(FORTUNE Magazine) – I don't know how much of a role, if any, midlife crisis played in Betsy Morris's recent career decision. I haven't asked. All I know is that she chose to forsake the management track at the Wall Street Journal and become a senior writer at FORTUNE. And we're really glad she did.

As you will see when you read her cover story on the new kind of midlife crisis confronting today's executive woman, Betsy isn't afraid to take on controversy, nor is she overly concerned with political correctness.

Like issues of race and religion, those involving gender have become tender topics these days. Many of her findings are surprising and won't be popular with a lot of women who consider themselves feminists. Contrary to popular belief, for example, women managers aren't as frustrated over the so-called glass ceiling as we have been told. And they usually don't leave corporations because they really want to spend more time at home with their kids--even though that is often the motive they cite. Typically, they are exiting because they are discovering what men have known for several generations: The corporate rat race can be very unfulfilling.

Coming to such a realization is taking its toll on a generation of striving career women, many of whom have remained true believers until recently. Like men, some are leaving home, having affairs, and buying Porsches. But most of the women you meet through Betsy's eyes are searching for more meaning in their lives--starting their own businesses, going to work for causes in which they believe, cultivating their creative sides.

Betsy, who has always been a striver, probably knows something about this. A Stanford grad and an Outward Bound alum (two people died on her first outing), she has juggled for years the responsibilities of being a bureau chief at the Journal with raising her two kids, sharing the work with her husband, John Helyar, co-author of Barbarians at the Gate and author of Lords of the Realm. Now she's taking on a new challenge at FORTUNE and starting out brilliantly.

John W. Huey Jr. MANAGING EDITOR