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For the new generation, dreaded midlife crisis starts at 30

By Penelope Trunk, Globe Correspondent, 9/04/05

GLOBE STAFF PHOTO/DAVID L. RYAN Jessica Marshall Forbes knits at home. ''Thirty is when you're really grown up. At 30 you should know what you're doing,'' she says.

Thirty is a magic number for the new generation.

Jessica Marshall Forbes of Cambridge, 27, and a newlywed, sums it up this way: ''When you're younger, in college, 30 seems like a turning point. And as I'm nearing that age, the significance hasn't changed. Thirty is when you're really grown up. At 30 you should know what you're doing.''

Indeed, 30 is the key age to have career goals in place. Lia Macko, coauthor of the book ''Midlife Crisis at 30: How the Stakes Have Changed for a New Generation - And What to Do About It,'' writes, ''It may be socially acceptable to spend time searching for a professional calling during your twenties, but after 30, that grace period ends fast. Adjectives begin to change - 'aspiring' actors/filmmakers/musicians/writers are recast as 'wannabes' or 'dilettantes.'.''

And for women, there's an added dimension to turning 30: the biological clock. Jeffrey Arnett, professor of developing psychology at the University of Maryland, says: ''Women take into account their reproductive potential is diminishing. Women think if they marry at 30 they can have two years with their husband and have a kid and then wait two years and have another kid. But if this doesn't happen, then they worry about the impact on their reproductive life.''

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The worries are well-founded: The chance of birth complications skyrockets after age 35. For example, the chance that a baby will have Down's syndrome if the mother is 30 is 1 in 1,000 and if the mother is 35 it is 1 in 400, according to the March of Dimes. It used to be fashionable to tell women, ''Don't worry about babies. You have time. Concentrate on your career.'' But now that the statistics on late motherhood are clearer, fears have set in. For Forbes, the self-imposed deadline for having children has everything to do with medical risk. She says age is not a concern, ''as long as I'm not getting to the point where complications start.'' So it's no surprise there is a generation of women who do manage to line up the grand convergence of career, marriage, and motherhood within a couple of years of 30. Macko says, ''In the past, women had kids when they were lower in the masthead. Now women are making decisions about kids and earning potential and marriage all at the same time and this is specific to their generation.''
How can women ease some of the pressures of turning 30?

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Macko says, ''Tune out the cultural white noise'' and figure out a plan that will meet your own needs, regardless of the expectations people place on you.''

Starting a business is a great way to ensure that you can control your time as 30 approaches. Elizabeth Cogswell Baskin is the author of ''How to Run Your Business Like a Girl: Successful Strategies from Entrepreneurial Women who Made it Happen.'' She says most entrepreneurs she interviewed ''tried to do kids and corporate life and they couldn't.'' Baskin encourages entrepreneurship at a relatively young age. She says ''younger women are smarter about these issues'' and realize corporate life is not compatible with family life.

Linda Babcock, professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and author of ''Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide,'' encourages women to manage the convergence of fertility and finances by negotiating upfront with their partner.

''Ask questions like 'Who will find the nanny?' and 'Who will change jobs?' You might change your mind, but you will set the tone for both parties making an adjustment when the baby comes.'' Managing the changes one faces at 30 is much easier if both partners are committed to absorbing some of the shock.

For those of you fielding the annoying question ''So you're already 30, where is your husband?'' recognize that all women face crisis issues at 30. It's just that some are about finding a partner or career, and some are about coping with having found them.

Penelope Trunk can be reached at penelope@penelopetrunk.com

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