Although I was unable to finish this book, I throughly enjoyed what I read. The author seems very insightful and knowledgeable.

Why We Can't Sleep is a compassionate look at why Gen X women struggle to make peace with all of the things they've been led to believe they could and should be. If you have felt alone in your inability to find "balance," and to constantly and consistently succeed in every realm, this book will bring you comfort. Although I am technically a Millennial, I appreciated these stories, and I'm sure women of all ages will see pieces of themselves in this book, too.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

I think this does a good job exploring what a modern midlife crisis can look like and why. It's not perfect, but I think it could help women not feel so alone and instead more normal. The author presents the information in an easy to read format and spent a lot of time researching and interviewing. I could have done without the constant narrative of how much worse Generation X has it and the sometimes shallowness of the women she interviewed. Still something I'd recommend to female readers in their late 30s or 40s. Thank you to Grove Atlantic for the ARC!

I wasn't sure what to expect when I opened this book but it was a quick read that really resonated with me as a Gen X woman. It touches on relationships, parenting, personal health and more in a relatable and funny way. I really enjoyed hearing from women like me with similar problems - it helped me feel less alone in my feelings and situations, especially in this quarantine. Having it all has always been our goal but no one told us how big of a toll the pursuit of that would take.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book was a quick read, and was very relatable. Overall, enjoyable read, but it is not a book that will "solve your problems," but rather feel like they may be valid. It looks at anxiety in women through a generational cross-section (Gen X vs. Boomers), and explains why the current "middle-aged" woman might feel the weight of the world is on her shoulders. I don't think this book is extremely relatable from all angles, but it makes some valid points. I don't think I would recommend it to everyone I know, but if I knew a particularly angsty individual, maybe they would find some solace in this book.

I'm younger than the target audience for this book, but I still saw so much of myself within it, as I'm sure other women of all ages did. In times like these, this book made me feel less alone.

Acknowledging the Hidden Beasts

As a female who has identified as a GenXer for a long time, this book certainly resonated with me. In it, the author explores the particular problems that GenX women have had throughout their lives and currently. She looks at cultural reasons why this may be so, supplying a lot of facts and figures. She doesn't really offer a cure or solution but puts a magnifying glass on the multi-faceted problems. Even though there is no ultimate one-size-fits-all cure, it still was nice to have what I now understand are common struggles acknowledged. Sometimes, naming a thing all by itself or understanding that you are not alone helps, something I don’t think the men who have given this a negative review understand. If you are a woman of a certain age, you may want to pick up this book so you understand that you are not alone in the struggles, as they are mirrored by your generation.

So depressing. I was hoping for more narrative but it‘s just a litany of statistics and “my friend says...”-type of anecdotes. Then, she tried to wrap it up neatly by advising gen x women to practice “self-care” and just let it go. Pretty lazy book, if you ask me,

A must read for those born in the 70s and 80s. Why we can't sleep is absolutely hilarious and covers the topics that you can relate to including health, marriage, parenting, how you feel etc. The best part is its not just the authors opinion but based on real statistics.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic for providing me with a copy of Ada Calhoun’s Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis, in exchange for an honest review.

In Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis, Ada Calhoun explores the unique challenges facing Generation X women, who are now middle-age.

Spanning from the early 60’s to the early 80’s (there is some disagreement on the dates), Calhoun explains that many women born during this time had a challenging childhood. We ( I am a Gen-X woman) were raised by mother’s who fought for equality and told us that we could do anything. This created an immense pressure to “have it all,” even when “having it all” is an impossible goal and reaching for the brass ring has made us deeply dissatisfied. The caustic divorces that we experienced with our parents, created a drive to maintain the semblance of a perfect life for our children, to hide any cracks in the co-parenting relationship. Growing up latch-key kids and experiencing a free-roaming childhood, has turned Gen-xers into overprotective, helicopter parents. We are drowning as we fail to keep up with our self-imposed expectations.

Calhoun argues that previous generations did not put such a big emphasis on perfection. Our mothers didn’t have social media to constantly compare themselves to their friends and celebrities. They didn’t post pictures of their gluten-free cupcakes or their latest beach vacation. They didn’t feel a constant pressure to keep looking youthful. Societal pressure to go vegan or to believe in a certain movement didn’t plague them every time they looked at their phone, because cell phones didn’t exist. Social media didn’t exist.

