Solving for Gen-X: High Achievers and the New Midlife Crisis

The complaints of privileged, middle- and upper-middle class people are easy to dismiss as #FirstWorldProblems. Women are closing the wage gap. Men do more at home. Fine. And yet, a 2009 analysis of General Social Survey data showed that women's happiness "declined both absolutely and relative to men" from the early 1970s to the mid-2000s. More than one in five women are on antidepressants. And nearly 60 percent of Gen Xers—women and men—describe themselves as stressed out. Is this midlife crisis truly a crisis among some of the world's most fortunate people? If so, what caused it and how do women and men find their way out?