Millenials to Boomers etc.

[Tekate]

@AGBF it's funny Deb, I thought when I was young all the problems in the world were caused by my parents generation.. And I suppose every generation leaves a mess for the next. I have said I have 2 millennial sons. They both have an 'attitude' that my generation screwed theirs, AND my parents generation was GREAT. So I suppose it's always the generational thing. My mom grew up in a time (1930s 40s) when a girl couldn't live in the city unless she was supervised, I on the other hand took off for college on the train to the CITY! and my parents didn't even come to see me off (they were partying I'm sure, my bedroom became one of my brother's room, no room at the inn for me or my sister then )

We as boomers did our best.. my sons will tell you that I was a helicopter mother, but that is because ALL of the stuff I did as a kid I didn't want them to do, not that I was living thru them, I just wanted them to live.

I think every generation blames their parents.

As America has declined over the last 50 years somebody has to blamed and why not pit one generation against another.

 

[ksinger]

@AGBF it's funny Deb, I thought when I was young all the problems in the world were caused by my parents generation.. And I suppose every generation leaves a mess for the next. I have said I have 2 millennial sons. They both have an 'attitude' that my generation screwed theirs, AND my parents generation was GREAT. So I suppose it's always the generational thing. My mom grew up in a time (1930s 40s) when a girl couldn't live in the city unless she was supervised, I on the other hand took off for college on the train to the CITY! and my parents didn't even come to see me off (they were partying I'm sure, my bedroom became one of my brother's room, no room at the inn for me or my sister then )

We as boomers did our best.. my sons will tell you that I was a helicopter mother, but that is because ALL of the stuff I did as a kid I didn't want them to do, not that I was living thru them, I just wanted them to live.

I think every generation blames their parents.

As America has declined over the last 50 years somebody has to blamed and why not pit one generation against another.

And as long as they can complain about how impotent they are due to mom and dad's sins against them, they can avoid responsibility for, or even attempts at, making changes of their own. Once a generation stops complaining, takes power, and starts making the choices for us all, then they risk failures that can result in having a finger pointed at them.

I won't live to see it, but I hope the millennials do save us, and one day become referred to as "The Even Greater Generation".

 

[LLJsmom]

All the blaming is pointless. It’s like blaming people for being human. I hope we can all move on and do something productive.

 

[House Cat]

I am still in Virginia and still using an ancient computer that slows me down greatly. I welcome all the technological assistance I can get! If anyone out there can do some quick research, I would love it!

I woke up today and I suddenly thought about this thread in a different light. (Getting onto the computer was harder than having the thought!)

I realized that I felt that millennials and boomers were being pitted against each other and warring over tiny scraps while the wealthy taking the all the huge amounts of money. I thought that if I were ksinger or Matata I would be able to find an article from "The Atlantic" or somewhere that had discussed the matter of generations being pitted against one another in an attempt to manipulate them. The rich always manipulate the poor. Karl Marx wrote that the ideas of any society will be the ideas of the ruling class.

With my dreadful computer, this is the only article that readily sprang up. It isn't bad, but I wish I had a search engine that generated more than one website each 15-20 minutes!

Article...https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/12/how-oligarchs-took-america/

It is true that what creates the attitude where one person will not support the other is the feeling that there isn’t enough to go around. I think the oligarchs have done this quite effectively. If we were to support one another, they would be in trouble.

Why do you think Fox News takes so many potshots at Millennials? Who’s their main viewer?

