We had 4 kids, who are now all, mostly, independent adults, thankfully, but it took us 25years to get here. It shouldn't take that long!
I was having dinner with my Sister, who's Son (nephew) is turning 18 soon. His Dad (BiL) was telling me when he turned 18 his Dad told him, pack your shit and get out. I'm done raising you. Go on, git.
Ky Sister said, "Our son turns 18 in 3mo. Are you going to tell him the same thing? (Nephew is sitting with us)
Dad says, "No. I'm just telling you what my Dad told me. And Im glad he did, because I got to go be free and be a man."
I said, "I don't know what's so different now compared to when we were growing up."
Sister, who owns 7 businesses, is a CPA, MBA, working on a PhD, says, "School is a lot more expensive. You cant just put yourself through college working a summer job like we did., for one."
I said something she didn't like much, "Why even go to college if it is overpriced? Nobody cares where you got your degree unless its an Ivy League College, all they care about is what you can do?
If all you can do is is play video game, then they are hiring video game testers right down the street. Hottest economy in the history of planet Earth."
But it makes me wonder if these days we are not just coddling our kids by insisting they go to college and extend their babysitting all the way through college until they are 22 or 26, which is when they no longer get to be on their parents medical insurance.
I was travelling all over the world when I was 18. I figured, what use is an education if you never go out and see the world before some idiot warhawk blows it up?
And I am glad I did because it made me independent from my 18th B-day, on.
My kids have zero desire to see the world.
They're just not that interested in anything outside of America.
Its tough to relate to that lack of interest in the larger world, the one outside your little world.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201711/10-reasons-teens-have-so-much-anxiety-today



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2019 11:56PM by schrodingerscat.

Well I think a lot of the problem is that society has become more secular. 60 years ago conservatives never used birth control, it was common to have large families. And so the risk of losing one or two wasn't such a big deal. Kids were under less expectation from their parents since their parents had so much on their plates. They were free to learn through their own choices, to try knew things. to experiment.

Now their are smaller families, there is birth control. Mothers want the extra income so they want jobs and careers, instead of raising kids they want to be educated so they can make supposedly make more money (which if they just researched it out they'd find out that they aren't doing as well, even though they're working a lot more).

But it's the small families and the expectation of getting too many kids into too few careers. Families are struggling really hard for something most will never have, and really is out of reach. It's the shrinking middle class, the American dream that's elusive.

Because adults have become infantilized. Look at Bronies - prime example. When you spoil children, they end up as a (wo)manchild, who think the world owes them everything.

I think that kids need to have a plan, and they need involved adults to help them think through the details of that plan.

I had a plan, but not a very clear idea of how to go about it. So after college, I ended up drifting for many years. Looking back, I wish that the adults in my life had talked to me more about practical ways to earn a living, and how to go about getting qualifications to follow those paths. IMO you can't just boot a kid out without the kid having a clear idea about his or her next steps.

Kids also need to build a nest egg for the beginning steps in their adult lives. They may need a car, they may need a professional wardrobe, or they may need to pack up and move.

IMO parents who simply point their kids to the door are asshats. I don't think that parents should tolerate layabouts, but parents need to have long conversations with their kids ahead of time about the kids' futures and the parents' expectations for them.

Maturation has a physical onset and a social completion. It simply takes more preparation to get by as an adult in the modern world. High school alone is no longer sufficient preparation to get a good job generally. Necessary skills are more specialized and developed. That takes extra time.

This is the right way to look at the problem. The nature of the economy has changed. The need for higher education is greater than ever, and the cost of that education has skyrocketed. Any parent who thinks her responsibility ends when the children reach 18 is delusional. If you bring kids into the world, you have a duty to get them to the point where independence is possible. It is not their fault that the definition of "independence" has evolved.

Also, how can young people achieve independence when the cost of living relative to income has risen so high. The truth is that most families can't even survive on one income: why would anyone think a teenager or person in her early 20s can rent an apartment, buy a car, and support herself in college or grad school without help? And eventual home ownership? Very nearly impossible for a majority of young people because of the worsening distribution of income, years of quantitative easing pushing up asset prices, etc.

The American dream is defunct. Even the most gifted and diligent young people face challenges their parents did not. The focus should therefore not be on them and their shortcomings but rather on the trends that render old-style independence so much more difficult to attain.

It took a lot longer for me to permanently leave the home, but my mother hated it when I left as I did a lot of the cleaning and laundry. I took care of my younger siblings, etc. I paid room and board while none of the others did.

Most of us took a turn moving home at least once. My sister moved to NM to teach with her family and she spent the summers at my parents' house. My older brother had a brain aneurysm, and he spent A LOT of time at my parents' house after that. My younger brother is disabled and only left the house to go on a mission (which was a huge mistake).

My son has left home twice. Once to get married and once to live with his girlfriend. It didn't work out either time. He lives here now. His sister left at about age 18 and only stays here now and then in between all her adventures--mostly working in Alaska. There is plenty of room here for them to live here, so what's the big deal? My nephew who is going through a divorce is also living here right now. It is closer to his kids and his work than living with his parents in Idaho.

