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?

Thank you for your apology OP, and I apologise in turn for getting you confused with someone else.

I don't think you can criticise young people for not knowing YOUR history, ie the main events that happened in your life. Someone complained about them not knowing about the Bay of Pigs. Most people look bored if I mention the 3day week, my experiences then make me feel any Brexit shortages are not a big deal. What are yourviews on the Korean War ? What war you ask, well the 90 year old next door could fill you in on that as he fought in it.

My frustration about a lack of historical knowledge is when younger people make assumptions based on that. I was the one that talked about the bay of pigs. It was in response to someone saying that the young generation unlike the older generation have never faced possible annihilation in their lifetime. That simply is not true. People would not have paid for private nuclear bunkers if that was true.
So a lack of recent historical knowledge does not matter if you are not then going to make assumptions based on your lack of knowledge.

In my workplace there is myself, one other woman about my age, and everyone else apart from very senior management are very young. Lots of people in their early twenties. So it is actually from listening to them that I have formed certain views. And being amazed at certain things that no I would not have assumed.

sparklesocks I never used the word soft. I talked about a lack of resilience amongst those from better off backgrounds which many people who work with young people are talking about. That is not their fault. It is because they are over protected. You develop resilience from experiencing age appropriate things that are difficult for you, and resolving them. For too many young people they have no longer had enough of those experiences.

Your OP does not make it clear that you were only referring to a small group of very privileged young people whom you happen to know and which may well be irrelevant to many other posters.

Some of us may know completely different young people facing completely different circumstances. If you are not from a well-off background, then austerity comes with very real threats and real challenges. Today the message has gone out that foodbank levels in Edinburg are so low that families face starvation. Presumably some of those either contain young people or the parents and grandparents of young people? Young people have medical needs too, and suffer from the cuts to the NHS. As an academic tutor I spend a lot of time advising students to seek medical attention and at the back of my mind there is the little voice that mutters: Oh and don't tell them that unless they actually kill someone other than themselves they're likely to be looking at a 6 months waiting list to see a psychiatrist.

As for the nuclear thing, if you honestly knew many people who bought nuclear shelters you must have known some unusual people. Neither I (55) nor dh (approaching 60) knew a single person. Dh is an archaeologist, so you'd expect him to be digging up the foundations of them from time to time if they were that common: instead, the shelters he has dug up over the years have invariably been from WW2, when the threat was very real. Most people thought of nuclear war as a "possible- threat", whereas most sensible people today recognise global warming as an "almost certain- threat".

Young people are also aware of the terror attacks of recent years: some will have lost friends and family to them. They are aware of knife crime. They are aware of the rising tide of racist abuse and attacks, ditto the attacks on disabled people.

I talk to a lot of young people, from all sorts of backgrounds, and I am often struck by how much I have to learn from them- and how cosseted my own generation was. We went inter-railing and demonstrating and somehow thought we were solving all the problem of the world: but in actual fact, we were buoyed up by an unspoken belief that, unless some maniac pressed a button (and they probably wouldn't), then our world would go on getting better and better and more comfortable for us.

And that of course was why we weren't very bothered about buying a house or thinking about our pensions or anything mundane like that: we were spoilt children and thought the world would look after us. We could afford to go off and slum it in a cooperative because nobody would really let our granny starve or leave our dad without medical care. If we went to university, the state paid, and nobody expected us to feel guilty about that.

*in my workplace there is myself, one other woman about my age, and everyone else apart from very senior management are very young. Lots of people in their early twenties. So it is actually from listening to them that I have formed certain views. And being amazed at certain things that no I would not have assumed.

sparklesocks I never used the word soft. I talked about a lack of resilience amongst those from better off backgrounds which many people who work with young people are talking about. That is not their fault. It is because they are over protected. You develop resilience from experiencing age appropriate things that are difficult for you, and resolving them. For too many young people they have no longer had enough of those experiences.*

So basically because you interact with a very specific group of young people at your work, you think you know enough about the entire generation to make sweeping generalisations about the issues they will encounter when they get older?