 

[cmd2014]

Sadly this thread has made me feel even more forgotten as a Gen X. I loved the article that pointed out that we felt forgotten as children and we are forgotten now. We were latchkey kids, kids of divorce, expected to fend for ourselves throughout childhood and that sure didn't change once we became adults. We were expected to fend for ourselves at 18 in the middle of a recession - and called lazy and shiftless by our boomer parents if we *shockingly* couldn't find jobs (even though we needed twice as much education than our boomer parents did just to get jobs that paid less, offered no benefits, expected us to work all hours, doing anything and everything, but gave no job security). It was not unusual for even Gen X professionals to not be able to find jobs (yup, engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses....no jobs for you!). We were too qualified to be considered for so called menial jobs, but there were no spots open unless someone retired or died in our chosen fields. So we cobbled together minimum wage jobs through our 20's (and sometimes 30's), if we were lucky, and lived with roommates, didn't have cars, and worried about ever being able to buy a house or support children of our own, all the while being looked down on by our boomer parents for being under-employed. We were expected to suck it up and not express anxiety through the constant threat of nuclear annihilation through the height of the cold war, but at the same time we were accused of being cynical and nihilistic in our world view. As women, we were told that we could have anything (and everything) by mom's who honestly didn't have a clue what they were talking about, and yet we faced discrimination, misogyny, and glass ceilings in the workplace, while still being expected to do the lion's share of childcare and work at home. We were told that we had no loyalty as employees, even though our multiple job transfers and willingness to move far, far away from home to find work was born out of desperation (through layoffs, company closures, and a complete lack of upward mobility as boomers have elected to simply never retire - which btw is continuing to happen), not out of choice. We are the first generation not to be able to live comfortably on a single salary (and no, it's not because we are greedy and materialistic and want things that other generations didn't have). We are the first generation to be crippled by student loan debt (higher tuition, more education needed just to get the same jobs that our parents could get with just a high school diploma, less support from mom and dad). We bought houses just as housing prices decided to skyrocket, and then had huge mortgages through the bust of the housing bubble (which also wiped out what little we had of our retirement savings too). We are the first generation not to be offered pensions and other benefits by our workplaces (so we are going to be less well off in retirement than our boomer parents too), and there is likely to be nothing left of social security or old age pension programs by the time we get there (where I live, the age of eligibility has already been increased to age 70, where us has been eligible at 65). We were the generation most affected by the cold war. We were the most affected by 9/11 (most of the victims were from our generation, as have been most of those called to serve). Y2K was pretty much our problem. We are accused of being politically apathetic, and yet we have had literally no political voice as we are overwhelmingly small in number compared to the voting cohorts on either side of us. So we put our heads down and try to make do with what we have. And we don't even get a mention because we are sandwiched between the two most self-focused generations in modern history. If anything, the only mention we get is millennials telling us that they don't want to work as hard as we do (as if it's some kind of choice for us). Of course, most of us have been parents of millennials in addition to mentors to millennials in the workplace and employers of millennials, and have chosen to try to not make life as hard for them as it was for us. It's more than what our boomer parents did for us. Not sure if that was a good thing of not.

It's not that boomers are horrible - it's just that they are quite good at choosing not to see what they don't want to see, and their lives and opportunities were so different than ours, that they just couldn't seem to understand the challenges we were facing. And it's not that Gen X'ers are bitter, it's just that we are a bit tired of it all. But we typically choose not to engage, because we're self-sufficient enough that we really don't need to. And for the most part, we kind of like millennials, because after all, we have raised them. We're just a little sorry that we raised you to be less resilient, a bit more entitled, and way more willing to complain than we'd really like you to be.

 

[cmd2014]

But you know, every generation has its challenges. Maybe none are better or worse off, but just different. And maybe each generation has difficulty understanding the experience of the one that comes behind. I know us Gen X'ers are pretty unsympathetic sometimes to what we perceive as "whining" from those who we see as being less tough and more coddled than we were at the same age. Just like our boomer parents thought we were lazy and not trying. And their parents thought they were wild and irresponsible and would never move beyond being hippies and make anything of themselves...

