CRISIS CLIMATE

SINCE TURNING 40 a couple of years ago, I’ve been obsessed with women my age and their — our — struggles with money, relationships, work and existential despair. I called my friend Tara, a successful journalist a few years older than me. Divorced a decade ago, she has three mostly grown children and lives on a quiet, leafy street with her boyfriend. They recently adopted a rescue dog.

“Hey,” I said, happy to have caught her on a rare break from her demanding job. “Do you know anyone having a midlife crisis I could talk to?”

The phone was silent. Finally, she said, “I’m trying to think of any woman I know who’s not.”

Today’s middle-aged women belong to Generation X and the end of the Baby Boom, which lasted from 1946 to 1964. The Gen X birth years are 1965 to 1980. The name — or anti-name — was popularised by Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel, . Prior to that, it was the name of an excellent 1970s British punk band featuring Billy Idol. The band was named after a 1964 book containing interviews with British teenagers — on the