Eh. This book was kind of interesting but mostly just depressing. The author shares research and stories of Gen X women about why they are so unhappy. Basically Gen X women have told they could have it all and spoiler: they can’t. Everyone is stressed out and hates their lives. The book seemed light on actual research and felt overwhelming anecdotal. There’s also no fix given at the end. The same “bandaids” the author complains about in the beginning (get more fresh air, look on the bright side) are what she ends up using in the end. This should have been a long article instead of a full book IMO.

4.5 stars

I took my time reading this book because I wanted to think about each of the chapters as I read them. When I requested this ARC, it was the title that caught my eye, because I don't sleep. So I thought it was going to be some sort of self-help book that might help me sleep better. But it turns out it's about the different generations (boomers, gen-x, millenials, etc.) and in particular about gen-x women and why life seems to be such a struggle that we don't ever rest or feel like we can rest. Although some of it does not apply directly to me, much of it did resonate and several of her discussions mirrored discussions I've had with close (online) girlfriends. And it makes me value, even more, these girlfriends that I've discovered over the past 15 years. After reading this book and reflecting on motherhood, I realize that life would have been even harder without the support of these women. This book is incredibly well researched (the references alone take up 10s of pages) as she describes the gen-x generation (born 65-79) being sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millenials and the different current events that occurred as we were growing up, as we graduated from college, as we entered the workplace, and as we raise our children (or struggle with infertility or choose not to have children) while taking care of aging parents. It does not discount the struggles that the previous generations or current generations have, but with mounds of research, she talks about why Gen-X women are feeling so broken and useless and down on themselves. In the end, she says that perhaps it's a matter of reframing our experiences.

"It's about telling the story of our mistakes, our life, in a new way, in which we're heroines worth rooting for."

"Maybe the Generation X story need not be: <i>We're broke. We're unstable. We're alone. Maybe it can be: We've had a hard row to hoe. We've been one big experiment. And yet, look at us: we've accomplished so much."

And she backs this up with tons of research.

This book was dry at times, but that's partly because nonfiction is not my usual genre. But as I read this book, I kept thinking, "She's talking to me!" I think all women (and men) born between 1965 and 1979 should read this book. Looking back over the past 5 years of my life, I can see how I've started applying some of what she talks about in this book. And I agree that is has been helpful for me. I still need to consciously get more sleep though, lol!

Special thanks to #AdaCalhoun, #NetGalley and #GroveAtlantic for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Boomers deserve full credit for blazing trails while facing unchecked sexism and macroaggressions and for trying to raise children while giving up their own dreams. But Gen Xers entered life with "having it all" not as a bright new option but as a mandatory social condition."

Confession: being born in 1981, this classifies me as a (very old) Millennial and not a Gen Xer. But I figure I had a crush on Zach Morris as a kid, so, you know, I'm close enough to Calhoun's target demographic to warrant reading this book and subsequently writing this review.

The good: this book was well researched. Calhoun gives facts, figures, and stats that she pulled from a variety of studies, and she has the citations to prove it. She also interviewed a large smattering of different Gen X ladies to gain their insights for this book. "They are single and partnered, mothers and childless, black and white and Asian and Latina, gay and straight, liberal and conservative, evangelical and atheist, and they hail from nearly every state, including Alaska... They live in the country, the city, and the suburbs. They work, don't work, did work, will work, and have careers that include photographer, priest, tech executive, lawyer, doctor, teacher, and telephone company manager. They range in dress size from 0 to 28+. Some are having an okay time of middle age; many are struggling in one way or another." Additionally, I appreciated how this book was organized into different sections - from caregiving to job instability to money to being single and childless to post-divorce. This way, it was easier for me to skim through the sections that were less relevant to my life (raising kiddos... yawn) and focus more on the ME sections. I mean, I am a selfish Millennial, after all.

The not so good: although well researched, I wouldn't say I necessarily learned anything new nor earth shattering from reading this book. Gen Xer ladies grew up hearing they could have it all... and this book shows that being told you're supposed to be kick-a$$ at everything leads to ladies feeling like they're failing at something. "Our lives can begin to feel like the latter seconds of a game of Tetris, where the descending pieces pile up faster and faster." Also, although there was a lot of information on Why We Can't Sleep... but not so much information on What To Do To Help Us Sleep. Calhoun does share a few tidbits in the final chapter of what's helped her, but they're very tailored specifically to her life and her situation. Additionally, and this is on me, I'm just not the biggest fan of self help books (which this book kinda-sorta is). Although it wasn't particularly long at less than 300 pages, it felt like the same information was repeated over and over - which is a trait I find in a lot of self help books. Lastly, I found this book to be rather depressing. Regardless of if the Gen X ladies interviewed for this book were mothers, childless, married, single, gay, straight, the breadwinners, or jobless, they were all stressed out and unhappy on some level. "Things are so much better than they were decades ago, but they can be bad and better at the same time."