 

[LLJsmom]

Sadly this thread has made me feel even more forgotten as a Gen X. I loved the article that pointed out that we felt forgotten as children and we are forgotten now. We were latchkey kids, kids of divorce, expected to fend for ourselves throughout childhood and that sure didn't change once we became adults. We were expected to fend for ourselves at 18 in the middle of a recession - and called lazy and shiftless by our boomer parents if we *shockingly* couldn't find jobs (even though we needed twice as much education than our boomer parents did just to get jobs that paid less, offered no benefits, expected us to work all hours, doing anything and everything, but gave no job security). It was not unusual for even Gen X professionals to not be able to find jobs (yup, engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses....no jobs for you!). We were too qualified to be considered for so called menial jobs, but there were no spots open unless someone retired or died in our chosen fields. So we cobbled together minimum wage jobs through our 20's (and sometimes 30's), if we were lucky, and lived with roommates, didn't have cars, and worried about ever being able to buy a house or support children of our own, all the while being looked down on by our boomer parents for being under-employed. We were expected to suck it up and not express anxiety through the constant threat of nuclear annihilation through the height of the cold war, but at the same time we were accused of being cynical and nihilistic in our world view. As women, we were told that we could have anything (and everything) by mom's who honestly didn't have a clue what they were talking about, and yet we faced discrimination, misogyny, and glass ceilings in the workplace, while still being expected to do the lion's share of childcare and work at home. We were told that we had no loyalty as employees, even though our multiple job transfers and willingness to move far, far away from home to find work was born out of desperation (through layoffs, company closures, and a complete lack of upward mobility as boomers have elected to simply never retire - which btw is continuing to happen), not out of choice. We are the first generation not to be able to live comfortably on a single salary (and no, it's not because we are greedy and materialistic and want things that other generations didn't have). We are the first generation to be crippled by student loan debt (higher tuition, more education needed just to get the same jobs that our parents could get with just a high school diploma, less support from mom and dad). We bought houses just as housing prices decided to skyrocket, and then had huge mortgages through the bust of the housing bubble (which also wiped out what little we had of our retirement savings too). We are the first generation not to be offered pensions and other benefits by our workplaces (so we are going to be less well off in retirement than our boomer parents too), and there is likely to be nothing left of social security or old age pension programs by the time we get there (where I live, the age of eligibility has already been increased to age 70, where us has been eligible at 65). We were the generation most affected by the cold war. We were the most affected by 9/11 (most of the victims were from our generation, as have been most of those called to serve). Y2K was pretty much our problem. We are accused of being politically apathetic, and yet we have had literally no political voice as we are overwhelmingly small in number compared to the voting cohorts on either side of us. So we put our heads down and try to make do with what we have. And we don't even get a mention because we are sandwiched between the two most self-focused generations in modern history. If anything, the only mention we get is millennials telling us that they don't want to work as hard as we do (as if it's some kind of choice for us). Of course, most of us have been parents of millennials in addition to mentors to millennials in the workplace and employers of millennials, and have chosen to try to not make life as hard for them as it was for us. It's more than what our boomer parents did for us. Not sure if that was a good thing of not.

It's not that boomers are horrible - it's just that they are quite good at choosing not to see what they don't want to see, and their lives and opportunities were so different than ours, that they just couldn't seem to understand the challenges we were facing. And it's not that Gen X'ers are bitter, it's just that we are a bit tired of it all. But we typically choose not to engage, because we're self-sufficient enough that we really don't need to. And for the most part, we kind of like millennials, because after all, we have raised them. We're just a little sorry that we raised you to be less resilient, a bit more entitled, and way more willing to complain than we'd really like you to be.

Nah @cmd2014 Don’t sweat it. I’m a Gen Xer too. Not a grungy bum. Worked hard. Lived at home to save money. No luxuries. Starwhat? What is this paying $2 for a cup of coffee sh$t? I’m glad no one is talking about me. I’m fine. I got through it. We all did. Let’s all move on to being the change that we want to see. Right. No whining. (Hahaha!! Gen Xer war cry!). Every generation has their fair share of the good and the bad.

 

[redwood66]

Nah @cmd2014 Don’t sweat it. I’m a Gen Xer too. Not a grungy bum. Worked hard. Lived at home to save money. No luxuries. Starwhat? What is this paying $2 for a cup of coffee sh$t? I’m glad no one is talking about me. I’m fine. I got through it. We all did. Let’s all move on to being the change that we want to see. Right. No whining. (Hahaha!! Gen Xer war cry!). Every generation has their fair share of the good and the bad.