Rent is THROUGH THE ROOF these days or haven't you noticed? I have told my daughter and SIL not to purchase a house in this market so are working on a bus to live in until they can buy a home later on. At this point, they are thinking strongly of going back to Alaska to work and live as my daughter has been offered a full time manager job up there.

There may be a lot of jobs, but A LOT of those jobs don't pay enough to own a home or even pay rent. So everyone has to work 2 jobs or live at home with their families. I see it all the time and I don't blame them. My kids are welcome here AT ANY TIME they need to come home and when I left the first timne, my dad, who was a big bear of a man, came to my bedroom to tell me taht if it doesn't work out, I'm welcome to come home anytime. I think that is how it should be.

We all work REALLY HARD and we all have done very well with only one with a degree. My farmer father taught us to work HARD and our employers are always THRILLED with our work ethic. My kids are great workers, too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2019 07:09PM by cl2.

I have no plans to ask my kids to move out, either, as long as they're working or attending school. For that matter, if either developed a disabling illness, we would support the adult offspring.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2019 11:43PM by scmd1.

I have thought about this, too--and I see a number of different aspects which come into play.

When I graduated from high school, there were at least ten married female graduates (I know nine of them were pregnant because they had to sit on a certain bench during rehearsals for graduation....plus me--and I was not pregnant! There could have been others in my class who were married, but who were not pregnant, who I did not know about.)

My husband was a retired Marine (age: 19). (When he was serving in Korea, he had been retired, with monthly retirement pay, PLUS FULL MEDICAL COVERAGE FOREVER!, when it was discovered that he had seriously out-of-control Type I diabetes. His mother had died from this when he was about ten, and the military did check for this when he enlisted, but at that time when he enlisted, he didn't have it--though he obviously developed it during the time when he was serving in Korea.)

After I graduated, I got what amounted to a minimum wage, entrance level job in the Los Angeles City Civil Service.

So we had my minimum wage job, plus HIS [at that moment] minimum wage job, plus his monthly US Marine Corps retirement pay....plus full medical insurance for him. We lived a simple life, but we had all of the financial necessities covered, without any stress.

Medical and dental expenses were so INCREDIBLY low then: a doctor's exam (OB-GYN) was something like $25.00, and medicine for a urinary tract infection (we were newlyweds) was about $15.00 for me. (About three years later, when I got my nose job, my then-work insurance, in aerospace, paid all of the bills, and I got about $250 in addition, so I came out of it with a truly wonderful nose (Thank you, Dr. Berman!), and some additional money too.)

A solid, middle-class life was financially do-able then, even for functioning "adults" who were still, chronologically, in their teens.

This no longer true now. Housing expenses have risen unbelievably, and so have medical expenses (plus prescriptions, etc.). Food is extraordinarily more expensive now (fresh cabbage was three cents a pound at the Von's Market catty-corner from where we lived in our second apartment). Car insurance, adjusted for the years involved, is WAY higher now.

For most part, for most millennial, near-adults, in their late teens I have observed (and I used to work with a whole school of them), they just aren't psychologically, or experientially, ready for adulthood and marriage as they approach their high school senior year.

Somehow, "WE" (my age cohort) were.

My parents' generation were.

My grandparents' generation were.

But something has, indeed, changed in our society, and this is no longer true.

I think some of it has to do with the lack of specific education for adulthood that kids used to grow up with: my parents built the house I spent most of my growing-up in, and as they did (and as I helped them, to the extent of my physical and mental abilities at any given moment), I learned "how to build a house"--what is necessary, what laws have to be followed, what the considerations (water, plumbing, electricity, drainage, future earthquakes, etc.) are, what the TRUE costs are, not just for raw materials (2X4's, pipe, roofing tiles), but how you need to do "this" in order to achieve, or prevent, "that" from happening down the line.

Most of the kids I went to school with, from elementary school through high school, lived in houses their parents constructed. (I still shudder at the memory of sleeping on raw concrete in the garages we used to have slumber parties in.)

It is a totally different culture now, and I agree: it often takes a whole lot longer (like two or three decades, sometimes) to grow a child into an adult in the twenty-first century.

I am not blaming the child/adolescent/young adult. For the most part, they are following the dictates they have been raised with--the same as their peers.

But I agree, SOMETHING(s) have changed, and it is a society-wide reality.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2019 08:18PM by Tevai.

I had insurance that cost me 95 cents a paycheck and my husband had insurance at the hospital (where he works). My job was at Thiokol, who built the space shuttle, and we had the best insurance in Utah.

We paid ZERO for our twins and they had to stay extra in the hospital for bilirubin. I had a C-section, too. Since we had 2 insurances, what one didn't pay, the other did.

I grew up as a farmer's daughter, although he was a high school teacher, too, and we learned to work HARD and we watched our dad work half the night and then go teach school again the next day. He got a lot of awards, too.

When we got our house, the interest rates had been high around Reagan's time. Our house was a steal considering what they are now, but not cheap at the time. The interest rates were 9.9%. At least they had gone down. When they dropped lower, we refinanced. Now our house is worth 6 times what we paid for it.