Why We Can't Sleep is a thoughtfully-written, well-researched account of Generation X women, particularly American women, and their experiences. This is not a self-help book. You'll find no road map for feeling better about your life, for changing your circumstance, or for navigating daily stressors. But sometimes, all you need is to feel seen, heard, or not alone. Ada Calhoun's book provides that reassurance. As a Gen X woman just beginning to navigate perimenopause, this book speaks to me deeply. It's not an easy read. Hearing other women discuss their challenges, some the same and some vastly different, can be heartbreaking. I felt an overwhelming sadness and despair reading most of this book and found myself asking if life was going to get better. Is there hope? And if not, what's the point in continuing to wake up in the morning and go through the motions. The great thing about this book is that it does end with hope. It may take another decade to get there, but the hope for happiness is out there, even if one isn't able to relocate to a new city, find a different job, find or leave a life-partner, or make another significant change.

The only caution I have with this book is that I think it's very niche - for the American Gen X woman in her 40s and 50s, I highly recommend reading it. Again, sometimes you just need to know you aren't alone and if you don't have a strong network of girlfriends, this book provides that acknowledgement. However, I don't think it will speak as strongly to women in other generations or even in other countries. That's not to say there aren't some lessons that are universal, but I think the bulk of this book really only applies to a small segment of the population.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

Why We Can’t Sleep is a book a didn’t know I needed. I turned 40 this year and that fear of that “holy cow! Where has my life gone & what have I accomplished?” hit me. Know that other women have and are going through the same thing was refreshing ― lol I love that I found a connect all the women Calhoun interviewed, gosh! I absolutely love the is book. Placing my preorder now!

Thank you, Grove Press and Netgalley for gifting me a darc of this intimate story. Over all I gave this book a 4/5 star.

Why We Can't Sleep is profoundly relatable. I recommend it on my podcast, One Great Book - bonus episode 5.

Seeing as many women I know are in mid-life or beyond (like myself, at age 54) and yet most have issues with sleep, I felt compelled to read this book. It's the subtitle that should really catch your eye because if you're a good sleeper, you should still read this book. Learning about what women in their 40s, 50s, & 60s are going through will prove to be extremely helpful to you.

My only regret about this books is that it didn't come out sooner to really help me address some of the issues I worked through while in my 40s. This is quite eye-opening and entirely readable. There is a personal point of view along with facts & figures so it does not stray into maudlin, 'oh poor me' territory. In fact, it's the opposite, it's very empowering. Can't wait to get this into the hands of library patrons here.

Being a woman is tough. Being a woman in midlife is tougher. In "Why We Can't Sleep", Ada Calhoun allows women everywhere to understand that those feelings of anxiety, panic and general overwhelm we feel as we hit our midlife strides aren't just in our heads. In chapter after chapter, Calhoun shares incredibly well researched stats about just how hard it actually is to be a middle aged woman. The book does focus about 90% of it's attention on Gen Xers (of which Calhoun is one), so the shelf-life of its relevance is a little tight. That said, I do believe the overall message will resonate with middle age women for generations to come.

Overall, "Why We Can't Sleep" is an interesting, smart read. I felt myself wanting to read passages aloud to my husband, quote stats to my coworkers and send copies of this to the Gen X women in my life.

That said, I wish I had reset my own expectations heading into this book. While it's great to know that we're not alone out there, it's also not super reassuring to hear a bunch of stats about how screwed we are heading into midlife without any potential solutions, solves or ways to deal. If you'd like a cathartic read, this may help. Otherwise, I was honestly left feeling a bit more depressed and anxious about just how many things in life may never work in my favor. If you're looking for advice or ways to navigate your own midlife crisis, this probably isn't your go-to.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

I found Ada Calhoun’s WHY WE CAN’T SLEEP highly readable and valuable as a Millennial woman. This nonfiction examination of Gen X women's experiences with aging and managing their middle-aged years was incredibly interesting. I found myself unable to put it down, perhaps because I craved a fuller (and more honest) understanding of real women's experiences. Calhoun's writing was engaging and entertaining, and she covers a good range of topics. I did have an issue with the narrow scope of voices featured in the books (many were left out), as well as the inaccurate stereotypes used to discuss both my generation and the Baby Boomers’ generation, but overall, as a white middle class cishet woman, I found in entertaining and enlightening.

Calhoun illuminates the very issues that make women feel isolated, alone, and full of despair. She points out that these issues are actually more universal than we realize and provides a ray of hope through practical solutions to these common challenges.

