TIME, again, for the rituals of the British summer getaway. The Hobbesian struggle for seats on no-frills airlines; the hunt for a BlackBerry signal in la France profonde or darkest Tuscany; and, at the airport and around the hotel pool, the traditional pageant of family dysfunction. Holidays are a concentrated chance to ogle other clans’ frictions and fissures, whether with pity or silent relief: bawling infants; teenagers sullenly trailing their elders; slacking fathers and exhausted mothers; put-upon grandparents. The pity may not belong quite where it used to. As discerning tourists may notice, changes in demography and job patterns are altering the age distribution of stress.

Begin with the early 20s, which across the recessionary West, but perhaps especially in Britain, with its high housing costs, are grimmer than in the past: 20-somethings are often indebted, jobless and stuck in an involuntarily protracted adolescence. The Office for National Statistics reckons that nearly 3m people between 20 and 34 were living with their parents last year, almost half a million more than in 1997. Young Americans now have a similar tendency to boomerang. Kim Parker of the Pew Research Centre in Washington, DC, says moving back in with the folks has become widespread enough to have lost its stigma.

That reflux can be awkward for 50-something parents, too, many of whom find themselves caring for elderly relatives as well as struggling offspring. The “sandwich generation”—caught between adolescent children and senescent parents—used to be in their mid-40s. Now the oldies are living and staying healthy for longer, and so requiring care later. Carers UK, a charity, calculates that the number of pensioners who are themselves carers (of either partners or their own ancient parents) is rising fast. Thus 55—an age when, in the past, people were liberated from immediate family obligations to rediscover fun—may soon be the new 45. The sandwich generation is getting stale.

But, Bagehot submits, the most pitiable lot of all—those most worthy of fellow passengers’ sympathy on the plane, though they are unlikely to get it—may be professional parents in their late 30s. They are the victims of two colliding trends. Life is slowing down and speeding up at the same time: families arrive later, even as careers are accelerating.

Work may go on longer these days, as retirement and pensions recede into old age; but, for many in the professional classes, its peak comes earlier—as a glance at the people who run the country attests. When they moved into Downing Street in 2010, David Cameron was 43 and George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, was 38. Ed Miliband was 40 when he became leader of the Labour opposition. If politics is a youngsters’ game, so, increasingly, is business: CEOs are getting younger, and not only in the digital industries in which a decade’s experience makes you a veteran. Egon Zehnder International (EZI), a recruitment consultancy, recently calculated that the proportion of top CEOs in their 40s had doubled in 15 years, to 40%. A few are in their 30s. Ashley Summerfield of EZI says that more engaged boards and more teamwork with other executives help to offset the bosses’ callowness.

The effects trickle down through workers’ 30s (and beyond). Like a middle-distance athlete on a bend, anyone who wants to run something in his 40s needs to position himself for supremacy a decade earlier. In a big company, that might mean taking charge of a division or a region. By the time they’re 38, the ambitious need to be just a rung below the top. It isn’t only the super-achievers: there is a similar pattern in the median incomes of British graduates, with pay levelling off in the late 30s, then bobbing around a bit before declining in the early 50s.

Which is unfortunate, because that intense period at work now tends to be interrupted by procrastinated childbearing. The average age at which women in well-to-do families have their first child has risen to 32; fathers are often slightly older. Probes into the causes of happiness find (not surprisingly) that the first few years of a child’s life are the toughest for parents. The most gruelling part of child-rearing now coincides with the make-or-break phase of careers. The erosion of state support through tax breaks for child-care and the like doesn’t help. The pin–up for this new, crunched cohort—call it Generation Xhausted—could be an American, Marissa Mayer, who, aged 37 and pregnant, was recently poached from Google to be chief executive of Yahoo!.

The balding years

Researchers of well-being have established a fairly clear pattern, across different cultures and countries, in which happiness dips in the 30s and 40s before recovering in the 50s. There is some evidence to support the idea that, in Britain at least, the rockiest patch—the new mid-life crisis—is now in the earlier part of those intermediate, sad decades. Surveys by Relate, a relationship-support charity, have found that various psychic maladies, such as loneliness and concern about work-life balance, are most common between 35 and 44. Relationships disintegrate, perhaps after that final-straw row over whose turn it is to take out the recycling. Ruth Sutherland of Relate says that people in this age group have the fewest friends, with no time to cultivate them, and are least likely to ask for time off work, despite needing it the most.

What is to be done? Generation Xhausted, like the stale sandwichers, would benefit from a more enlightened attitude among employers to flexible working. More companies might think about providing crèches for their employees. If the trend toward high-speed careers continues, child-rearing might eventually shift back a few years to avoid the new crunch.

Most of all, though, frazzled late-30-somethings would benefit from the kindness of strangers and the compassion of their friends and families. But here Bagehot must confess an interest: he is 37.

Economist.com/blogs/bagehot