I don't have a clue how people can afford a house payment!!! When my boyfriend bought his house 7 years ago, he wasn't really happy with the cost of it, but it is a nice house. He was losing money on his house in Colorado, but the value of his house has increased by more than 1/3 since he bought it.

This is just a really bad time for housing and pretty much anything. Wages have NOT kept up with cost of living.

Maybe some expectations have long been wrong.

donbagley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Maybe some expectations have long been wrong.

I don't know what you are referring to here.

Could you explain?

that we chose to have these children and we should be there to help them throughout their lives, not just until age 18. Yes, there are some who don't get out there and get a job, etc. Who aren't doing what needs to be done. You can see them daily on Dr. Phil.

My son has had his issues, but I'll never put him on the street no matter what. He has a job and the owners love him as he is such a good worker and he earns more than any of their other employees. It isn't a job that can sustain him, but he is working, and after getting off alcohol 4 years ago and all drugs including suboxone (which helps opiate addiction) last fall, I have to be supportive. I have learned to just love him and as long as I do that, it works.

My kids grew up with a single mother who tried to give them what I could, but they by no means thought anything came free and that I had to work hard and sacrifice a lot. My daughter hit the ground running from age 18. She does have college debt, but not much because she worked her summers in Alaska (and earned as much as she would as a college professor in one summer with tips) and she paid her way through college and graduated with honors. Now she is writing training manuals for the company she started at in January, but will be going back to Alaska in February to be a manager, where she also wrote their training manuals.

But my kids had to worry along with their mother if there was enough money since I work by production. My son would open my checks for me as i was afraid I wouldn't earn enough.

My dad was VERY authoritarian, but we were always welcome at home no matter what. If I lost my house, I knew I could live in the house at the farm, when I was a single mother. They helped me as much as they could.

We CHOOSE to have children. They don't choose to be born.

My TBM daughter only plans on having one. I had 2. My parents only had 9 grandkids and they have 6 children. We've obviously cut back on producing kids.

There is enabling (which I'm good at) and then there is actually TAKING CARE OF OUR CHILDREN AS WE CHOSE TO HAVE THEM. Not throwing them out into the world without the tools they need and some of our parents didn't give us those tools.

I couldn't agree more, Don.

It was always wrong to kick children out at 18 and expect them to make it. The vast majority of them ended up suboptimally, living lives that were poorer than necessary in any number of ways.

OK Boomer.

I love that line. It is just the perfect two word response to out-of-touch seniors who bitch about today's youth. The young people of today are inheriting a world that is vastly different from the one that the boomers inherited 50-60 years ago. And the trends we see are mostly reasonable responses to the changes we have witnessed.

As others here have pointed out, the economy itself has changed drastically and presents much greater challenges to today's youth than what their grandparents faced. A high school diploma these day is not worth the paper it is printed on. The costs for education and housing have skyrocketed while inflation-adjusted wages have been stagnant for 2 generations. And frankly, it has been the boomer generation that has sucked up a very large part of that wealth while refusing to invest in infrastructure improvements and social programs (except for Medicare and SS - they will fight to the death to protect those social programs). I think simple economics mostly answers the question above.

I admire my own grandparents generation (the greatest generation). I can think of my own grandfather who joined the Idaho National Guard at 17 and was in active combat in the Pacific when he was 18. While I admire him and respect his experiences, to be honest I would never want to see my own son re-live that experience. My only son is now 19 and quite frankly, the thought of sending him off to some meat grinder halfway around the world is horrifying to me. But for many generations, that's just simply how things were. They matured quickly because they were forced to, not because people back then were morally superior, and certainly not because it was optimal.

I also think that increased life expectancy comes into play here as well. There just simply isn't the need to rush maturation when you can reasonably expect to live well beyond the age of 45-50. But it wasn't all that long ago when 50 was more or less the median life expectancy.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2019 09:34PM by Strength in the Loins.

I have written this before, but the Boomer generation has really screwed younger people. That is not quite the same thing as stating that the economy changed in ways that rendered "independence" more difficult for young people, but it is related.

The point is that under the Boomer generation, both political parties blew a hole in the national budget and drove the national debt much, much higher. That debt will eventually be repaid, but not by those who are reaping the benefits of the borrowing. Meanwhile the extension of life spans--the median age of death when Johnson enacted Medicare was about 65.5 years whereas now it is around 80 years--plus vast electorally-mandated expansions in benefits created a separate set of liabilities that will also need to be repaid after the recipients of that state-sponsored generosity have died. What we have just experienced is the greatest round of inter-generational theft in the history of the world.

Meanwhile the tax system has been distorted so vastly that the top 1% is about to surpass the entire middle class in terms of net worth. That is one of the reasons that the cost of housing and living has risen so much: the rich are expanding their asset portfolios so dramatically that poorer people, obviously including young people, are priced out of the markets. And then there is the environmental destruction, whose severity and implications have been clear for decades.

There is no way the younger generation and their children will enjoy anything approaching their parents' standard of living for the simple reason that their inheritance has already been squandered. It's tragic, really, such monumental selfishness dressed up in the guise of various political ideologies that people believe with religious fervency.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2019 09:42PM by Lot's Wife.

