Why Midlife Is Going to Be Especially Hard On Millennials

Afew years ago, the New York Times ran a piece about “Xennials,” defined as people born during the late 1970s or early 1980s — a generational gray area when the Gen X-ers (those born between 1965 and 1980, roughly) gave way to Millennials (1981 to 1996).

“Xennials are straddlers . . . neither here nor there,” the article’s two authors wrote.

They pointed out that the oldest Millennials made it to college before the widespread adoption of cellphones and social media. As a result, this group might identify more with the previous generation than with later-born Millennials who had never lived in a world without text messages and Likes.

The article even included a short quiz (just for fun, nothing scientific) designed to tell you “which generation you really are, spiritually.”

I was born in 1982 — solidly Xennial — and was eager to take the quiz. My responses leaned so heavily Gen X that I was deemed “not even really a Millennial.”

All this came to mind recently when I spoke with Jean Twenge, PhD, a professor at San Diego State University and author of the new book Generations, in which she maps out the defining traits and experiences of the six generations of people now coexisting in the United States.

What she told me about Millennials’ midlife prospects made me glad to have been born toward the front of the line.

‘Across U.S. society in the last 5–10 years, there’s certainly been a growth in distrust and cynicism and political polarization and conflict, and that is likely to take the biggest toll on those in midlife who are building careers and building families.’

“Grappling with the realization that life may not live up to your expectations is kind of at the core of midlife crises,” she says. “And when we compare the different generations, Millennials had these really sky-high expectations that you didn’t see as much among previous generations or Gen Z-ers.”

Citing plentiful data, she says that Millennials grew up thinking they’d be better educated, more professionally accomplished, and more financially successful than their parents. And not without reason: Since the nation’s founding, nearly every new generation of Americans enjoyed greater prosperity than their parents or grandparents. Millennials had every reason to think the world would be their oyster, and they (we) were looking forward to sucking it down.

“Expectations can be inspiring, but they can also lead to disappointment,” Twenge says.

As has been documented widely, Millennials may be the first generation in U.S. history who will not be better off financially or professionally than their parents. There’s still a chance that may not come to pass; Twenge says some of the most recent data show Millennials have caught up to Gen X-ers and are gaining ground on Boomers. But in many other ways, the disconnect between the world Millennials expected to inherit and the one they got is arguably the greatest among any of the current generations, and so could fuel an especially stark period of midlife distress.

Twenge cites the many cultural and political ructions that have shredded the fabric of American life during the past decade. “Across U.S. society in the last 5–10 years, there’s certainly been a growth in distrust and cynicism and political polarization and conflict, and that is likely to take the biggest toll on those in midlife who are building careers and building families and paying more attention to the communities around them,” she says.

When you break down the generations in terms of sociopolitical views, she says that Boomers and Gen X-ers tend to lean more conservative, while Millennials and Gen Z-ers lean more liberal. While these divisions are hard on everyone, they may be especially trying for midlife Millennials who now feel ideologically at odds with their parents while trying to raise kids of their own.

“We’re seeing these fault lines within families that certainly got worse during the pandemic and became so much more personal — more an aspect of day-to-day life,” she says. Arguably nowhere are these divisions as stark as they are between Millennials and their Boomer parents.

There’s more. The accelerating pace of technological advancement (AI, mobile tech, etc.) is another potential thorn in our side. “As you get older, the ground tends to shift beneath your feet politically and culturally, and you can feel like you’re on a conveyor belt and you want to get off,” Twenge adds. “I think that used to take longer, but now, thanks in part to technological innovation, people may be feeling that at 40 or even younger.”

Climate change’s transition from theoretical threat to real-and-present calamity is another massive weight heaped onto the shoulders of midlife Millennials.

‘Being more focused on the self and less focused on others — that purely distilled individualism is in many ways the cardinal trait of Millennials.’

Finally, Twenge points out that Millennials are more individualistic than the generations that preceded or followed theirs. “Being more focused on the self and less focused on others . . . that purely distilled individualism is in many ways the cardinal trait of millennials,” she says. “That’s not a criticism. This trait has huge upside, like prioritizing equality, but it also has downsides like disconnection.”

All these ingredients may blend to make an unappealing midlife stew for Millennials like me. But not everything is aligned against us.

Twenge says Millennials waited longer than previous generations to get married and start families. As a result, they’re likely to be a bit more mature and financially established, on average, than parents from previous generations. They’re also likelier to stay hitched. “Later marriage is generally linked to lower rates of divorce,” she says.

Perhaps the biggest boon for Millennials: The early and mid-2010s appear to have been a historically great time to buy a house, and that’s exactly when many of us were moving into the first-time-homebuyer stage of life. Twenge says this lucky timing helped some older Millennials accumulate wealth early in life in a way that was unavailable to previous generations.

Overall, however, the picture of midlife seems a bit bleak for Millennials — particularly the younger cohorts who possess all their generation’s characteristic optimism and individualism, but who missed out on the housing boom and spent their adolescent years steeped in social media.

Only the oldest of the Millennials — early ’80s babies like me — have reached their forties. It’s too soon to say how things will work out for us. Even if the dire predictions do come to pass, there’s a lot of research on midlife crises, and the data show that it doesn’t last.