Interestingly, Calhoun explains that the pressure to compare and to be perfect seems to be felt more strongly with Gen X. Younger generations don’t seem as worried about what people think. Perhaps it is because Gen Xer’s were older when social media became common place. I was born at the end of Gen X and Facebook wasn’t popular until I was in my 30’s. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have my teen years and 20’s recorded on social media. Calhoun notes that younger generations seem to post on social media with less worry of how it will be perceived, where as Gen X is more careful regarding what they post. We are a generation that has quickly adapted to technology, yet we have not had it in our lives the same way that the generations after us have experienced.

Why We Can’t Sleep made me feel stressed. I can attest to the feelings of perfectionism and failure. I’ve entered my 40’s happy with my life. I don’t have children ( two wonderful step-children, but they are only with us for holidays), so perhaps that lessens the intensity of needing to prove something or create a certain life. I think it gives me freedom. Still, I had a mom who drove home the idea that “anything is possible,” which, as I reflect, doesn't feel true. I entered the work force and experienced inequality. My mom gave me a clear message that men should not be fully trusted, yet she also pushed a traditional marriage. I was told to be both independent and dependent. It was confusing.

Additionally, Calhoun pointed out something that I didn’t realize I was resentful over, until I read it. She mentions that there is now a backlash for the freedom that we experienced in childhood. I was a latchkey child starting in third grade and although there were adult neighbors, I was basically left home summers/holidays/after school, from the age of eight. That would be unheard of now, but my mom was a working, single-mom and we had no choice. Besides that, I don’t really remember my mom being engaged with me. When we were home together, I was told to play outside or in my room. Maybe it’s because my mom had me later in life, but she continued the, “children should be seen and not heard” motto from her generation. There were times that my mom did things with me, like take me to museums or to the movies, but on a whole, I was on my own. Calhoun says that this was common for Gen X childhoods and this has prompted many Gen X parents to become uber engaged with their children. I see this in my friends with their parenting styles. I realize that my mom had to work and things were hard, but I do feel that I was disconnected with her as a child and did not become close to her until I became an adult.

Calhoun tackles perimenopause and the options that women have to ease this transition. She states that this is an important life change that is simply not discussed. I agree, I’ve never discussed this with anyone, including my doctors. I’m 42 and I haven’t noticed much of a change yet, but I appreciate that Calhoun speaks to this topic.

With everything going on in the world with corona virus, I’m not sure that it was good timing to read Why We Can’t Sleep. I made me feel more anxiety. That said, I think Calhoun has written an important book that is worth a read. I will definitely recommend it to friends of my generation.

As a Gen X female, I found this book totally relatable. I loved hearing from women whose lives are so similar than mine and reading about how they handle the same problems I deal with every day. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to know they’re not alone, especially in this stressful time.

A hit in some ways, a miss in others for me.

I am technically a Gen-Xer, after all, and have been curious about what it’s like for other people—what it’s like, hitting your forties? Are their experiences the same as mine? Am I even experiencing the frightful middle-life crisis, or not yet, and how can I tell? The author worked with her own experiences, as well as those of friends, and from research, too, so the result was a good mix, I think, of personal plus scientific/psychological. And it is definitely interesting to see all these experiences, some very close to each other, others pretty varied, all the more since a lot of women I know then to bag it all and have less visibility when it comes to reaching middle-age.

That said, it was also a miss, because a lot of the aforementioned also didn’t resonate with me. (Mostly it’s about cisgender, middle/upper class women.) I identify as agender and aro-ace; I’m not nor do I want to be in a romantic relationship; I don’t have nor do I want children; my background and career path place me much more among millennials than xennials; I never felt the pressure of “having it all” (no family to take care of), I don’t particularly feel “invisible” (I probably am, but I don’t feel it since I’m not interested in romantic love, and I’m enough of a nerd, in a branch where this is desirable, for people to notice me regardless). So, this was all interesting, but in a distanced way. I didn’t relate that much. Is it because I haven’t reached that point yet? Or because my path is different enough that my experience will never be so close to what’s most often depicted here?

I guess I did enjoy this book, although it didn’t particularly “speak” to me. I’d recommend it only to someone who matches that demographic and is interested in a mirror—“I’m not alone and this comforts me”.

P.S. It's not about how to cure insomnia.

No Zzzzzz’s: Why We Can’t Sleep

“You come to this place, midlife. You don’t know how you got here, but suddenly you’re staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led. All your houses are haunted by the person you might have been.” Hilary Mantel, Giving Up the Ghost

At times clunky with stats about Generation X, and full of surprisingly insulting, depressing, or enlightening quotes from articles (“Think pieces about Generation X teem with lists of qualities we supposedly display. For example: ‘Superficial, easily distracted, rootless, inscrutable, self-centered, unfocused, pathetic.’ Or: ‘With caution–and on little cat feet–wary, worn before wear, fearful, and suspicious.’”) writer/journalist Ada Calhoun’s Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis is most interesting when she talks directly with women facing midlife and a life they may not recognize as their own or how the hell they got there.

