To think current young adults are heading for a tough mid life crisis?

[clairemcnam]

Most generations since we have moved in the west beyond bare survival, have had a significant group of young people questioning the point of focusing on a career, buying more stuff and living an ordinary consumerist life. But this generation seems incredibly conformist. Amongst young adults the emphasis seems to be on agitating around being able to buy a house, rather than questioning capitalism.

I suspect when a lot of current young adults hit mid life, they are going to be hit very hard as they begin to question their life and why they strived so hard to be consumers.
AIBU?

Less career focused then moan when they can't afford to buy a house as they've been on a gap year for 10 years and are stuck working in a hipster coffee shop

What a weird place Mumsnet is today.

Young people are paying a small fortune for an education that almost certainly won't get them anything more than an entry level job. That education used to be free and used to guarantee a great career.

Millennials are now encouraged to have 2-3 jobs in a 'portfolio' career to protect them against the inevitable redundancies:

That job is then not enough to even consider being able to own a house.

Not having housing security means not feeling you can start a family.

At the same time, we are hearing that the world, from an environmental point of view, is fucked.

And then they get berated for buying avocado on toast and travelling the world...

Is it any wonder that the security of a 'conformist' life that their parents enjoyed seems so appealing? Is it hard to imagine they're just getting their heads down and working bloody hard in the hope they may not have to work until they're 80?

And the 'softness' of increased mental health issues is a) it is finally acceptable to talk about these things and b) because they are under so, so much pressure.

What a weird take you have.

I'm also wondering why wanting to be financially settled is likely to cause a mid life crisis later

some people always hold this kind of view though. I was a relatively late baby - I disagree with that actually but that's what people told my olds - and when they said they wanted more financial stability before they started a family, apparently people laughed at them.

We had communist/ anarchist terrorism in the 70 s and 80s. The red brigade et al in Europe. Is that the sort of thing you mean.?

We have terrorism nowadays which wants to upset the world order ( caliphate anyone?). Just because it is not about having a socialist/ communist/ anarchist world order does not make any the less anti capitalism. Though I appreciate this has not come from the west/ Europe.
There are plenty of very angry young people still, with fire in their bellies. They are very dangerous though and always have been .

I personally remember complaints in the 80s that university students were too focussed on getting ahead in the yuppy Thatcherism years and not enough on getting involved in social order protests etc compare to the 60s and 70s so it is not new really.

I do.think though that in the west we have reached a sort of weary acceptance that capitalism seems the only option even if we dislike it, as everything else tried seems to have failed miserably in most places.

Early 30s is not a young adult. I am talking about 18-early twenties. That is a young adult.

Young radicals don’t really make change anyway. The real power lies with established middle aged lawyers, a handful of senior policymakers, investment bankers and the owners of supermarkets. Depressing it may be, but it’s the truth. University students barricading themselves into the Student Union like a scene from the Young Ones are pissing into the proverbial wind.

Increased mental health issues sorry is not I think down to increased pressure. You really think the generation, my grandparents who went to war, were under less pressure?
Increased awareness of mental health issues, and labelling of levels of anxiety and sadness that would once have been considered normal are to blame, along with the lack of opportunity in childhood and teenager years to develop resilience, are to blame.

OP "I am talking about 18-early twenties. That is a young adult."

if I hadn't focussed on earning money at that age, I would be absolutely screwed now. I'm so glad I did what I did. I'm 43.

what would you rather I had been doing and how would it have been funded?!

I agree. I think a lot of stuff labelled “mental health” is just feeling sad. Because this is the marketing generation. Everything has to sound a bit more flash than it actually is.

I’m sure they’ll be fine. I think you’re being quite patronising, well intentioned or not.