I was thinking similar thoughts when I was growing up, and whenever I gave voice to them (whether I was talking to adults or to kids my own age), I was told that I was "crazy."

Here is what I saw so clearly as I was growing up:

In modern (meaning here: post-WWII) terms, the San Fernando Valley I grew up in was still basically endless acres of grasslands, surrounded by mostly/relatively uninhabited mountain ranges on all sides. There were some really nice (Hollywood money) residences here and there, some historic adobe houses from Mexican and Spanish times, and a bunch of pre-hippy "hippy"-kind of simple, put-together with this-or-that houses....and some incredibly nice "flatlands," a good share of which were horse and cattle ranches. (The high school I eventually went to had, for a very long time, an on-site corral for student's horses, so kids could ride their horses to school every day, and have them safe, watered, and fed during the school day.)

From Topanga Canyon Blvd. (west) to Canoga Avenue (on the east), from Vanowen on the north to Ventura Blvd. on the south, was, mostly, "Jack Warner's horses" (Warner Bros. studio owner).

When my family moved to Woodland Hills, on the vacant grasslands behind the Flying-A gas station on the NW corner of Topanga Canyon Blvd. and Ventura, was the place where "everyone" in Woodland Hills went on Saturday nights for tailgate parties, to watch silent films (from several decades earlier) on a screen which was set up each weekend.

We all had a great time, since most of those silent films had been filmed in "our" hills, "our" mountains, and on "our" grasslands--and everyone shouted out when the locations where Laurel & Hardy were walking in the "Old West" appeared on the screen, or the (well known to us place) where the Crimson Ghost was hiding at Stoney Point....and sometimes, too, something I didn't understand back then because I was way too young at that time to understand, where someone had their first encounter with a personal to them, life-changing event. It was tremendous fun, with everyone happily participating in the sort of politely controlled rowdiness (fueled in part by Saturday night beer).

But as the years of my childhood and early adolescence went by, I could see the grasslands shrinking, and the mountains being significantly carved away. Vacant acres became construction projects, as whole new neighborhoods went up in brand new subdivisions.

Around (I am guessing) the time I was in sixth or seventh grade, I realized that--if every married couple in the western Valley had four kids (which appeared to me to be the family average for our area), and THOSE kids had four kids each as they grew up and married, and THEIR kids had four kids each as THEY grew up and married--there wasn't going to be any Valley left. There was such a heavy emphasis on procreation after WWII (led, in no small measure, by the Catholic Church--because of their ban on birth control).

I observed this for awhile, and at some point I began speaking up, and saying exactly this: if EVERYONE has four kids (on average), the Valley--as we all knew it and loved it--was going to disappear.

I was told I was "crazy," which I thought was really odd since, to me, this all seemed so mathematically obvious. How ELSE could events unfold, given that every married couple (just about) was so eager to produce "their quota" of four kids (on average)?

What I didn't realize back then is that the "earnings potential" of a given married couple with the average four kids was worth a specific sum of money to real estate-connected people, to builders ("building your own house" was being superseded by commercial construction people), to people selling refrigerators and stoves and washing machines and diapers and automobiles...."everyone" (just about) "older" had a direct financial stake in those hypothetical "four kids for every married couple." (Including the entertainment industry, of course--who constantly pushed the "four kid" ideal, from Disney, to all of the companies providing weekly, family oriented, TV shows for world consumption.)

I was, of course, correct. My beautiful, historic (built in the very early 1920s) Greek-columned high school exists no more (replaced by new, "reform school modern" construction, following the destruction of the Sylmar quake).

Across Vanowen, Jack Warner's horses no longer roam--it is now the Topanga Mall.

There is a giant monstrosity of some kind being built where the once "new" Woodland Hills Post Office used to be--on land a literal stone's throw from where we all watched those many silent films.

I wasn't crazy.

I think I first thought those thoughts (about what would happen if "every" married couple had four kids, who each then had four kids....) when I was in about fifth grade, but my realization grew with each new year.

The truth is: I wasn't crazy at all.

For a man who respected math so incredibly much, my Dad (in particular) couldn't comprehend a simple mathematical concept that I could not explain in mathematical terms, but that I could so clearly, in my own mind, "see."

And now we are dealing with all of that mathematical fallout, as it impacts so much of our daily, and our national, lives.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2019 10:54PM by Tevai.

Population 10. ha ha ha No, this is a small town. Nobody wanted to live here as they have a cattle butchering plant and it had an odor. They've fixed the odor, but houses didn't sell very well out here and we came out as we could actually barely afford a smaller home back in 1986.

Now, I walk my dogs up where there used to be fields just below Blacksmith Fork Canyon. There is an elementary school up there and it is filled to capacity. Two summers ago, they started building a new housing community and I've watched it go up as I walk my dogs up there. It makes me sick. The traffic in Cache Valley has gone through the roof. You get stopped 2 stop lights back on main street in Logan. We went from a 2 lane road to Hyrum to a 4-lane road and it is really busy at 8 and 5. And the houses going up in Hyrum are selling FAST. Who would have thought when I moved out here?

Just because I am a Boomer doesn't mean I am out of touch with reality. Ageism is ugly and it doesn't help to blame old people for their kids inability to function as independent adults.

