Book Notes

Exploring the ‘breaking point’ with Sue Shellenbarger

By: Joan Ruddiman
   The media are having a field day with almost weekly revelations from brain research. The latest is that the male brain emerges from a female brain. We in the general public, like the media, tend to simplify what is incredibly complex and in this case, succumb to bad jokes.
   Adam says to Eve, "You are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh."
   Eve replies, "Fortunately for both of us, I had the brain."
   After mapping the brain, diving into the adolescent brain, exploring the aged brain, researchers tackled women’s brains. Given the number of female baby boomers, attention should be paid to what is going in the heads of 45 to 55 year old women.
   Ladies, this summer as you sat on a beach somewhere, took that week off from the whirlwind we call life, did you find yourself thinking about taking a class, reviving an old hobby, changing careers?
   Gentlemen — and children — have you noticed some odd behaviors in predictable old mom?
   Hang on, because women of a certain age and those who love them are in for some potentially dramatic life changes. You need to read "The Breaking Po!nt: How Female Midlife Crisis is Transforming Today’s Women" (Henry Holt, 2004). Sue Shellenbarger knows all about "losing your mind" at 50. Actually, as she discovers, it is more that the brain re-charges, propelling women into marvelous new realms.
   Sue Shellenbarger writes the popular "Work and Family" column for the Wall Street Journal. A few years ago, she wrote a column about her mis-adventures with an ATV that resulted in some severe fractures and a personal reassessment of her life. In attempt to make light of the fact that a 50-something could be so foolish to take a wild ride on an all-terrain-vehicle, Shellenbarger referred to her "mid-life crisis."
   Big joke, right? Women don’t go through such nonsense. Men are the ones who pursue younger women, acquire the trophy wife, and buy the Harley as they re-create themselves. Yet that column generated more responses than any in the dozen years she had been a columnist, with many fervent pleas to recognize what Shellenbarger had flippantly dismissed. For many women, a mid-life crisis was indeed a reality.
   Shellenbarger the woman was stunned by the responses. Shellenbarger the journalist was intrigued. Looking for the story behind the stories, she spent over a year interviewing the women who first contacted her and others she found through networking and newspaper ads. She also interviewed experts in the fields of aging, human psychology and neuroscience for insights to explain the phenomenon revealed by personal anecdotes.
   In "The Breaking Po!nt," Shellenbarger defines "female mid-life crisis" as she establishes a research–based understanding of what appears truly to be a cultural phenomenon that will have wide ranging effects in our society.
   Shellenbarger quotes Joseph Campbell who wrote, "Mid-life is when you reach the top of the ladder and find it was against the wrong wall."
   In her own life, and in the 50 in-depth interviews she conducted, Shellenbarger found the truth in this quip. Women who have been the dutiful wife, the hard-working employee, the devoted mother reach an end-point where life-long goals are achieved and these "successful" women are exhausted from the constant effort. Often the throes of transitions trigger a point of re-assessment. Dad dies, a divorce goes through, the last kid goes off to college or a health scare looms — some major life changes cited by women in the study. Shellenbarger herself admits to facing several crisis points in the time just before she became "someone no one knows, a wild woman with graying hair under a full-face helmet, a hand too heavy on the throttle and an adventure lust so consuming that I lie awake nights."
   Though some (men) have suggested that a woman’s mid-life crisis can be attributed to an "empty nest syndrome" or menopause, Shellenbarger found these theories can not be supported by the evidence. There may be an age correlation, but simply the kids leaving and not being able to have more kids doesn’t spell causation for a breaking point or breaking free.
   What is apparent from psychological theory and awareness from current research in neuroscience is that women are more than extensions of others, be that a spouse or a child-bearing and child-rearing entity.
   Shellenbarger briefly touches on Erick Erickson’s Eight Stages of Development and Jungian psychology, among others. These theories are not gender-specific. For example, Jung’s concept of "the shadow" — the repressed part of our personality that emerges as midlife — is something men and women recognize as they change careers, seek degrees in new fields, take up a new hobby, often which reflect a passion from early in their lives. She also touches on the fascinating world of the brain. Gene Cohen at the Center on Aging, Health and Humanities as George Washington University recently published results of his study on brain development in mid to old age. Evidence suggests that synapses increase 20 percent in response to new challenges and endeavors taken on by an adult. The National Institute for Health notes measurable changes in the brain at mid-life.
   Ironically, what is now understood about the teenage brain seems to repeat in the 50-something brain. The extensive firing of synapses in the teen brain is called "exuberance." Neuroscientists posit that teens take risks and seek challenges because the brain needs stimuli and fresh data to stimulate connections that fire synapses, thus "growing" the brain.
   Shellenbarger talks of her doctor, who while tending to yet another mis-adventure chides her for acting like a 17-year-old. Throughout the book, as Shellenbarger makes her points around specific case studies, women speak of feeling like a kid again, of being amazed at their devil-may-care attitudes they thought they’d left behind in their teens.
   Jung, as well as Elliot Jacques, who is the man who coined the phrase "mid-life crisis," wrote of the importance of coming to terms with one’s creative potential, that this is the "task of mid-life." The women of Shellenbarger’s study reflect this need for self-expression and re-connection to a lost or suppressed passion. Shellenbarger examines these patterns that she then presents as "archetypal drives." In what she calls, "Looking for Our Missing Piece," she defines and elaborates on The Adventurer, The Lover, The Leader, The Artist, The Gardener, and The Seeker.
   OK, so women have mid-life crises, too. Add it to the list of equal opportunities with men in our politically correct age.
   Actually, there is a whole lot more to this. Shellenbarger has been a respected journalist for over 30 years. She sensed a story that has major implications and she believes she found it.
   Consider the demographics. There are 41.6 million baby boom women alive today, which, as Shellenbarger writes, is "more than twice the size of the GI Joe generation of men who fought in World War II and transformed the U.S. economy, and three times the size of the suffragette generation of women who won the vote in the early 1900’s."
   Shellenbarger notes, "The sheer size of this age group of women ensures the trend will have unprecedented impact." Moreover, women today make more money than any generation of women before them. They are better educated. They also came of age in the world of women’s liberation — I-am-woman-hear-me-roar. This is not our mother’s middle age.
   Forget the soccer moms. This PMZ, what Margaret Mead called "postmenopausal zest" has the potential to influence the political spectrum as well as social mores and cultural trends. This indeed is a cultural phenomenon that demands attention.
   For those who loved "Secret Life of Bees," Sue Monk Kidd’s second novel titled "The Mermaid Chair: A Novel" (Viking Penguin, 2005) may have been a let down. However, re-visit this novel with Shellenbarger’s "Breaking Po!nt" in hand. The strange behaviors of Kidd’s protagonist, Jessie Sullivan, will make perfect sense.
   Shellenbarger makes it easy for book study groups by providing a nicely annotated bibliography and appendices that detail the history of the concept of the mid-life crisis, the study of the archetypes and research on aging. That she is a good writer makes the book quick to read and easy to discuss.
   This is a topic for our times. Shellenbarger lived it, researched it and shares her understanding of the phenomenon of the female midlife crisis.
   Joan Ruddiman, Ed. D., is a teacher and friend of the Allentown Public Library.