I hope those young colleagues are aware they are in the presence of such an all knowing figure who can predict the future for them.

cortthatwas I actually come from a very poor background, am about the same age as you, and certainly did not grow up with the belief that things would get better and better.
This may as you suggest have more to do with class than generation though.
And I did think that nuclear war was pretty inevitable as did plenty of other people I knew.
I am well aware that those from the kind of backgrounds I come from have a very different experience of life. The threat of knife crime is different from when I was young, although there is more help than there was when I was young. Even having access to information on the internet makes a difference.
Although some of the boys I grew up with went in to army at 16 - only job many could get if you lived where I grew up. And the army itself has said that that level of soldier is not as able to deal with hardship as in the past.
In terms of mental health, I have cared most of my adult life for a relative with a very severe mental health problem. I have a better knowledge of the mental health system sadly than I would like to have. It is still very poor, but some of it is better than 30 years ago. Being suicidal by itself was never enough to guarantee psychiatric help in a timely manner. 30 -40 years ago is when the old psychiatric hospitals closed down, many of which were in fairness awful places. But ever since then the help is limited.
For most people 30 years ago there was the GP or psychiatrist, that was it. There were mental health day centres, but at one time only people who had been institutionalised in hospitals were eligible to go. Things got a bit better under Blair with more mental health support, and since then it has got worse again.

And that of course was why we weren't very bothered about buying a house or thinking about our pensions or anything mundane like that: we were spoilt children and thought the world would look after us. We could afford to go off and slum it in a cooperative because nobody would really let our granny starve or leave our dad without medical care. If we went to university, the state paid, and nobody expected us to feel guilty about that.

Yes you have a very different life experience to me. I have been an activist all my life and have met many people like you, and yes I was well aware that you had resources to fall back onto that I did not.

I always had to work, since 16. But I have always tried to make the world a better place too. Money has never been my main focus. Although I never wanted to suffer the kind of poverty I did as a child and as a teenager.

I think today's young people have it harder overall. Even the ways they "have it easier" make it harder for them long term.

A university education costs a fortune and runs up a large debt. As for buying a property, that's out of reach for many and cripplingly expensive for those who will be able to get a foot on the ladder.

So we have many young adults who have to live at home with parents looking into their 20s and beyond. So they have all the creature comforts of home, most of what they earn can just be spent for fun ... seems a bit spoilt but what a shock those people will have once they do emerge from the cocoon, unprepared for real life.

Plus, careers are so much more competitive now. I'm a lawyer (now at partner level) and was very much not the cleverest girl in the class, messed about at school etc. I wouldn't stand a chance these days against the absolutely superb candidates we have applying for traineeships these days. Most of those superb candidates would be great at the job but most won't be offered one because there are so many we can literally just take la creme de la creme. It makes me shudder to think of those left at the wayside. My eldest has some learning difficulties and says things like there is no point him even trying to have a career. I'm doing everything I can to support him but I think he has a point. It's just so much harder these days to be even modestly successful.

honeylulu I think things are harder these days for kids from privileged backgrounds.

It’s interesting to think that we’re seeing a generation almost completely influenced by the internet.

I wonder how much their perspective is influenced by comparison with a wider range of people and knowledge of wider events.

I also think a lot of activism is passive these days, a lot goes on in the form of posting a statuses on the internet. people tend to have multiple subjects they would claim an activist view point on rather than one or two causes that they champion and are truly knowledgeable about.

"Yes you have a very different life experience to me. I have been an activist all my life and have met many people like you, and yes I was well aware that you had resources to fall back onto that I did not"

Sorry, you may have misunderstood me. I did not grow up rich, and my dh certainly didn't.

But Europe, and the UK, were still very much in a mindset that over time things would get better and better, the economy would grow, if not perhaps immediately, then at least over time.

It was easier to find work, there were fewer zero hours contracts and the NHS was not under threat.

You knew you would get to see a doctor if you fell ill. As the parent of a child who is going to struggle with ill health all her life, I am very aware of these issues, and of how much harder things have got in the last decade. 20 years ago, she would not have left crouching on the floor for 12 hours in a corridor in A & E with suspected encephalitis. A month ago, she did.

When we were young, there was a good chance that if you worked for a few decades you would eventually be able to save up and buy a property. Dh and I were engaged for 10 years saving up to get married- and then we were able to buy a slightly run-down house in a not very affluent area.

I don't see how my dc will ever be able to do that.

I wonder if it makes the difference that the current generation has seen a generation come of age and face the 2008 crash. I graduated uni during said crash and growing up I saw older cousins and knew of the older children of my DPs colleagues doing amazing things after uni and figured I would too so long as I worked hard.

I can understand the current generation of young adults being more focused on money after seeing people of my generation get stuck living with our parents in our 20s or be stuck in pocket money jobs despite having masters.

