GENERATION IN THE MIDDLE: THE PRESSURE OF RESPONSIBILITIES
“I feel like a drowning man with all these people clinging to my neck,” sighed one forty-six-year-old man. “My father died of a brain hemorrhage last year, and my mother has been helpless ever since. Then my ex-wife ran off to England a few months ago, leaving our three teen-age daughters with me, which doesn’t exactly thrill my present wife, since we have two small babies ourselves. And now my brother-in-law is dying of leukemia, and my sister is leaning hard on me. I feel as if I have to be a father to everybody, and the truth is I’ve never been a very good father.”
This man’s complaint is not a cry of self-pity but an accurate reflection of reality. For most men the responsibilities that come with being in the prime of life are truly staggering. This is the time when a man must father two generations, the young and the old. His children are becoming adults, and his parents are approaching death or dying. Suddenly he has to take care of everyone, but nobody is there to take care of him. Moreover, the challenge to become a father in the fullest sense comes not only from within his own family circle, but from the rest of society as well.
This sense of being overburdened, even overwhelmed, affects men in all economic groups. Alex R. is a forty-one-year-old lawyer who, despite his prosperity, feels deeply ambivalent about his accomplishments. “You know all the things I’ve always wanted to happen only started happening in the last couple of years,” he said at first, describing the heady rewards. He had just realized a childhood dream by moving his family out of the city to a twelve-acre farm, still within comfortable commuting distance. His law firm’s in come had increased dramatically, as had some of his own investments, allowing him to become involved in new areas of work. And, seeing his knowledge and experience come to fruition, he had finally acquired a strong sense of self-confidence.
After completing this sunny summary, however, Alex switched abruptly to the darker side of his life:
I don’t want you to think that everything is pie in the sky, or sweetness and light, because that’s not true. One of the things that happens to you, as your business gets more successful and you get more successful, is that you get to the point—I know I have-—where you say to yourself, “I’ve had it with responsibilities.”
You get tired of it. You arc responsible to your office, you are responsible to your wife, you are responsible to your children, you are responsible to your parents, you are responsible to your in-laws. You are responsible to everybody!
My whole life is a series of responsibilities. Especially in my profession—you’re responsible not only to your business, but to every one of your clients. And you really get to the point where you would love . . . you know, you have this little dream, wanting to go to some little island somewhere and just get rid of everything. Just let everybody worry about themselves, and you stop it.
And I think that is a real problem I have. That’s the other side of the coin: You have the power and you have the achievements—and you don’t want them.
This was a very, very difficult year for me in that, first of all, we bought the house. And moving from a 6V4-room apartment where you’ve lived for 12 years to a farm, with the renovations and everything, is very traumatic. I always wanted that house, right? Well, now I have a house—a big house. But I didn’t just buy a house. I really bought a way of life. A 12-acre farm— that’s a way of life. We have a well, right? If a pipe on the well isn’t corroded, then the electricity isn’t right, or the pond has to be dredged, or you have to feed the apple trees—or this has to be done, or that. You know, it’s never ending! Forget about financially. It is just a responsibility.
And then the office was extremely busy. In addition to that, my partner had an operation and was out for a couple of months during this whole period. That put another burden on me, because I had to cover for him and do his work, so it was a combination of a huge amount of pressures all coming at the same time. And then you have the responsibilities to your children. To your wife. Forget it! You really get to the point where you just want to blow your mind—get out, right? It’s terrible.
These sentiments underscore the fact that part of the midlife crisis hinges on a man’s being squeezed in a viselike grip by two generations, while other demands upon him are also multiplying.
As a group, men in their middle years shoulder more personal and social responsibilities than anyone else. They feel threatened not only because they sense the tensions from both ends of the life cycle, reminders of their own waning youth, but also because they must support both ends financially. Typically they are responsible for parents whose incomes have been cut in half while their medical needs have increased; and for children who are attending college, where costs are mounting alarmingly.
In our society there is only a “fairly narrow band” of productive people who must provide for the unproductive ones, says Dr. Robert N. Butler, the director of the National Institute on Aging, who believes that much of the resentment felt by mid-life men is due to this heavy burden: Their responsibility, both individually and collectively, for the rest of the society. “They are angry at both the young and the old, and with other groups as well,” says Butler, “because they see these groups getting ‘all the benefits’ while they, hard-pressed, pay all the bills.”
But the issue is not simply economic. This anger is especially intense among this generation of men because they feel as if they have always been in the middle, always been burdened by obligations. Taught to respect and please their parents, they were pushed prematurely toward work and duty, and thus deprived of a carefree youth of their own. Ironically, they then became the first generation of child-centered parents indoctrinated to indulge their youngsters’ every wish, sacrificing their own needs and desires along the way.
No wonder the handicapped generation feel cheated. Just when they expect to reap rewards for their sacrificial efforts, they find instead that their obligations are mounting, their sense of being pressured and put-upon increasing.
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