Career Women at Midlife: Sadder and Sicker

Submitted by admin on October 8, 2009 - 2:53pm

Michelle Conlin

BusinessWeek

March 27, 2009 (All day)

While women are securing greater power in the workplace, they are also growing less satisfied with their lives as they age

Kathy Caprino’s life seemed the stuff of glossy-magazine perfection. The big deal marketing job, complete with roomy office, upbeat assistant, and lunchtime indulgences in retail therapy. The cool contemporary spread in Connecticut. The emotionally aware jazz percussionist husband frolicking with the two healthy kids.

What a photo spread: a mise en scène of Third Wave feminisism, writ fabulous. Only as she powered through her prime earning years, notching promotions and amplifying her assets, Caprino began to ask herself why she felt lost and angry all of the time. She developed a chronic case of tracheitis. Life became about snapping at her husband, falling asleep around her kids, and loathing the deadened corporate machine she had become. At 38, Kathy Caprino had it all. She was also the unhappiest and unhealthiest she had ever been.