Are you a Gen X woman who is totally exhausted every single day but tells herself that it is normal, or who feels as if she has no right to even complain about the exhaustion? Well, this book is for you! The Pew Research Center categorizes Generation X as those of us born between 1965 - 1980. If you look at a majority of women aged 39-54, what do you see? A lot of my friends are hustling to get back into the workforce after raising their kids, some are now taking care of their parents, and after a few glasses of wine every single one of them fesses up something they feel guilty about (why did I give up my career, why didn't I stay home with my kids, or the doozy "I supposedly 'have it all', so why am I still not happy?") In Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis, author Ada Calhoun has collected information from thousands of women from a variety of backgrounds to show us that no matter how different we think we are, we are all facing a lot of the same struggles. If you are staring at your ceiling at night wondering why you are so anxious, overwhelmed, or depressed but maybe you just can't quite put your finger on why, Calhoun gives you detailed breakdowns of all the factors that are really working against us. While some would say that reading these statistics would make us even more depressed, I found it informative and comforting to know that "it's not just me!"

As an X-ennial - someone who is straddling the Gen X & Millenial generations (born in 1980), a lot of these stories and insights are just starting to seem relevant to me. Personally I enjoy reading first hand accounts of women's experiences and how they've come out on the other side..... one way or the other. Not an earthshaking book, but does shine a strong light on some issues that haven't been discussed fully from this perspective.

Eh... I was interested in this book because I thought it would be relatable and intriguing to read about lack of sleep and to find other women to relate to. While some stories were relatable, I found myself skimming a majority of the book because there were quotes and lists of things that have already been shared ad nauseam. I would say this was just an ok read.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

"Why We Can't Sleep" is author Ada Calhoun's way of making sense of midlife for Generation X women. In the book, she details concerns like housing costs, HR trends, divorce data, and perimenopause that currently face the "have it all" generation.
Because Gen X women are often overlooked since they're sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials, this book offers unique insight. The content can help Gen X women and their friends/family members understand more about the pressures, concerns, and issues they face. I know I will be discussing many of the book's topics with my friends and spouse as we seek to make this season of life less stressful and more fulfilling.
Note that the book is written primarily for upper middle class women. The issues discussed affect all Gen X women, but the content and interviewees primarily earn close to six figure incomes and a college education.
The book also doesn't include much advice. Calhoun interviewed dozens of Gen X women and professionals to discover what keeps us awake at night. She also adds valuable data and research with a few tips sprinkled in. However, this is not a self-help book. I appreciated reading about the challenges I face and knowing that I'm not alone, but I will need to go elsewhere to find solutions.
Also, she doesn't include any references to faith. Personally, I would prefer to read a book on the midlife crisis that includes faith as a coping mechanism.
Some of my favorite insights and truth nuggets:
Radical acceptance - finding a way to take life as it is, not as you thought it would be.
The labor (at home, for many women) is invisible. There's also an inconspicuous mental load.
"You know how to do this already: love when it's difficult. It's a superpower. You just need to use it for yourself, too."
Perimenopause can be more emotionally and physically fraught than we anticipate. These 1-13 years are as dramatic as puberty.
Moods are our body's own amazing feedback system.
Why can't we be pudgy, grouchy, or uncontained? My heroes - not one could be mistaken for a supermodel.
Reframe and look for redemption sequences where negative experiences somehow become meaningful.

"Why We Can't Sleep" by Ada Calhoun examines the plight of the middle-class women of Generation X. She argues that they face unique pressures. While dealing with many of the issues women have long experienced at middle age--physical changes, reassessment of one's place in the world, the burden of caring for both children and parents--they also have spent much of their working lives in a recession. They're also often forgotten by the media, as a smaller cohort than either their boomer and millennial counterparts. More importantly, they are truly the first generation of women who have been told since their early childhoods that they can and should "have it all," only to realize that can be the source of incredible stress rather than freedom.

As a member of Generation X, much of the content here resonated with me. I only recently found a job in the field in which I got my graduate degree, I'm facing many of the physical and personal issues described in the book. And like many of the interviewees Calhoun quotes, I'm uncomfortable with my own unhappiness; what right do I have to complain? So at one level, I appreciated the book as validation. Yes, middle age is a tough time, and we're going through it at a tough time.

But at the same time, I suppose that every woman in America who has gone through middle age could say much the same. The precise political, cultural, and social obstacles that confronted them might have been different but were obstacles nevertheless. I tend to think that Gen X women have more in common with women of the Boomer, Silent, Greatest, etc. generations than the author lets on.

