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Cottagecore is the Millennial Midlife Crisis

Nicole Rudolph

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Have you ever wondered where the midlife crisis came from? Were there 18th century gentlemen running off in fancy carriages to escape the monotony of their daily life? Or is it a purely modern idea? Let's look into the background of this strange phenomenon to understand how it got it's name and what exactly it's supposed to entail. And, for that matter, how it may be changing with the times. Because millennials are reaching their 40s and I don't expect a rise in sports car sales and sudden immigration to Tahiti. Maybe there's a different option- one we already see in our closets and our homes.

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Edited with DaVinci Resolve: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/prod...
🎶Music via Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com

00:00 Stereotypes and Fantasies
04:01 Men's Menopause
10:46 Emotional Turmoil
13:52 Treat Yourself
16:23 Run Away to Middle Earth

20 Comments

@PockASqueeno 1 year ago

TBH, buying some flowers for your house and going to a hobbit party seems a lot healthier and ethical than abandoning your entire family to live in Fiji. So yeah, I think we learned from our parents’ and grandparents’ mistakes. Seems like a win to me.

@maryrath9062 1 year ago

I saw a comment stating Millennials skipped the midlife crisis and went straight to old people hobbies. Now excuse me while I get ready to go bird watching.

@Bewarethoughtpolice 1 year ago

When you live in crisis, you crave simplicity. When you live in boredom, you crave complication. Guess which millennials have lived through. Work up the ladder and you'll make it? That's a lie. Get a degree and it will set you up for life? Set us up for a life of debt. Save up and you can get a house some day! Save? Haaaaa.

So let me have my whimsy it's the one joy that they can't take.

@suekuarell4685 1 year ago

We dont have a midlife crisis because our life is crisis itself

@lyreparadox 1 year ago

I think cottagecore is also a reaction to all the plastic crap that our lives are filled with.

@Luischocolatier 1 year ago

"In the current climate I have no way to predict more or less how long I'm going to live for, so I have decided that instead of having a midlife crisis I'm going to have an ongoing life crisis"

@ixchelkali 1 year ago (edited)

I'm an old woman, well into the crone stage and heading into the home stretch. I think a lot of the midlife crisis had to do with people who had worked for years to achieve stability reaching it, and then finding that stability felt like being in a rut. The archetypal midlife crisis applies to middle-class and above, not to those in the lower economic strata who have no stability.

You didn’t hear a lot about people having midlife crises during the Great Depression or during WW2. There was too much external crisis happening for anyone to feel they were in a rut.

So perhaps that would account for the dearth of midlife crises in Millennials. Perhaps there is simply too little stability both in their own lives and in the larger world for them to feel a need to slip the traces and break out of a rut. Maybe there hasn't been enough stability for them to have ever gotten into a rut.

@MappingKitty 1 year ago

Millennials - Have been through at least 2 recessions in their lives, watched the world change rapidly as we grew up, witnessed 9/11 and how the world changed, and have realized that all the get a degree and instantly get a job died before we hit the work force. Yet it's our fault for buying avocado toast. Yeah we are going to spend time on hobbies since we have no illusion about the stability of the world and we might as well enjoy things while we can.

@vlmellody51 1 year ago

My late father had a huge midlife crisis in the early 70s . His behaviors became increasingly erratic until the day he ran off with his affair partner, blaming my mom for the whole thing.

Many years later, he told me how proud he was for never having had a midlife crisis like all of his friends. I burst that delusional bubble immediately.

@coela2616 1 year ago

"to suddenly be 'over the hill' and going downwards requires that it felt like we were 'headed upwards'"

yep, that's it. that's the whole thing.

@eolill 1 year ago

This feels very relevant. If boomers got jobs, wives and kids in their early twenties and still lived in that house with that wife and worked that job 20 years later... I can see how you could feel trapped and in need of something new. Millennials having only just acquired those things (if we have at all) are unlikely to be bored with them yet, but certainly disillusioned with chaotic hustle culture lives and the glam yolo status symbols of influencers. We're all burned out and would love more quiet cozy time with our families. I think that for those millennials who can afford it, quitting their jobs will absolutely feature in their midlife crises. Not to run away with their affair partner to the bahamas -- to downsize with their wife to a quieter neighbourhood and work part time while taking up wood working or crocheting.

@MissPlaced84 1 year ago

Do you remember the "quarter life crisis" talk that started around when we would have been in our mid-20s? I think it was mostly drowned out by a more pervasive "Millennials are ruining everything" attitude in the media. Neither of my parents finished college, but they had stable careers no student debt, and owned a house by their early 20s. So many of us had a terrifying amount of student debt, likely still in school, struggling careers, etc. and we were so infantalized that "adulting" became a word -- as if we weren't really adults, just cosplaying as them when the occasion required it. There was a point where many of us started feeling in crisis because we were "quarter aged" and felt we hadn't even gotten started.

@LBullockPW 1 year ago

I saw someone say craft rooms were the midlife crisis for Millennials. As an elder Millennial planning her first craft room, I felt seen/attacked. 😂

@mirandarensberger6919 1 year ago

"We're too tired to have a full-on crisis." That hit hard.

@kelzbelz313 1 year ago

We’ve had enough unprecedented “adventures” we crave comfort.

@demolitionwoman-boop 1 year ago

I really appreciate your ongoing efforts to include photos and other media showing Black people in historical contexts. We so often don’t see those images so I think it’s easy to slip into thinking they didn’t exist, but this kind of thoughtfulness helps push back against that!

@israeldepedro7522 1 year ago

In my opinion, for someone to have a midlife crisis they should have been able to achieve first a level of stability we are mostly denied nowadays. We instead are living in crisis all the time, with the occasional things we spend money and time on as a distraction or respite from the constant sense of dread we got used to living in.

@heronimousbrapson863 9 months ago

When I was a teenager, someone who was 40 was positively ancient. Now that I'm 73, a 40-year-old to me is a youngster.

@CrystalArtest 1 year ago

The pandemic really got me into cottage core. At first it was fashion,now it’s antiquing, growing plants, home decor, making some my own cloths, dreaming about owning a small but nice Victorian home