The boomers were given it all and took it all after WW2 and then judged the younger generations that came after for anything they had done in their youth. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Now the boomers judge any youth involved in those three things. 'Abstain from sex, say no drugs, heavy metal is of the devil' is what they say now. A complete turn around from what they were involved in growing up. Now the boomers seem to be in a competition of who can buy the most toys like boats and RVs. And whoever gets the most money and toys seem to win the game of life i guess. The boomer model of living 'give that it's mine!!!', and 'no pain no gain' or 'i never was a drug addict or sex addict growing up(lying to themselves about the 1960's and 1970's like it never happened)'. I was born by boomers so i get their crazy mentallity. The television generation i call them. They can not live without that tv set because it was invented when they were children. And they sit and judge everyone younger by what they see or are triggered by on that tv set. I've been around them for most of my life so i can comment on this. You won't see a boomer that does not watch television everyday, not one. The main reason i despise television is because i was around my boomer parents that watched it every freakin day. And they literally believed and judged everything they saw on it.

I have to wonder how China’s “one child” policy has shaped the population since most Chinese alive today were an only child. So they would have received a lot of attention. The kids aren’t called “little emperors” for nothing. Potty training is a little different, but would blend in nicely on the sidewalks of San Francisco.

Lol. The old farts have been moaning about how the younger generation is going to hell in a hand basket at least since Socrates, and likely much earlier. It was in the time of Socrates that we have written records of the whining.

S.N.A.F.U. It has always been thus. The millennials I worked with seemed to be coping pretty well, given the changes in society.

they *are* taking to the streets to protest climate change inaction, gun control inaction (another school shooting has happened today in Santa Clarita and as of now, there still is an active shooter). And shit.

We're putting the weight and results of *our* actions and inaction on the young. I'd be pissed too. Actually, I am.

I don't know how to link behind the paywall, but here's a link to an article about the oceans warming: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/climate/ocean-warming-climate-change.html

Oh, and those pesky nuclear weapons? They're still around and growing in number. INF treaty? Trust but verify? How quaint.

I haven't even touched on wealth disparity and their economic future, crippling student loan debt, etc., etc.

The folks who need to fucking grow up are those of us who are criticizing these young people.

NB: This post isn't directed at you, BoJ except that I agree with you. I skimmed the comments. Apologies for any redundancy. It just pisses me off to no end when people are like, "OMG! These kids suck! Their music sucks! Get off my lawn!"



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2019 12:11PM by Beth.

is the disappearance of jobs that make independence and family formation possible.

When I was a kid, one of our neighbors was a bricklayer. On his wages as a bricklayer he supported his mother, his wife and their two adopted children (my friends and constant playmates).

He had no college degree. But he was conscientious and skilled with bricks and masonry (of the small 'm' craft).

That family was not just getting by. They were prosperous. They owned horses on two acres of land and had a small cottage in addition to the main family house. Two cars. Nice vacations.

This was not uncommon. In fact, in a typical middle-class neighborhood most would have only one spouse (usually the husband) working full time outside the home. Most were not college graduates. Truck drivers, factory workers, carpenters, office workers....

Except for maybe truck drivers, most of those types of jobs nowadays do not support an independent life for even a single person, let alone support family formation.

There are towns in the rust belt where in days long past and for generations, a kid could start working at the smelter at age 18 (or earlier) and within a couple years be able to get their own place and start a family.

Another factor is high expectations. A lot of younger people are not willing to live independently if it means a lower standard of living than what they enjoy living with their parents. In my parents's generation becoming independent often meant a HUGE drop in standard of living for several years. Independent meant leaving Ma and Pa's nice, big house...and moving into a shack or small trailer home. There are some young people who are willing to do that these days. But many (if not most) are not.

"A lot of younger people are not willing to live independently if it means a lower standard of living than what they enjoy living with their parents. In my parents's generation becoming independent often meant a HUGE drop in standard of living for several years."

Yes. And Yes.

I expected to be poor when I was young and starting out. Not permanently, but I knew it had to be. I accepted having room mates and living in some pretty crappy apartments as I saved and strategized. I always knew I had to do it myself. No one was going to help me. And I didn't want help. People help me it makes me feel like I owe them and I can't stand that. But thats just me.

I do see it being harder today to get started but also see expectations to have it all immediately. BUT I also do not lump all the young kids into one category. I see the ones who live below their means and save and strategize. I also see the ones who go into debt to have the right car and all the tech gadgets. I also know of hundreds of jobs where you can still work your way up and don't need a diploma.

I always blame the millennials for everything. As a joke.

I have read a lot of the millennials blaming the Boomers for everything they think is wrong. Its not a joke.

Brother of Jerry has it right. This is nothing new. Story of the ages.

I work with a lot of millenials. Have managed to find the good ones. Love em. Hard workers and fun. Also had to let a lot of them go because their focus is how much time they can get off and how little they can do. There are all kinds. I don't lump them. I look for the cream of the crop. They are there.

I also laughed the other day at a kid who was bragging how well he had done because he had already owned a grand piano. Success. The person who he was bragging to said, "Yeah, but you live in your parents basement."

