that statistic from the census, about how
college-educated Gen-X mothers are veering off the career track in
record numbers? That's just the beginning of the story. In the
following chapters, we will give names to some new balls thrown into
the career-family juggling act and answer a question on the minds of
many mothers and daughters (as well as economists, historians,
writers, and politicians): Why are so many Gen-X mothers quitting
their jobs? Is the surge of stay-at-home moms rooted in market
conditions, or are we witnessing a generation-wide latchkey-kid
backlash?
Finally, world events marking the late 1990s and the early years of
the new millennium created an emotional impact that undoubtedly
contributed to our urgent and collective desire to make sense of our
lives. In dramatic ways, a generation of individuals became schooled
in collective failure and loss as we confronted an abrupt economic
downturn and the events of September 11 and its aftermath. All of us,
irrespective of personal choices, neuroses, fears, or regrets, began
to realize at the same time that it was time to get down to the very
serious business of getting over ourselves if we intend to make
contributions that matter.
It was time to grow up.
Reprinted from: Midlife Crisis at 30: How the Stakes Have Changed for
a New Generation -- And What to Do about It by Lia Macko and Kerry
Rubin © 2004 by Lia Macko and Kerry Rubin. Permission granted by
Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. Available wherever books are sold or
directly from the publisher by calling (800) 848-4735 or visit their
website at www.rodalestore.com
For more information, please visit
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