The Myth of Work-Life Balance: Why Gen X Women Need to Rewrite the Rules
It's 8:07 p.m. You're clearing the kitchen while replying to a Team's message. The school WhatsApp group is pinging about tomorrow's bake sale. Your mother's pharmacy reminder flashes on your phone. Your teenage daughter just texted asking if she can go to a disco that you thought she would ask about for another 2 years.
You're technically not at work. But in reality, you haven't stopped working at anything all day.
For those of us older millennials and Gen X, we entered corporate life believing the story that we’ve been told. To work hard, prove yourself, and you'll earn your seat at the table. And we did. We climbed and we delivered. Many of us now hold senior titles, lead teams, and shape strategy. We read the books and ‘leaned in’.
But here we are at what should be our peak earning and influence years and instead of balance, we're holding up an entire ecosystem. Aging parents, children who still need us. Corporate expectations that don't mould to our ever changing lives. Mortgages. And our bodies that act in the way we are used to.
It's uncomfortable to admit but the version of work-life balance we were sold was never designed for the reality Gen X women are living right now. And the system that promised us "having it all" is quietly watching us break under the weight of it.
The Sandwich Generation Squeeze: You're Holding It All Together
Our parents are aging. They are navigating healthcare systems, lifts to appointments, grappling with memory loss or chronic illness. Some of us have already become caregivers, advocates, and medical decision-makers for the people who once took care of us.
Our children: whether they're still in school or have moved into their college years still need us. Emotionally, financially and logistically. They're also facing a world more uncertain than the one we entered, and we're trying to guide them while barely keeping our own heads above water and we don't have the answers.
And then there's work. Where we're expected to lead, strategise, mentor, perform and be fully present. When saying "I need to leave for my father's doctor appointment" or "I can't take that trip to London because my kid needs me home" can still feel like admitting weakness despite all the feminist books we’ve read.
What is often seen as lacking ambition or not really in the game is far more nuanced. It's about carrying an invisible load that compounds every year and doing it in corporate structures that were built when caregiving was assumed to be someone else's problem. The fact that caregiving is seen as a problem to begin with is a huge problem.
The Gen X Trap: We Contributed to These Structures. Now They're Failing Us.
We and those before us fought for flexibility, normalised working mothers, pushed open doors in male-dominated industries. We worked late, proved our commitment, and earned our positions. But the corporate world didn't evolve as much as we hoped it would. Yes we are there and we participate, but at what cost?
The "always on" culture we helped create? It's now devouring us. Remote work gave us flexibility but also erased every boundary. We're on Zoom at 7 a.m. and answering Slack at 10 p.m. We've absorbed so much work into the cracks of our lives that there are no cracks left.
And now, return-to-office mandates are clawing back even the small accommodations we fought for. For Gen X women managing elder care, teenage crises, and a body going through menopause, these rigid structures aren't just inconvenient, they can be a breaking point in our lives and careers.
The flexibility paradox is real and not something you are just imagining:
We're more experienced than ever, but less visible when we're not in the office.
We're working longer hours than younger colleagues, but it's less recognised because it happens at night or on weekends.
We have the judgment and leadership companies claim to value, but we're being quietly passed over for opportunities that require "full availability."
It's burning us out.
The Invisible Load: Mental Project Management of Everything
On top of your corporate role, you are the keeper of everyone's calendar, health history, emotional wellbeing, and future planning.
You remember your mother's medication schedule, your son's sports calendar, your team's deliverables, your own mammogram appointment, when the car inspection is due. Who needs to be where, when, and with what.
This mental load, the constant planning, tracking, anticipating, and coordinating is exhausting. And unlike your title or salary, it comes with no recognition, no support system, and no off switch.
Researchers call it "cognitive labour” but for Gen X women it's a regular Tuesday
It's hard to see where it ends as this load gets heavier as you age. More people depend on you. More things can go wrong. And the stakes whether they are health, finances, futures can feel higher and more pressurised than they've ever been.
It's not surprising so many Gen X women are quietly burning out, scaling back, or walking away entirely. This is a rational response to an irrational set of demands.
Redefining Success: What If It's Not About Doing More?
We were raised on a definition of success that equated achievement with endurance. The model of work harder, do more and push through.
But what if success in this season of life looks completely different?
What if success is:
Strategic presence, not constant availability. Showing up fully where it matters most, not everywhere all the time.