I remember at weddings when I was a kid and at the reception the gifts would be brooms, and wash cloths, and irons and ironing boards and if you were really lucky a vacuum cleaner. Been to any receptions lately?

Agree D&D, there are a lot of great Millennials out there but there are also a lot of high expectations. I am really really MAJOR REALLY getting tired of hearing how I am responsible for the housing market. When starting out, unless you are able and willing to shell out the bucks you are not getting a big house and yard. And no, I am not going to sell my house and give you enough money to knock down walls and install gadgets. More people are caring for elders and adult kids moving back in. People are working longer because we took major hits financially and need to keep health care. More are caregivers for Grand kids. Moving is expensive. Keeping current doctors is an important point to some. Less people seem the draw to move to a golf course. New weather patterns have shut down a lot of options. Florida and other Southern spots are not all that desirable at this point.

PS - I am not old enough to be a "Boomer".

Thank you for illustrating where so many Boomers and Gen X are right now--taking care of everybody while they try to take care of their aging selves and a poor health care system run by Big Pharma and Insurance.

I am so tired of the blame game. I am so tired of this thing where millions of the whole generation are judged to be the same. That is an absurd concept. Lumping is so lazy.

I am angry that so many of us Boomers used delayed gratification as a means to an end and nowadays so many of the young see delayed gratification as a weakness. Because "I deserve!" Got to have it all now!

We are 8 billion people on a planet that is being stripped at every turn. People are still producing offspring at an alarming rate. And everyone is supposed to have a nice house and big salary? Please! Do the math. This is where thousands of years of evolution have left us as we tolerate religion that promotes having children at all costs. We have over run the planet. The boomers didn't do it. They just participated in a trend that can't seem to be stopped. Now I am off to kill the mealy bugs that have nearly killed an entire lemon tree on my patio.

We are animals on a planet who pray to their invisible gods for favors. Good luck to everybody--especially those who understand earning their way reciprocity, and being kind.

I used to blame others and i even blamed myself but i am realizing that pointing the finger and blaming will get us all no where.

> Brother of Jerry has it right. This is nothing
> new. Story of the ages.

I think you have this wrong. What BoJ said is that the complaining about the younger generation is perpetual, not that the economics and sociology are perpetually the same. As he wrote in another post in this thread, "The old farts have been moaning about how the younger generation is going to hell in a hand basket at least since Socrates, and likely much earlier. It was in the time of Socrates that we have written records of the whining."

He clearly thinks the reality of work and life have changed to the detriment of young people. Thus "The millennials I worked with seemed to be coping pretty well, given the changes in society." That is correct. The structure of the economy, the cost of living, the ability of people to support a family, the financial burdens young people must bear: these have worsened considerably over the last four decades and darkened the future of younger generations.

I'd add that when democracies change their values--cutting taxes far below spending, granting one generation perquisites for which later generations must pay, gutting education spending in many states--responsibility for those changes by definition lies with those who voted for them. The adverse decisions of the last 50 years were ensconced in law not by young people but by those who are now in late middle age or older.

Individuals are individuals. But voters are collectively responsible for the results of their (representatives') decisions. Young people did not, for example, create the huge middle-class entitlements--mortgage interest deduction, medicare, etc--that are bankrupting the country nor did they enact the tax policies that have impoverished families and created a Third World level of inequality in the distribution of wealth. Why am I so confident that they are not responsible for these things? Because they were not alive when the key policy choices were made.

There are lazy young people, to be sure, just as in any other generation. But the macro environment is far less propitious for them than it was for their parents and grandparents.

It's called economics.

College is a complete scam like being contained in the morg for a few years in their buildings and getting money extracted from them. It is not profitable for society for an 18 year to go full-time into the workforce and to skip college all together. The loads of money colleges get would disappear. I regret totally ever going to college. Just like in public schools they do not encourage independant thinking. Independant and critical thinking is a threat to all businesses. Society or corporations conditions continue d dependance from age 1 to age 25 and then expects the kids to just snap out of it but when the kid does snap out of it and tries to leave religion or high school to be completely independant unlike his cult parents the kid is met with great hostility and viciousness by his parents to be dependant like they are on religion like they are. The people that have preached adulthood and scolded me the most to be an adult are not adults themselves and never will. You think my parents could break off from that cult and be independent like i try every day to be? Yea right, not in a million years will their brains ever be free of that operation. Its my parents and those in their same boat are the ones that truly lost their adulthood. They went backwards as they got older. So why can't my parents become true independant adults at their age. They are twice my age. Still totally dependant and enslaved by a cult probably to this do. That is my question. Why can't the older generation become independant adults. I have never seen it happen although i was raised in a cult where there are no true adults in my opinion. Its literally impossible to be an adult and believe any religion, especially the mormon one. The devil we know.

I agree with your wisdom and wish others could see it too. College is a complete scam, Except for a few specialized professions that only employ like 2% of the population, Doctor, Lawyer, accountants, everything a person needs to know can be learned as an apprentice on a job. Teachers and social workers don't need to waste 4 years learning how to babysit. Engineers and mechanics can learn by watching the master. Monkey see monkey do.

