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itinerant_spirit's review against another edition
reflective
fast-paced
2.0
Basically, life sucks, particularly for women. But make friends and change your mindset and it can be okay! Um. Maybe that can work for a very small percentage of the population…
emilyrandolph_epstein's review against another edition
4.0
I'm not Gen X but this was an interesting read.
se_wigget's review against another edition
2.0
This book is for a book discussion group. Otherwise I wouldn't have picked it up.
Well. This brings up plenty of depressing memories. Stuff she says about growing up Gen X resonates with me. The stuff about 1970s childhood--how we're a generation before those who were brought up to think they were special.... She even brings up how teachers didn't give a fuck that we were bullied. No kidding--I was the #1 school scapegoat, and no teacher ever came to my defense. Some of the teachers were also bullies. I had such severe social anxiety that I didn't speak--I was sent to the principal's office, and he threatened to paddle me if I didn't start speaking! Yeah, just the thing to make me feel safe in school. The actual fuck.
I know--when I remember these things, I tell myself that was a long time ago and I can hear assholes telling me to "get over it"--the usual. But the earlier the trauma, the more it has affected your development and your life. And being a social pariah and craving respect, acceptance, and understanding--these are major themes in my life that go back to early childhood. It's not like I graduated from high school and from then on I was showered with respect and admiration--quite the contrary.
Thrown to the wolves.
Girls are (or at least were) thrown to the wolves--especially if you have a narcissist mother and other narcissist/sociopathic relatives--and we aren't assigned a handbook on how to survive in this toxic society.
As for "latchkey kids"--I enjoyed being home alone when I was a kid. It didn't happen often, but when it did, the house was quiet and calm for a change.
Straight breeder this, straight breeder that. Yawn. The author doesn't acknowledge the existence of people like me who aren't heterosexual and have never had any interest in breeding. And no, my not wanting to give birth doesn't somehow magically make me freakish, narcissistic, or psychopathic. QUEER AND CHILDLESS PRIDE FOREVER!
Are all the women in this book straight, married, and breeders? Give me your queer, your misfits, your bohemian masses. Not to mention women of color and transwomen, although I'm neither. I embrace not being straight and not being a breeder. Also, I've never had ANY interest in having children, so I don't live in the aggressively breeder-orientated version of reality the author lives in.
I'm a fiction writer, and my female protagonists are always single, queer, and childless (with the one exception of a story I wrote nearly 30 years ago about a character based on my mother). These are identities I embrace no matter how much straight breeders act like I shouldn't.
Maybe the title should be _Straight Breeders Lament_. Or _Discontented White Straight Women with Children_.
The author apparently lives in an alternate reality in which everyone is heterosexual or at least heteromantic. "Compulsory heterosexuality."
On pages 146-7 she finally acknowledges the existence of women who have never wanted to have children. But it's brief and still heteronormative. She makes voluntary non-breeders sound like a tiny minority, but I know plenty of women who are happily childless.
Overwhelmingly, the attitude is oh it's such a tragedy to not marry a man and have at least one baby. There are many, many reasons for not having babies--including keeping the population down and look at how humans are destroying the planet--and the author is completely oblivious of such reasons. I have absolutely never had any interest in having children, and no amount of harassment has ever made me ashamed of this.
alexisrt's review against another edition
4.0
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book (I think I'd rate it 3.5). On the one hand, as a Generation Xer (#ForgottenGeneration) it was nice to see a book specifically focused on us--that we do have a generational identity, and that we didn't have it as easy as the Boomers (a fact often ignored in Generation Wars). Calhoun is close to my age and she nails a lot of the experiences of my childhood--the kind of benign neglect (and why we don't do the same for our own kids), the being taught that everything was on an upward trajectory for women and we could do everything, only to discover that we were just going to have to do everything.
The problem is partly in the execution. She made a decision that while she would interview a diverse group of women, the vast majority of them are not identified, and the feeling that comes across is that differences are smoothed over into a homogeneous experience that reads as white even when it isn't. The fact is that not all of us were given precisely the same messages as kids, even if we encountered many of the same structural obstacles (student loans, recessions, expensive childcare) as adults.
She deliberately decided to focus on the middle class, deciding that class differences were too great. That's actually a valid decision for this type of book, but the sample felt more specific than that: not just middle class, but a certain kind of middle class, the urban middle-to-upper-middle. Women who had followed what she was taught was the accepted path of college-career-family. Other than a chapter on women without children, there felt like little deviation from that: there was discussion of the stigma for the childless, but not the flipside, the stigma for women who had focused on family.