Influence over hours logged. Leading through insight, mentorship, and decision-making not by being the last one online every night.
Sustainability over sprint. Building a career pace you can maintain through perimenopause and beyond not one that burns you out by 52.
Integrated living, not separated compartments. A life where care, work, rest, and growth coexist and not live in silos competing in your brain
Enough, not everything. Defining what "enough" looks like for you right now, in this season, with these responsibilities and protecting it fiercely.
I can see you Type A perfectionists side eyeing this and feeling like it's lowering the bar. But its not about lowering your expectations, it's about redefining what the bar measures in the first place.
For Gen X women, success might mean leading a team brilliantly and being present when your father has surgery. It might mean saying no to a promotion that requires 60-hour weeks because you're not willing to sacrifice the next five years of your life. It might mean stepping into a different kind of leadership, one that models boundaries, presences and priorities, over burnout.
Building Boundaries That Reflect Your Reality
Balance implies everything can be equal. That there is some sort or magical scale that balances out if you could just try harder and find the magic formula. But Gen X women know: some weeks, work gets 70%. Some weeks, your mother needs 70%. Some weeks, you need 70%.
The goal isn't linear balance. It's boundaries that can ebb and flow..
Here's where to start:
Name your non-negotiables.
These are the things that don't move, no matter what's on fire at work. Maybe it's Wednesday dinners with your aging parents. Maybe it's your morning walk. Maybe it's being offline by 8 p.m. Write them down. Treat them like an important work meeting that you’d never miss.
Create visible structure.
Block "protected time" on your calendar, and actually protect it. No meetings before 9 a.m. No emails after 7 p.m. or whatever works for you. Core work hours where you're fully present. Boundaries only work if other people can see them. And only work if YOU honour them yourself and take them seriously.
Redesign your work rhythm around energy, not just deadlines.
You know your body and mind better now than you did at 30. Work with that and not against it. Do your hardest thinking in the morning. Save admin for low-energy afternoons. Stop trying to work like someone without caregiving responsibilities.
Challenge the culture, not yourself.
When someone schedules a 6 p.m. call, you can say: "I'm unavailable then, let's find a time during business hours." When flexibility gets questioned, you can name it: "I deliver results. How I structure my time shouldn't matter." If you have the credibility and positional power to push back. Use it.
Build alliances with other women who refuse to burn out.
Gen X women leading differently with boundaries, with humanity, with limits are modeling a better way forward. Find them and be that person for someone else.
This isn't about opting out of ambition. It's about opting out of a model of success that was never designed for this stage of life.
From Balance to Alignment: A Success Story You Can Sustain
Balance suggests that if you just arrange everything perfectly, it will all hold and everything will work and everyone needs gets met.
But you know better. Life doesn't balance, it shifts, surges, demands and recedes and demands again.
Alignment is different.
Alignment means your time, energy, and values match the season you're actually in, not the one you wish you were in, or the one you had ten years ago.
Alignment allows for growth and caregiving. Ambition and rest. Leadership and limits. It doesn't require you to be everything to everyone. It requires you to be intentional about what matters most right now.
Gen X women are uniquely positioned to redefine success for everyone who comes after us.
We have the influence and credibility. We have lived long enough to know that the old model doesn't work. If we lead differently, if we set boundaries, name our limits, and build careers that don't cost us our health or our families, we change what's possible for the next generation and that's culture changing.
Your Boundary Experiment: Start Small, Start Now, not when things ‘quieten down’
Here's your invitation:
Name one boundary that would make your life feel more breathable this week.
It doesn't have to be a radical blow up your life action for it to be meaningful or important, in fact it's the building of small titrated actions that can make the most sustainable changes.
Turning off notifications after 7 p.m.
Blocking Friday afternoons for strategic thinking (or rest).
Saying no to one meeting that isn't essential.
Protecting your parent's appointment without guilt or apology.
Taking a full lunch break, away from your desk.
For accountability, write it down, tell someone, put it in your google calendar and defend it like it matters because it does.
Every Gen X woman who sets a boundary shifts the culture. Every woman who says "I'm leading differently" gives permission to the woman behind her to do the same.
You've already proven you can work hard. Now prove you can work wisely in a way that doesn’t cost you your peace and presence in your life.
Balance was never the end goal. Redefining success on your terms, in your season is.
