Cliché

I joke about how the (male, mostly) middle age crisis used to involve getting a divorce and buying a sports car, and by "involve" I mean how it was presented in popular culture and fiction. I'm pretty sure I read a lot of novels in my 20s which centered on middle aged white guys experiencing "getting older," and while they were a bit more nuanced than that, I don't remember them conveying anything much more complex.

Ones I remember that dealt with the specific issue of parents being driven insane as their children grow into adults did seem to put the blame on the children, Simpsons "it is the children who are wrong" style.

Maybe the fault is with the reader - me - here. Could I have missed the point of books I read 30 years ago? Quite likely! Or were they written by a bunch of narcissistic ageing sadsacks finding fault with everyone and everything but themselves? Also quite likely!

My broader point is that I was not prepared by the generational tantrum privileged people with  microphones throw as the world starts to pass them by, and how destructive that can be because they are spiteful, venomous, shit people.

Also when I was young and naive I didn't know just how full of shit our respectable newspapers could be.