Of course in every generation there are people who focus on making money and building a career. But in every generation there are differences, and that is about how they have been brought up, it does have an influence.
I am always struck by young adults though how many who come from fairly privileged backgrounds, think they are having a hard time. I think this is because the proper middle class has significantly shrunk, and many jobs that were proper middle class in the past, really are no longer. So they will in many cases struggle more than their own parents.
But it also betrays an incredible lack of historical knowledge and awareness of the recent past. The amount of people with disabilities that were in institutions, the amount of people with severe mental health problems in terrible mental hospitals, the lesbians who spent years in mental hospitals, and gay men who spent years in prison, the routine sexual harassment and low pay many women experienced at work, the level of extreme routine racism and homophobia, etc. So many things that used to be taken for granted that would rightly cause a major stir these days. Things are far from perfect, but if you are not white able bodied and middle class, now is a much better time to be young than in the recent past.

There does seem to be an incredible lack of understanding of the recent historical past amongst many young people.

Uninformed sweeping opinions and statements

Base your argument on facts and try not to forget the absolute mess this world is in that young people need to navigate to survive today

Just because young people aren’t suffering ww2 doesn’t mean the word is a place they can thrive and flourish in

And to those adding to the “mental health” argument, you’re adding to the problem of people committing suicide without telling anyone.

It’s called stigma.

Suicide rates have fallen. And what makes you think we know nothing about mental health on a personal level?
I have also noted that reducing stigma only applies to things that lots and lots of people suffer from like depression and anxiety. Nobody seems keen to reduce the stigma of psychosis or schizophrenia. Indeed I read that the schizophrenia society has been trying to find celebrities who will publicly state they have this to destigmatise the condition, and has not been able to.

Mumm That is life. Life is hard. It always has been and always will be. I do blame older adults for the fact that younger adults have not been brought up to realise that this is normal.

And it is middle aged men who are most likely to kill themselves, not young people.

Rather than blaming the next generation I think the adults of today and the generation before us have a great deal of explaining and apologising to do. The greed of past generations and their disregard for the environment has made life very difficult for our children and grandchildren.

You’re responding to arguments I didn’t make.

OP

you've gone from worrying that young adults are too focused on buying property to worrying that they are too soft and don't know enough history.

interesting thread, I guess

Yeah I have wandered a bit.
I would never use the words too soft. Being gentle is lovely. But being able to deal with life's inevitable hard knocks will make your life easier.

Its interesting about the environmental side. I have actually been involved in this for years. And yet every year I see people taking on new habits that are damaging to the environment. Disposable cleaning wipes for example. Pet food in pouches. And flying around the world now seems routine for many younger better off people. I am very cynical that anything will change. Every year it gets worse. And it was my generation that pushed for environmental education in schools in the belief it would change things.

Suicide rates have fallen.

Possibly, just possibly, because it's more acceptable now to talk about mental health, mental illness and to seek help...you know, the very things you criticise young people for doing?

No I did not criticise people for talking about mental illness and seeking help. Please do not lie.

I feel that OP is doing a massive disservice to “older” people. I cannot accept that people from their generation genuinely have such ridiculous opinions about younger people

Rereading the comments is causing me mental health issues...

Actually I genuinely mistook another poster's comment for yours. I would normally apologise for that but as you leapt straight to the assumption that I am a liar rather than consider I was simply mistaken - an easy mistake to make on a fast-paced thread - you can whistle for it.

Okay I apologise for assuming you were lying rather than mistaken. I am just getting fed up on MN for being attacked by overly aggressive posters for perfectly normal comments, normally by people who do make things up to suit their own agenda.

This is nothing new or interesting. Older generations (not all people within them, but a decent chunk) have always moaned that younger generations are softer/weaker/worse than theirs in someone way. It’s a very cliched road to travel.

The bottom line is you know nothing about what it means to be a young person today, you don’t understand the unique issues they face and how it is to navigate this new world, just as your elders knew nothing about how it was to be a young person in your day. Perhaps, rather than making sweeping generalisations about young people and assumptions about how you personally believe they’ll cope (or won’t) as older adults (clearly you have a crystal ball!) - you could talk to and understand them and find out a bit more about how they see the world.