I think you are the one who is completely deluded OP and suffer from real lack of Historical knowledge if you think a small sample of, I assume young Brits, you know is in any shape or form representative of an entire generation.

I am the generation you are talking about and I am aghast at the fact that "racism", "sexism" and "homophobia" can be described as "micro-issues" in your world that are barely worth fighting for. If you live in a place where those issues are minor and barely worth mentioning then maybe you are the one living a privileged life?

Admittedly I am a queer woman of colour so those issues probably affect me more than most but you seem to fail to realise that most of the world population isn't made up by countries like the UK or western Europe. Most of my "generation" actually live in Asia, the Middle East, The US & Central and South America. Most of my generation lives in countries where they have very little bodily autonomy, where they are still living the aftermath of colonialism, where they are taught their physical appearance will impact their job opportunities (heard of whitening cream and eyelids operations in Asia?), where the gap between poor and rich is massive and where going up any kind of ladder (corporate/housing) is impossible because politicians and corruption ensure that the gap remains and poor people remain poor and at the very bottom of it, where women have very little rights, where homophobia is a crime that might result in death penalty and/or camps (heard of Brunei and/or Tchetchenia?) where religion isn't separated from state so freedom of thoughts (or anything) is a fantasy and not a reality.

Get out your bubble.

I am European and I know how relatively good things are in my country. I have also had the chance to live on most continents and know that the issues previously mentioned aren't micro-issues and are REAL issues that affect the life of a much bigger chunk of the population than consumerism does. (Not saying one can't fight it all).

I currently live in the US and here is what I see:

• Black men being shot by cops while sleeping in their car

• Children sleeping in the streets with their parents because the government doesn't think it should be responsible for housing its population, and doesn't want to spend money on family shelters.

• Children being separated from their parents and kept in ICE facilities and then sent "home" to a country they've never lived in due to awful immigration laws

• Adult and children left to die of treatable diseases due to not being able to afford treatment and/or healthcare insurance

• Gay folks being denied the right to adopt or being back their own children born in other countries due to suggestive laws that implies their marriage doesn't count.

• Folks being shot in schools or malls because the government fails to protect them by implementing stricter gun laws and disregard the importance of mental health care.

-Women risking the death penalty or a life sentence if they are caught trying to abort and found out to have had an abortion.

But hey oh, sexism, racism & homophobia is totally dead as is the need to fight and talk about mental health issues or the climate change, because I totally didn't have to wear a breathing mask for almost a month when San Francisco had the most polluted air IN THE WORLD due to fires (which killed a massive amount of people) due to climate change.

So sorry if while we are busy fighting against time to save our planet, while also spending time highlighting issues that are perceived by you (& your generation) as "micro-issues" while paying off our uni debt for diplomas that will probably only give us access to a cashier job, you find it more useful and groundbreaking to reminiscence your youth.

You have yet to say what your generation did that actually has made a difference ( I don't see buying bunkers in fear of atomic weapons as a ground breaking thing that could even have any kind of impact? Also atomic and chemical weapons are still very much a threat, hello North Korea and Syria) and how your life is in any shape or form "unconventional" and or "groundbreaking"? Do you live in a squat? A van maybe? Or you are one of many working and paying rent/a mortgage like everybody else but look down on younger generations for wanting to do the same as you?

Gay marriage has been legalized in most country after 2009+ so not really a produce of your generation, vegan options are more often offered now because a lot of my generation refuse to support the meat industry and has changed their shopping habits to suit their ideals, police violence is decreasing in the US due to movements like Black Lives Matters, Mental Health is improving due to the visibility brought by lots of young people regarding mental illnesses/disabilities/and other issues, even PND is better addressed and less taboo thanks to social media and young people making it a thing to be more in touch with one's feelings and their mental health status and be more open about it. You might think we don't do much but I think we do a shit tone while having much more to put up with and less time to fix it. We see your generation and older voting in extremist parties, getting us out of trading blocks that would benefit us, effectively reducing our work opportunities and freedom of movement while making it impossible for us to buy, we have to face spending $$$$ for degrees that are worth nothing once outside of school because the local cashier too has a master in Business from a prestigious school, once we have a job we don't have the luxury to let it go because we have student debts to pay off and private healthcare to afford because institutions like the NHS are cut to the bone and we also can't afford to stop working because we know retirement is probably not going to be an option for us because while you have the luxury to retire at 67 or earlier you are probably going to live to a 100+ and my generation will have to keep on cashing in to maintain you.