And I'm not sure that folks who like their feminism with some intersectionality will be entirely pleased by this offering. It focuses mainly on middle class women by design (though the author doesn't define exactly what this means by her lights). And while the author indicates that her pool of respondents was diverse, she doesn't make much reference to race or sexuality throughout the book--again by design. But I can't help think that the experiences and touchstones of black Gen-X women, gay Gen-X women, etc. are important enough to explore a little more meaningfully, if not here, then elsewhere.

(Thanks to NetGalley for a review copy.)

This book was tough for me.
I am a 25 years old from an Eastern Europe country where we like to joke that the trends and well everything arrive ~ 50 years later than in the western part of the world, the Americas included.
That being said, if I could sleep just fine before reading it, now I spend my nights worried sick and with high levels of anxiety because I find my generation in that of the Gen X in America.
We had communism to keep the traditional gender roles in place and us locked from the "outside" well enough to kill any chance of developing. I am among the first generations born after the fall of the regime and we bear the pressure the Gen x-ers bore in their time even if the context is quite different.
The book is well written though, you can see that research was done and it was a thorough one.
It reads quite okay, you do not need to have a background in economics, statistics or politics to understand the points she makes and the data she offers.
I personally could relate to many of the stories and women in this book which makes for good writing, good rendition of dialogues and characters although a non fiction book.
I think you should really check how you place yourself respective to the generation X in the America before reading. The book is useful nonetheless and I would recommend it to any woman out there who feels weighted down by worries and well , life but also to men. Men should be reading this even if only to understand how we think, what it is expected of us, how we struggle to cope with our own selves, lives, spouses...

Only made it through about 40 percent of the book. It contained a lot of statistics supporting the author's case, but was lacking in personal stories. Perhaps toward the end there may have been a section on what can be done about the issues discussed, but nothing early in the text alluded to any kind of hopeful or helpful content

I think the title needs to be different - it should be "THIS is Why We Can't Sleep". Going into the book, I assumed it was going to be a book about helping women get their sleep back in middle age years. Instead, the book made me more anxious when I read about all the admittedly true and real reasons of why we are up all night worrying. And this tension built up to one very short conclusion, so was not reassuring for the reader at all. I hope that the author will eventually come up with solutions and write a follow-up a few years from now.

While "Why We Cant Sleep" is specifically meant for Gen X women, as a millennial there are a lot of things in this book that I can identify with. A lot of the things Gen X women are facing are also faced by older millennials. I was raised by Boomers, and have 3 Gen X siblings, so I feel a lot of the same things they do. I think most older millennials could also relate to this book. The world we face and are in is not the one we were promised as kids, where if we worked hard we could be or do anything we wanted to. Time goes by so fast, and here we are in our 30s with almost nothing to show for it as a generation. Its great to know that we aren't the only ones, sometimes, even if we wouldn't wish the circumstances we're facing on our worst enemy. Social Security will be tapped out before we even get to use it, and thats a frightening thought.

Why Can’t We Sleep is a non-fiction book made for Gen X women who, as the title implies, really need some shut eye.

I read an excerpt of this book in a magazine what feels like at least a year ago and I was very excited to get my hands on an advance review copy in exchange for an honest review. Honestly, this book rocks. It’s the catharsis you’ve been waiting for!

“We’re the first generation of women raised from birth hearing the tired cliche “having it all”—then discovering as adults it is very hard having even some of it.

Likening middle age to the latter stages of a losing Tetris game, Calhoun makes the case that not only do we have to make life-changing decisions at this point in our lives, we are also dealing with a Molotov cocktail of hormones in the form of peri- and regular menopause. Our stress makes our hormonal symptoms worse, which in turn increases our stress.

In part, I read this book at night before trying to sleep because my nighttime reading (The Snowman) was in danger of giving me nightmares.

While this book may have not helped me sleep, it did make me feel like a GenXer 100%. Moments of my life, touchstones like the Challenger explosion and latchkey kids, are used to illustrate why middle age is such a difficult time for us. Far from being coddled, many of us were ignored and left to deal with trauma alone. This wasn’t considered neglect; it was just the way it was. In fact, it’s possible our generation has higher than normal rates of Reactive Attachment Disorder, causing is to have problems forming loving relationships, stemming from our childhood and lack of caregivers. And this is why we are so careful with our own children, wanting to spare them the pain of our own childhood.

The author discusses Generation Alone, a book about Gen X’s spiritual life, quoting, “in aloneness, one’s life is filled with nothing but the clutter and busyness of activity and, all to often, the painful memories of one’s own past.” While I’m a younger X with little kids and thus exhaustion more than any of these other emotions, this still hits very close to home.

The entire book is like this, having your issues explained in painstaking detail as if your BFF wrote the book rather than an author you’ve never met. If you think your midlife problems originate from anything other than being a GenX (or Gen X adjacent) woman, well this book has some interesting arguments about why you’re wrong.