Are we Still Here?

Gen X Women: Are we still here?

I posted on Reddit this morning! My first time.

My question: GenX women, are we so busy caregiving that we’re being erased from history?

Our parents — typically the Boomers — are living longer, but not healthier, and with less medical insurance than the previous generation (1). So former “latchkey kids” are now being called upon to care for their aging parents in ways that I suspect may seem unfamiliar to them. And, according to almost every source you can find, the bulk of this work is falling to daughters and daughters-in-law (2). Big surprise.

Caregiving is of course important work. Our culture doesn’t reflect that, but we know it to be true. I’m wondering how many GenX women are just tapped out. After all, we raised our own kids in a very different way than our parents. Where my mother neatened a house free of Amazon purchased clutter and did the laundry in the silence of an empty home while we played dangerous games in the woods with the neighbor kids, I hauled my own children to the park, the library, the play circles, the ballet classes, in an attempt to not repeat what felt like my own slightly neglected childhood. Our kids are hand-raised, grass-fed, certified Organic Millenials and Gen Y-ers — who, by the way, are staying at home longer than previous generations (3). Our work is, it would seem, never to be done.

I was saddened to realize that I can only come up with a handful of culturally/politically influential women my age: Jennifer Weiner (1970), Venus Williams (barely, 1980), Michelle Obama (1964), former Vice President Harris (1964). Clearly this needs to be remedied by my own research. But I have to ask: Have we gone too far filling societal gaps in caregiving? And if so, how do we pull back?