This made me laugh. Remember these placards?

 

[LLJsmom]

This made me laugh. Remember these placards?

OMG TOTALLY!! I worked for a company that had it as one of its core values!! Fer reelz!!!

 

[cmd2014]

LOL I remember that too! I think that pretty much sums up our generation. Kinda makes you feel like we were the red-headed stepchildren of life sandwiched between a family of blondes!

 

[Matata]

No one can take whining away from me. I luv a good whine, the really nasally kind where my words come out my nostrils in a trilling vibrato and cause listeners' eyes to roll back in their heads and then they begin to drool. It is soul cleansing, freeing, exhilarating.

 

[LaylaR]

Sadly this thread has made me feel even more forgotten as a Gen X. I loved the article that pointed out that we felt forgotten as children and we are forgotten now. We were latchkey kids, kids of divorce, expected to fend for ourselves throughout childhood and that sure didn't change once we became adults. We were expected to fend for ourselves at 18 in the middle of a recession - and called lazy and shiftless by our boomer parents if we *shockingly* couldn't find jobs (even though we needed twice as much education than our boomer parents did just to get jobs that paid less, offered no benefits, expected us to work all hours, doing anything and everything, but gave no job security). It was not unusual for even Gen X professionals to not be able to find jobs (yup, engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses....no jobs for you!). We were too qualified to be considered for so called menial jobs, but there were no spots open unless someone retired or died in our chosen fields. So we cobbled together minimum wage jobs through our 20's (and sometimes 30's), if we were lucky, and lived with roommates, didn't have cars, and worried about ever being able to buy a house or support children of our own, all the while being looked down on by our boomer parents for being under-employed. We were expected to suck it up and not express anxiety through the constant threat of nuclear annihilation through the height of the cold war, but at the same time we were accused of being cynical and nihilistic in our world view. As women, we were told that we could have anything (and everything) by mom's who honestly didn't have a clue what they were talking about, and yet we faced discrimination, misogyny, and glass ceilings in the workplace, while still being expected to do the lion's share of childcare and work at home. We were told that we had no loyalty as employees, even though our multiple job transfers and willingness to move far, far away from home to find work was born out of desperation (through layoffs, company closures, and a complete lack of upward mobility as boomers have elected to simply never retire - which btw is continuing to happen), not out of choice. We are the first generation not to be able to live comfortably on a single salary (and no, it's not because we are greedy and materialistic and want things that other generations didn't have). We are the first generation to be crippled by student loan debt (higher tuition, more education needed just to get the same jobs that our parents could get with just a high school diploma, less support from mom and dad). We bought houses just as housing prices decided to skyrocket, and then had huge mortgages through the bust of the housing bubble (which also wiped out what little we had of our retirement savings too). We are the first generation not to be offered pensions and other benefits by our workplaces (so we are going to be less well off in retirement than our boomer parents too), and there is likely to be nothing left of social security or old age pension programs by the time we get there (where I live, the age of eligibility has already been increased to age 70, where us has been eligible at 65). We were the generation most affected by the cold war. We were the most affected by 9/11 (most of the victims were from our generation, as have been most of those called to serve). Y2K was pretty much our problem. We are accused of being politically apathetic, and yet we have had literally no political voice as we are overwhelmingly small in number compared to the voting cohorts on either side of us. So we put our heads down and try to make do with what we have. And we don't even get a mention because we are sandwiched between the two most self-focused generations in modern history. If anything, the only mention we get is millennials telling us that they don't want to work as hard as we do (as if it's some kind of choice for us).

It's not that boomers are horrible - it's just that they are quite good at choosing not to see what they don't want to see, and their lives and opportunities were so different than ours, that they just couldn't seem to understand the challenges we were facing. And it's not that Gen X'ers are bitter, it's just that we are a bit tired of it all. But we typically choose not to engage, because we're self-sufficient enough that we really don't need to. .

Great post cmd. You captured my own strangled GenX post in your voice. I edited out the part about being parents as I am not. But the rest, this is exactly how I feel daily.