There's a lot of territory covered in under 300 pages, and while it's interesting, that gives it a highlights reel feeling. That said, there is a lot of good in the book. She accurately describes the way GenX women often feel they were set up to fail: that we were told we could do anything, only to find that we weren't really supported in doing it. I think Calhoun has a bit of a tendency to understate just how big those social obstacles can be--that in effect we were told we could have it all, but that no one would change for us. For example, in the section on "Lean In" and negotiating, she doesn't mention that research has disproven the thesis that women don't get raises because they don't ask. They do; they're less successful at it.
A lot of this resonated with me, but not all. I am interested to see how younger women, who I often see scoff at those of us now in our 40s, experience things as they hit our age.
The problem is partly in the execution. She made a decision that while she would interview a diverse group of women, the vast majority of them are not identified, and the feeling that comes across is that differences are smoothed over into a homogeneous experience that reads as white even when it isn't. The fact is that not all of us were given precisely the same messages as kids, even if we encountered many of the same structural obstacles (student loans, recessions, expensive childcare) as adults.
She deliberately decided to focus on the middle class, deciding that class differences were too great. That's actually a valid decision for this type of book, but the sample felt more specific than that: not just middle class, but a certain kind of middle class, the urban middle-to-upper-middle. Women who had followed what she was taught was the accepted path of college-career-family. Other than a chapter on women without children, there felt like little deviation from that: there was discussion of the stigma for the childless, but not the flipside, the stigma for women who had focused on family.
There's a lot of territory covered in under 300 pages, and while it's interesting, that gives it a highlights reel feeling. That said, there is a lot of good in the book. She accurately describes the way GenX women often feel they were set up to fail: that we were told we could do anything, only to find that we weren't really supported in doing it. I think Calhoun has a bit of a tendency to understate just how big those social obstacles can be--that in effect we were told we could have it all, but that no one would change for us. For example, in the section on "Lean In" and negotiating, she doesn't mention that research has disproven the thesis that women don't get raises because they don't ask. They do; they're less successful at it.
A lot of this resonated with me, but not all. I am interested to see how younger women, who I often see scoff at those of us now in our 40s, experience things as they hit our age.
thestoryowl's review against another edition
5.0
I needed Ada’s pleasant warm engaging voice to walk me through this new phase of life I’m entering. The information is grounded and practical and the stories made me feel so much less alone.
furey's review against another edition
3.0
2.5 stars. Depressing AF. We can’t sleep because we are worried. We don’t like how we look, what we weigh, our spouses, our divorce, our singleness, our careers, our parenting skills, caring for our parents and our kids. There is no cure but the author is cured. Ok.
theshaggyshepherd's review against another edition
4.0
Why We Can't Sleep // by Ada Calhoun
Despite being younger than the target audience or the topic of her research, I still am glad to have read this book. Ada Calhoun, herself in the middle of a mid-life crisis when she first started writing this book, wrote about the many reasons that keep a lot of Gen X women up at night: finances, relationships, employment, children, parents, health, etc. While I don't have to worry about some of those things myself yet, the writing style still made me feel like she was talking to me anyways, helping me understand members of my family, my friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. While I don't generally fact check sources in books like this (there are just too many books for me to read to spend time on that) and therefore can't speak on the validity of her claims, many things do seem to make more sense to me now and I feel a little less apprehensive about reaching that age than I did before (hah). Her research once again shows though how much more focus there is on men's health and well-being, not that I am surprised by that in any way. I really liked that she tried to refrain from giving advice as much as possible but rather presented ways that helped her or a friend as examples on how to find your own way through those struggles.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
Despite being younger than the target audience or the topic of her research, I still am glad to have read this book. Ada Calhoun, herself in the middle of a mid-life crisis when she first started writing this book, wrote about the many reasons that keep a lot of Gen X women up at night: finances, relationships, employment, children, parents, health, etc. While I don't have to worry about some of those things myself yet, the writing style still made me feel like she was talking to me anyways, helping me understand members of my family, my friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. While I don't generally fact check sources in books like this (there are just too many books for me to read to spend time on that) and therefore can't speak on the validity of her claims, many things do seem to make more sense to me now and I feel a little less apprehensive about reaching that age than I did before (hah). Her research once again shows though how much more focus there is on men's health and well-being, not that I am surprised by that in any way. I really liked that she tried to refrain from giving advice as much as possible but rather presented ways that helped her or a friend as examples on how to find your own way through those struggles.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.