Starting sometime in the mid-1950s, baby boomers became the center of American cultural attention. Toni Home Permanents, cap guns, Hostess cupcakes, “American Bandstand,” lovingly packed lunches, the Beatles, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” Motown, Madras shorts, the SATs, undoing Nixon, the civil rights movement, ending the Vietnam War — all came into existence just at the time we, age-appropriately, could ingest, wear or wallop them.

True, our timely presence enriched record and lingerie companies, but we also caused great political change. Later came grad school, Sweet ’n Low, Datsun 240Zs, Tab, thong underpants and free love — it was clear: Life had been lovingly fashioned around us.

Cut to: The Present.

I recently asked a neighbor how old she was: Nervous, reluctant, she said, “Oh, 60 or 61.”

This conveys the ennui of today’s “new middle age” baby boomers, immersed as a group suddenly in retirement, the loss of parents, the start of Medicare, the end of daily routine, the start of your husband’s affair, the sudden, urgent need to grapple for assets for the rest of life and to guess at its length while enduring rash-raising reactions to the word “Kardashian” (for which no prescription creams exist at present). Or all of the above plus no retirement and no assets because of no job! This produces “artisanal stress” (created, by hand, by individual boomers for themselves).