Everything to Everyone

A Boston Globe journalist reframes the pressures of midlife and maps a more fulfilling way forward for Gen X and Millennial women. When Kara Baskin found herself losing her mom while working full time and caring for young children, she sought out a book that would put her experience—which hit like a cocktail of overwhelm, muddled feminism, and bitters—into words. She didn’t find the book she was looking for, and yet on every soccer field sideline, over drinks with friends, and during meetups of other journalists, simmering resentment poured forth in stolen moments among women, as did a search for validation. So Kara started asking questions. What is it that makes this stage different from what it was for women who came before? How can we field all of this midlife grief, stress, and upheaval and still, you know, enjoy ourselves? Each chapter of Everything to Everyone takes readers through a different role Gen X and early Millennial women play, from adult daughter of aging parents, to operations executive, to diligent professional, to EQ-translator, and asks how to adopt these roles more thoughtfully. As Kara explains, we are still the primary caregivers for our parents (66 percent of us, anyway!), and do the majority of labor in our own households, as in earlier generations--but we are also woke enough to know that we’re getting screwed. We are the ones calling our widowed dads to make sure they eat while simultaneously telling our daughters not to blindly take on gender stereotypes. We understand the necessity of hard work and sacrifice for family. We also deserve to feel buoyed by the fullness of our lives, not crushed. This isn’t a call to burn it all down. It’s an invitation to appreciate what we’ve built, on our own terms.