But please do tell me about how your generation has made things better for me and how as a queer woman of colour fighting for pretty much anything that define me is "conventional" and "conformist" and me fighting for "micro-issues" that are irrelevant.

PS: I have also been working and living on my own since I am 16, people fending for themselves isn't something of the past.

YABU for thinking that because certain issues have been mostly eradicated in your heck of the wood (though brexit would suggest otherwise if that's where you are from) that fighting for those issues is worthless. The world doesn't end at your doorstep and it's what your generation failed to see.

they can't handle the truth.

@Linning

nice polemic. I don't think I agree with a lot of it, but I defend your right to express it.

Particularly I don't agree with the underlying thread that the West is a villain, because it isn't. The West is a buckler to them that walk uprightly to borrow a phrase.

@Linning
Excellent post, Thank you and I say that as someone from the same generation as the OP. I was very politically & socially active from in my late teens/early twenties but then I had a full Student Grant and no fees, I could claim the dole in the holidays and jobs were plentiful for graduates

SnuggyBuggy I think it makes a huge difference. The young people I interact with on a daily basis are far more pragmatic and far less idealistic about the world than my own generation (and I'm not young) - and probably far less likely to be disillusioned as they grow older.

@gth1234

If you have read my post then you know I am also from the West. I don't say the West is the villain, I say my country (and yours) amongst others have played a massive part in the current inequalities, inequalities that still very much impact my generation worldwide. Apartheid ended less than 30 years ago, if you don't believe colonialism and white supremacy still massively impact many generations worldwide and determine their chances of making it out in the world then I doubt it's me who can't handle the truth.

I am always struck by young adults though how many who come from fairly privileged backgrounds, think they are having a hard time.

How many boomers need to be told this - it's because we can't afford houses. You claim we lack historical knowledge (because we don't count our blessings we don't live under the shadow of nuclear war) but we are only too aware that in the 70s working class people could buy homes, and in the 2010s the only people who can buy homes are those whose parents are wealthy enough to give them the deposit.

"racism", "sexism" and "homophobia" can be described as "micro-issues" in your world
You are mixing me up with another poster. I am actually black and believe me things were much harder when I was younger. So hardly minor issues. Also if you understood UK recent history you would also understand that many older lesbian and gay people dislike the word queer. To some it is like n***r. A word used too much as an insult for years to have any other meaning.

ADropofReality I have said repeatedly that more privileged younger people have a harder time now than their privileged parents.
But no most working class people could not buy houses in the 70s. What changed house ownership was the selling off of council houses in the 80's. This is when many working class people for the first time bought a house. Before that only very well paid working class people in jobs that were often paid more than middle class people, bought houses. Remember class is not the same as pay levels. And some jobs that re now fairly low paid, used to be high paid jobs.

Also Linning I marched in marches against section 28 (and many other marches), fought against sexism and racism (I was very active in the union), fought for better mental health services (I have cared for a relative all my adult life who has schizophrenia), wrote to my MP about many causes that were very unpopular at the time, etc.

Please do not assume that I and others of my generation did nothing that benefits your generation, sometimes at great personal cost. I was not busy making money and trying to buy a house, I was trying to make the world a better place. Some things have got better, but some are getting worse.

As I am sure you know, at the time of Section 28 lots of women and men in same sex relationships lost their jobs purely because of their relationships. I also lived near an area that nearly elected a BNP candidate. The racism on the street was seriously scary. And there were times I was scared.

Also I hate "call out culture" so this is very gently meant, not a put down at all. But assuming that an anonymous person on Mumsnet is white is a form of racism. I know it is a common one though. And I am glad that many young people in general do challenge racism.

But I will name change now as I have revealed far too much about myself.

clairemcnam - can you not see how blinkered it is to be judging an entire generation of people as being careerist and money focused because of conversations you have heard from young people where you work? Why would 18-20 year old people who are not career minded, capitalist and money focused be employed in your workplace? Surely they would be elsewhere pursuing their agenda? Or do you work for the Communist Party of Britain (in which case I can see your point) ? By the way, I work in a school and see plenty (and growing numbers) of children being given multiple opportunities to either build resilience or be crushed by their experiences. Obviously there are also children who are cocooned as much as possible from it, as there always have been, but not more than before, ime. The main difference now, as this is a different generation and every generation has different experiences, is that the things they are protected from are not entirely the same as in the past and the things they are exposed to at a young age are also different from before. Maybe the problem is, you have become a bit too sheltered yourself as you have got older and are now one step removed from those people you seem to think no longer exist?