We have a higher education complex that is more concerned about research than about building character. Academic Disciplines are more interested in getting government contracts and money (usually somehow associated with military research) The best and brightest of our kids are siphoned off basically to build bombs to kill people. An average university has hundreds of majors all just slightly different from the other. All for the purpose to trap the gullible into a dead end. Course work is none transferable. Even though most jobs are practically very similar with similar skills.

Eisenhower warned us of this educational catastrophy that children would be facing in 1961 in his farewell address. It's too bad none of us actually listened to his wise words.

I would like to read what Eisenhower said just out of curiousity now. I do agree that professions, especially doctors, that perform surgeries on other humans need the extra schooling. If children were encouraged not to conform so strongly and were encouraged to think for themselves rather than sitting in classrooms constantly i think things would be different.

If we're supposed to be the most intelligent animal on the planet, then why does it take 21 years for us to raise an adult human? And this figure appears to be rising, not going down.

There is an easy answer to that.

Most animals are born nearly fully developed. Larger mammals can usually stand and walk within a few hours of birth and run within a few weeks or months. Birds can fly within a few weeks. Rabbits begin reproducing at about two months. By contrast, it takes humans about 12 years to reach a comparable level of physiological development.

The answer to the paradox lies in the human competitive advantage: the brain. The human head is so much larger than most mammals' that babies must be born early so they can fit through the birth canal. By mammalian standards, they are born while still embryos. That is the cost of a species using its head instead of fangs and claws to survive and thrive.

That greater intelligence, in turn, endows humans with another competitive advantage: the ability to learn and organize in groups. In hunter-gatherer societies teenagers are fully capable of contributing to the community's economy and security. But as society progressed and grew more complex, learning for example to use agriculture to feed itself and then devising increasingly complex irrigation systems, political organizations, and military forces, education became ever more important.

That is a major reason why adolescents are such a pain for parents. Biologically children are programmed to start their independent lives around 12 or 13 years of age, but in any modern society that is economically and socially impractical. So they are stuck with their parents and families, acquiring the skills necessary for independence long after their bodies and minds desire that state.

But in your terms, the significance of the evolutionary narrative resides in an ever longer "adolescence." If we were living on the African Savannah 100,000 years ago, our children would have become "adults" in their early teens. By the 19th century the standard had risen and many countries, particularly the economically advanced ones, believed that several years of education were not only desirable but necessary. In the middle of the 20th century, the standard had risen to include high school and, where possible, college. As college became both more essential and more expensive, children's dependence on their parents grew progressively greater. And now college education is no longer enough for most attractive jobs and ever more kids are banished to the basement while they attain more schooling and basic job skills.

So yes the period of human dependence is both abnormally long in mammalian terms and constantly lengthening. That is not despite human intelligence, however, but because of it.

A truly excellent response, LW.

Very well done.

Heat rises.
Water seeks the lowest level.

Why make it a concern?

The biggest contributing factor for the infantilization of the American young adult is that too many kids are going to college. Especially those below average. Most all these kids aren't going to college with the desire to develop their character or expand their minds (like the upper class might) instead they are going with the dream of getting a cush bureaucratic job where they can sit down and tell other people what to do. College use to be for the upper class who could afford to sit around. The working class (most of us) aren't in the position to expand our minds. And the info they present to kids isn't what they need to know to be in the status or class where they were born and should stay for their lives.

The first obstacle in getting college kids to grow up is to get them to hold down a job and get to work!

Your hostility to education is pathetic.

I deeply regret my failure to major in Women’s Studies, specifically, nude studies.

I have no plans to accept, on any terms, a lapse into maturity.

¡Arriba los esquincles!

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I deeply regret my failure to major in Women’s
> Studies, specifically, nude studies.
>
> I have no plans to accept, on any terms, a lapse
> into maturity.
>
> ¡Arriba los esquincles!
======================

EOD,
Your hostility to education is pathetic.

;-D

:)

You are in a position to expand your mind, and it doesn't require paying tuition. Many courses are fee online and there is a world of information at our fingertips. Lifelong learning is important.

Education is not limited to having an expensive diploma. It has more to do with understanding and thinking broadly. No matter what career choices one makes, not wanting to "expand your mind" says a lot about someone.

There are more reasons behind wanting a diverse education than trying to get a bureaucratic job.

I worked my way through college. I worked my ass off. What I’m seeing is a lack of work ethic in the younger generations but they also seem to have no hope. My generation had hope. We were optimistic but that was a different world.

Today the young kids have to deal with a much higher cost of living than I did and the wages are pretty close to what I was making when I was their age. Easy credit has made everything more expensive. Housing, tuition, cars are more expensive because people can buy on credit and of course when the lenders go bankrupt due to bad loans the government bails them out.

In my youth it was difficult to even get a credit card if you were a student with no steady job. Because loans were hard to get the prices were cheaper.

True.
When I was growing up, one minimum wage earner could support a house and family. That is not possible now. Two minimum wage earners cannot afford to buy a house. Child care and health care more than consume one income for many.

Student loans and banks on campuses handing out credit cards like candy ensures young people drown in dept.

