It is a good article, isn’t it? I could see this starting in 1990, but like you said, she may have been too young. But it’s nice to see what is probably a liberal suddenly sensing a light bulb over her head.
I think most people lose their irony when they have kids.
Few people can be ironic, which means being uninvested, with their own children.
Which means a lot of people aren’t growing up until they start having children. Which is kind of sad.
I think irony is kind of like sophistication. Back in the early 60s I remember my considerably more wealthy cousins being bored out of their gourds by our simple pursuits when they visited. Quite a bit of the time I could see they really wanted to jump in, but it would spoil their pose of being big-city sophisticates.