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“Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26,” Nora Ephron famously wrote. “If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don’t take it off until you’re 34.” If any geriatric millennials are reading that and bristling at the idea that they are no longer fit to be seen partially clothed in public, perhaps they can take comfort in the fact that our concept of middle age has shifted quite significantly in the 20 years since Ephron wrote these words.
The oldest millennials are now 43, so it’s not like having to come to terms with aging is a new affliction for us. Yet I was amused to read an article in The Times of London recently, entitled “Help! I am about to reach my ‘millenopause,’” from a female writer who was about to turn 36. It was a curiously self-loathing piece, which seemed to buy into the right-wing press’s view of us as immature and self-obsessed. “Millennials are now the largest generation, and our legacy is… what? Boomeranging to live with our parents? Staying in shared homes into our forties? A declining fertility rate? Burnout culture?” she writes, adding, later: “We’re so infantilized that I feel as if I’ve skipped straight from newly graduated to middle-aged.” This is followed up by a character assassination by a member of Gen Z (though, at 27, you’re pushing it, love) in which we are called “embarrassing” and “self-absorbed.”
I came away feeling compelled to defend my generation, who, as ever, bear little resemblance to the media stereotype of us. Yes, it’s true that economic hardship has been somewhat infantilizing. I don’t feel like a real person a lot of the time—I can’t drive, I don’t own a house, and I seem to exist in a perpetual state of chaos. And yet the fact remains that I am an adult: I have a job, and an accountant. I’m someone’s mother. There comes a time where you just have to accept maturity, whether the coat fits or not.
It’s true that geriatric millennials have had to revise the traditional markers of adulthood, such as marriage with children. We’re settling down later (if we do so at all), buying homes later, and having children later. The Pope thinks we’re choosing pets over having kids, but everyone I know is either a parent, weighing up whether or not to become one, or trying to work out the shape their life will take if they don’t choose to procreate. When I wrote a book, The Year of the Cat, about a time in my life when I was on the cusp of making this crucial life decision, several older women said to me that they admired the fact that I had given it so much careful thought. “We didn’t really think about it,” they said.
I don’t think I’m unique in engaging in some quite lengthy self-reflection. The stereotype of millennial self-absorption comes, I believe, from the fact that, as a generation, we really do question ourselves and our life decisions. We have so much to weigh up when thinking about our futures, after all, from financial circumstances to our environmental impact. We are the first generation to have truly embraced therapy, and I think it makes Boomers nervous (“What are they saying about us? How are they so comfortable talking about their feelings?”). It is, I think, a sign of great emotional maturity to choose to work on yourself. Lots of millennial parents, for example, seem committed to making a change from the way they were parented. Instagram Reels and memes about boomer parenting techniques abound and, if anything, we are too nice sometimes. The popularity of “gentle parenting”—and the subsequent backlash—is a testament to that. Furthermore, millennial dads are far more hands-on and millennial mothers far more willing to demand equality in their relationships that our predecessors.
As for those who are single, childless, or choosing to remain child-free, they are reflecting, too. Books such as Arrangements in Blue and No One Talks About This Stuff take a deep look at what a life without romantic love, or children, looks like. Most single women can’t afford to live alone, so it remains a privilege reserved for the few. Contemplating spending middle age in a shared apartment is not something that most Boomers have to contend with, and yet, far from being self-pitying, most of my friends are angry, and that anger is being channelled productively into interesting art and writing, among other things. If millennials feel powerless at times, it has not stopped us from being engaged in politics and activism. We seem determined to do what we can with our limited power to make sure the next generation has things better than us, not worse.
Sorry if this all sounds a bit like I’m blowing my own generation’s trumpet, but someone has to. Has any other generation been so maligned in the media? And what for, ultimately? Our brunch preferences? Are we to be forever tainted with the legacy of liking avocado on toast, as opposed to viewing it as a shade for our bathroom suites? It’s easy to call us shallow, but are we, really? So what if we’re addicted to intricate recipe videos containing “hard-to-find” ingredients? If we have a lot of house plants and treat our pets like children? Yes, maybe we do overshare, and value “experiences” above consumer goods in a way that can be just a little bit annoying.
We’re not perfect, but we are, I think, resilient. We are the first generation who can remember life before the internet while at the same time being raised as digital natives. That is a profound shift, and we’ve been living it. We’ve also been kicking against it, questioning it, and trying to work out how to live when, for example, almost all romantic connections have been outsourced to apps. Then you have economic and political turmoil, climate catastrophe, a housing crisis, and a pandemic. The fact that we still have the joie de vivre to devote time to making a really, really nice sandwich that we saw on Instagram shows, I think, that we are willing to take the small pleasures that life has to offer us and cling to them for sustenance. There’s a reason we are the first generation to truly embrace self-care, corny as the phrase is. We’d do well to follow some more of Ephron’s advice for middle age: “Gather friends and feed them, laugh in the face of calamity, and cut out all the things—people, jobs, body parts—that no longer serve you.”
So if, like me, you are an aging millennial, I implore you: Don’t buy into this media-confected idea of a “millenopause.” Your 30s and 40s are tricky ages. Often in this time period, adults are not only caring for small children but also confronting the reality of their parents’ mortality and their possible care needs. Many of us will be negotiating that without the stability of the generations that came before us, but I have a feeling that we will swim, and not sink. We’re tougher than people think. At the very least, we’ll make some very funny memes about it.