It's a different world. I worked hard through college and postponed marriage until I could finish. I had a plan. Corporations didn't used to move you all over the place and discard employees with every buyout. My husband and I had a work ethic that I rarely see nowadays. We delayed gratification for everything to the point I can't feel comfortable splurging even now. I can see why people can't count on all that work paying off nowadays.

This question of "hope" is critically important. What is happening in the US and the West in general was presaged by Japan's experience over the last 30 years. The economy stalled, national debt rose, the old social contract was ripped up. As a consequence, young people lost hope and stopped working for a dream that was no longer available to them.

Imagine the future that young Americans face. Globalization of labor markets has lowered wages for all but the very highly educated, job security is gone, easy credit and low interest rates have inflated real estate prices to vertiginous levels, and a massive national debt must be repaid by future taxpayers. Most of those young people will never be able to buy a home and accordingly spend their lives in apartments.

There is nothing wrong with a less materialistic life, but the gap between that future and the "American Dream" is vast--and vastly discouraging. It should therefore not surprise that a lot of those people are disheartened and not sure what to do. It will take time for them to adjust to the less bounteous reality that they face prospectively.

The 'American Dream' is just that, a dream. You truly have to be asleep to believe it.

I agree that the hope just is not there. I live with millenials and i see the hopelessness everyday but they do not give up and are grateful just to not be homeless in todays world as i am grateful to not be homeless as well. I imagine things were not this grim before the millenials were born in the 1960's and 1970's.

Well, it is complicated, this raising kids thing

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qDNX9WKe8zs

Gets into the thick of it starting 9:30ish

And don't forget, the "nuclear family" concept of Mom, Dad, and kids living in their own house is a post WWII phenomenon. Prior to that for the vast majority of people, for the vast majority of history, generational families shared the same household.

Just because we boomers grew up in that time when single family households were the norm, doesn't make it the norm for humans in general.

Great point. Thanks for sharing.

It applies to people who are messing up the world and endangering pretty important things like the planet (think climate change denial).

"OK, Boomer" applies to people who selfishly ignore the disproportionate impact that their present actions and inaction have on those who are too young to vote. Remember why the voting age was changed from 21 to 18? It's because we were drafting people who were too young to vote and try to effect change in foreign policy. You're old enough to fight in Vietnam but not old enough to vote? Such BS.

"OK, Boomer" doesn't refer to a generation. It describes a state of mindlessness.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2019 11:46AM by Beth.

We've learned that the part of the brain that accurately assesses risk and is motivated towards short-term reward, the prefrontal cortex, isn't fully developed until people are approximately 22-24 years old. The idea that an 18-year-old is an adult is archaic and not based on science.

OK, Boomers. Continue, please.

This is a major problem with democracy: the fact that children are not represented politically. When a measure comes before the electorate that would shift wealth from future generations to present adults, only the latter enjoy the franchise. If the parents and grandparents and great grandchildren viewed their descendants' welfare as highly as their own, such legislation would never be enacted. But as is clearly evident, older generations--at least as they have been comprised over the last 50 years--are more than willing to ignore the wellbeing of the young and the unborn.

There is no easy way to remedy this problem. Society cannot responsibly enfranchise children, and it doesn't make sense to assign representatives to vote on their behalf. So ultimately the only way out of this mess is to persuade adults to behave more ethically.

Unfortunately, as demonstrated by the refusal of people to take seriously climate change, the health of the oceans, etc., the probability of such a change is not terribly high. Voters prioritize their own needs and desires above those of others, including their own children and grandchildren.

would be a good start. I'm talking about the Bill of Rights, not necessarily the franchise. We're shit proxies for children's interests, and we have FAILED at our fiduciary duty. WE HAVE FAILED THEM.

Do you think we will hit a point where every person or human has to correct or evaluate themselves and is forced to change their behaviors or their thinking as a whole in order to survive? Like to fix society we must all look in the mirror and fix ourselves?

So if I am a Boomer, and you say "Okay Boomers" is a derogatory term, how am I not supposed to take it as a slam?

Boomer is accepted as a certain generation and the term boomer covers all of them, so when you say "Okay Boomers" you cannot claim to not be speaking to all of us.

Okay Boomer does apply to a specific generation to the public at large no matter how you choose to interpret it.

Not all boomers are 'boomers' in the derogetory sense and i am learning this still. I was exposed to a lot of bad boomers including my parents so my view of boomers as a whole was very skewed and very tainted for a very long time. There are a lot of good boomers. Like BYU boner on this board was one of the first good boomers i had encountered in my entire life and it was not even a face to face encounter. So my view of boomers literally had started to change by talking to a good one on this board.

Thank you.

There are millions of good boomers and plenty of bad ones. The contribution of the boomers to society is monumental. Some of it brilliantly wonderful and some of it not so good by today's standards. Diseases conquered is a great place to start for the good.

Most people do the best they can with whatever information and resources they have---at the time. Judging past generations is Monday Morning Quarterbacking. The easiest thing in the world is to say what "should have been done" when you weren't there or one of the team.

I am a Boomer and I am proud of my life and I take great offense at this, "OK Boomer" thing. It promotes painting us all with a broad negative brush. A true assessment of a generation needs to be looked at scientifically rather than focus on the negative.