Ms. Selman, the 55-year-old teacher, was living in Terre Haute, Ind., when Covid-19 struck. Divorced for 17 years, she said she used the self-imposed isolation to create new routines to stave off loneliness and depression. He stopped drinking and started calling a group of friends regularly. This year, she took a new job and moved to Normal, Ill., in part because she wanted to live in a state that better reflected her progressive politics. She’s made new friends at a farmer’s market, she said, and is happier than she was before the pandemic, though she occasionally wishes she had a romantic partner to go on motorcycle rides with or just help carry the laundry up. -below. the stairs of her three-bedroom house. She regularly drives 12 hours round trip to care for her parents near Detroit, an obligation that convinced her to abandon her retirement fantasy of living near the beach and someday move closer to her daughter and grandson, who live in Louisville, Ky. “I don’t want my daughter to worry about me,” she said. Watching their parents age appears to have had a profound effect on many members of Gen X, born between 1965 and 1980, who say they doubt they can lean on the same supports their parents did: long marriages, pensions, homes which sometimes. skyrocketed in value. When his mother died two years ago, Mr. Miles, the videographer, consoled himself by moving some of her furniture into his New Haven, Conn., home. “It was a homecoming psychologically,” he said, allowing him to feel grounded after decades of moving around the country and itinerant career explorations, shifting from the music industry to teaching high school to producing films for nonprofits and corporations.