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

If you're a GenX woman and feel stuck, depressed, confused, overwhelmed... you are not alone! Read this book and it will all make a lot more sense.

Ada Calhoun’s Why We Can’t Sleep is based off of an intriguing concept: Gen X women were lead to believe that they could “have it all” (career, family, social life) and are now coming to terms in their middle age that they feel restless or unsatisfied with some of the biggest areas of their lives due to making these decisions under intense societal pressure of perfectionism, which Calhoun claims other generations of women have not endured to the same extent.

Although I am not a Gen Xer, I felt like this book may be interesting from a social perspective of comparing a different generation of women to my own. While many points made throughout the book were valid and interesting to think about, I believe the message would have been stronger as either a long-form essay *or* told through the perspective of very specific case studies (a la Three Women) versus a large and vague smattering of female voices.

Also, maybe I’m just a self-involved millennial, but I would have loved if Calhoun had explored the solidarity in the struggles of women of all generations through the lens of her own, as opposed to the rather whiny tone that Gen X women have had it “the worst”(because it’s a competition?)

I received a digital copy from netgalley and the publishers.

I loved this book! As a Gen-X female, I felt like this was telling my story. The exception is that my parents were Depression Era kids, not boomers, but the results are the same lol.

I’m not a fan of self-help books, and let me say this is definitely not one of those. Instead, this is more along the lines of “This is why you do what you do, or how you act, and it’s ok. You aren’t alone, and you definitely aren’t strange or F@#$& up.” Well, no more than anyone else. I did find one point interesting-our generation made the Millennials the way they are and everything we complain about, we are responsible for. Our generation were helicopter parents and gave ribbons to everyone because our parents didn’t love us enough or tell us they loved us enough, so we over compensated. Well are also a smaller group than both the Millennials and the Boomers and are taking care of both. Think about that ladies. So while we are working our full time jobs, we are still taking care of our kids and taking care of our aging parents. Who’s going to take care of us?

Ultimately, this helped affirm what I’ve been feeling and thinking. I have already recommended this to my girlfriends!

Thank you again to Grove Atlantic and Grove Press and Ms Calhoun fir the opportunity to read this ARC.

I was born between Generation X and Millennials, so I identify with aspects of both generations. I turn 40 this year and find myself reflecting on choices throughout my life, even experiencing bursts of what could be called midlife crises.

Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis was a timely read for me. Ada Calhoun frames the book in distinctive chapters, touching on how various areas of life contribute to how we may be feeling about this stage of life, including marriage (and singleness), divorce, perimenopause, caregiving, and careers.

One may feel that, if you're in this uncertain, uneasy time of life, a book articulating all these issues might be a tough read and one to be avoided if you're in this season. However, I found it affirming. It acknowledges that there are legitimate reasons life can feel tough right now, that the mental loads women carry, in addition to caregiving and money decisions and changes in health all are valid reasons that help explain the stress we find ourselves experiencing. I catch myself recalling her insights and recommending it to friends.

(I received a digital ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

This is an all-too current read for me as I am one of the late Generation X women to enter middle age, and deal with every soul crushing issue described here. And this book really does help explain why, and offer some hope for moving forward. Much of the book felt familiar and reified my own personal anxieties, but as the author notes just knowing you aren’t going through it alone helps. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for this unbiased review.

I have no other words for this book other than a deeply compassionate look at America's middle-aged women and their struggles with money, relationships, work, and existential despair. As Gen-Xers hit middle age, the generation that was referred to as "slackers" is still overlooked by the Baby Boomers and now sandwiched in between Millennials. As "X" usually signifies something undetermined, that same sense of lack of identity is echoed in this book. Filled with a wonderful mash-up of women across all social and demographic groups, I felt like Calhoun rounded up all the woman I need to become friends with into one book.
I didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. It's certainly not a how-to thrive in midlife or an objective commentary. Instead, it's a reason for hope and excitement and validation of everything that many Gen-X women are feeling right now.
Calhoun's writing is something I will return to again and again over the years to come. This is one of the very few books I'm planning on leaving marginalia in: notes to myself as I pass through the stages mentioned by other women in this book.

This book tells an all-too-true story of why Gen X women (especially white, middle-class women) feel overwhelmed, depressed, and anxious. It's a fairly depressing read, and I wish that she had taken race and ethnicity more fully into account, but it certainly resonates for many readers.