Young adults.

[XingMing]

DH and I were old parents; our parents were WW2 babies and children, so we grew up with a make do and mend life: don't buy anything, fix what you've got. We also went to boarding schools fairly young, and have survived it. It seems to us, talking earlier today, that our DS and his GF are much much younger for their age (20), and less competent than we were at the same age. Is this a good or bad thing?

That's so true, Corythatwas!

"At that age, DH was responsible for closing one branch of the manufacturing company for which he was a trainee manager and moving it to new premises the other side of London. It was 40 years ago, and then it seemed quite "normal". His friends were doing similar things. A lot of our contemporaries moved overseas to work around the same age."

Good for him OP, but I'm not sure what your point is? Surely you must realise that your experience is not universal, and not everyone could be trainee managers in charge of company branches blah blah blah. This might have been somehow the norm in your circle of friends but it wouldn't have been for most other people even 40 years ago!

Totally agree with this being another millennial bashing thread tbh.

I am particularly aware of the "today's children are such snowflakes" rhetoric because we have hereditary MH issues in our family.

Previous generations of the coryfamily simply relied on their family to deal with it, carry them, put up with breakdowns or occasional verbal abuse, preserve the facade. It is well recorded, I remember it from my own childhood, it goes back a long way.

My dd is the first to actually have verbalised the problem and sought medical help so she doesn't have to rely on other people to carry her. But along the road she has had so many people say "oh these young snowflakes, it's not like our generation when we were just tough and got on with things". It's in the papers all the time how young people just don't cope like they used to. That is not what I'm seeing.

In my pastoral role at a large university, I see so many people who take responsibility in ways that I simply couldn't have at their age.

If you think I am bashing Millennials, feel free to labour under that delusion, Sonichu. You are finding reason to take offence where none was intended.

Anecdata is all it is of course, but the alternative is statistics and data, and rather dry to read. Other people's opinions are interesting, to me at least. So your experience is not mine: that's why MN is so consistently readable.

You’ve basically written a thread explaining how fantastic you and your dh were as young adults and saying why can’t all other young adults be the same, and then saying you’re not criticizing anyone?? Eh?

It reads as critical to me too.
The conditions for their generation are so different to the recent past that it's no wonder they respond differently.

Just saying you didn’t try and have a family life until you were the age a lot of people become grandparents, so of course it was easier for you to manage all these responsibilities etc

I'm 37. Slightly different to exactly what you are talking about, but in my place of work (I'm a mental health nurse who works in an admissions ward) we have a lot of young people coming in who are so rude and demanding to the nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals, challenging them (in a rude manner) at every turn, in a way that I wouldn't have had the confidence or balls to do at 18/19. Neither would any of my friends. I'm also not talking about genuinely very disturbed, mentally ill folk either, in which case, certain behaviours could be understood. At the same time, many of these same folk often come across as extremely immature, expecting to be treated like children by not only healthcare professionals but also their families.

I also notice the same behaviours are prevalent throughout society, it isn't isolated to my working environment. Younger people acting like they are the big know it all yet being unable to conduct themselves in an adult like manner and instead reverting back to child like tantrums and rudeness when they don't get their own way. I must add though that I also notice this behaviour in all age groups.

I don’t see this as a generation bashing thread, a bit naive maybe from OP but she’s admitted she’s curious.

As for your experience of life as a young adult and your DH’s, even that is unusual as far as my own parents and Grandparents would be concerned, they had no options really, my Grandparents were young parents and their 4 daughters all became young parents so they fall into a similar generation from what I can tell. My Granddad had no education prospects, he was a miner as he grew up in a mining village, he did that job until the mines closed and then went onto work in a factory, so he would say “well I wasn’t exactly faced with any real decisions to make, that was the path I had before me.” So whilst I appreciate that from your own experience it seems that this skill of young decision making has been lost, I don’t think everybody has it in any generation.

As for fixing things rather than replacing them, well the world has been becoming more and more about quick fixes and consumerism in my opinion - nowadays some things cost more to repair than they do to replace.

The gripping terror of choosing a Uni I can’t attest to as I had to drop out of college at 17yo to get a job and support my younger siblings as my family pretty much disintegrated and we were left for long stretches of time with no money and no food, so I did what needed to be done so my siblings could still go to school and focus on their own education.

So really, barring the obvious generational differences in terms of the world and how it has changed, it’s all circumstantial as to how people of any age adapt and tackle certain decisions in their life, if they’re lucky enough to have any kind of choice. I don’t know if that’s a bit rambly (sorry if it is!) but I hope it makes some form of sense!

@milou the rudest people I deal with at work are people over about 65-70

No please or thank yous, condescending, misogynistic, horrid

My own grandparents are late sixties though and nothing like that. Pretty open minded, polite etc. I do think there’s a sense of entitlement in 65+ people though. Much more so than late teens early twenties

Mlou32, on the other side of that, people I know who work in catering maintain that it is usually older/middle-aged people who come across as particularly rude and demanding.

Embarrassingly, a relative claimed that the worst groups she had to serve were middle-aged academics and- the absolute pits apparently as far as entitlement went!- a group of teachers from a nearby secondary. They were the ones who would barge past queues of customers and insist on being served first because they were on a short break (sorry, madam, we all are), treating the whole world as a group of 5th formers to be bossed about. The politest were international students and children from the local estate, then local students.

Anecdata, but all interesting.

I was at DS(14)'s options evening last night. The number of parents who had chosen their children's options for them, pushing for extra GCSEs on top of the nine they have to take, planning A level and degree flight paths was shocking. Poor kids had no say.

I didn't intend it to suggest we were special or even unusual, and I think you've taken it too much to heart. No inter-generational criticism was meant. The Internet is a wonderful thing, but a random stranger's musings are easily misunderstood.

However, people generally were more stoical about life in days gone by because they had more to be stoical about. Life has changed so much since my great grandparents were born... radio, TV, medical advances, wars, women's rights, economic boom and bust (on repeat) and everything else. Some of it has made life easier, and some has brought new challenges.

Or should everyone over 30/40/50/60/70/80 (you choose) have the decency to be silent so as not to offend?

To be honest if you went to boarding school your experiences are not the norm for any generation.

Young people are more infantalised in some ways today and less in others. You see parents who don't trust their 14 year olds to travel to the nearest city for a day out with friends but at the same time expect them to have their future career mapped out and tell them they're life will be ruined if they don't get top grades. It's an odd mix.

For what little anecdotes are worth our kids left home at much the same age we did a generation earlier (myself and daughter both left at 17, husband at 20, son at 19) and like their parents before them knew some stuff and had to figure out other things.

This thread has me thinking about grandparents though. Out of my dc's 4 grandparents, we get the following:

M teen & young adult before WW2: probably had to be quite tough, disappointed in career dreams because of disability, did badly paid manual work and earned little, married and divorced

F teen & young adult during WW2: evacuated with boarding school to America where she had a very cossetted and luxurious existence, found it hard to deal with bleak reality of life in UK on return

M young boy during WW2, teen shortly afterwards: poor background, lost father at an early age, love of learning, studied on scholarships and not much food to become a teacher, for the rest of his life very comfortable

F young girl during WW2, teen shortly afterwards: cosseted and spoilt by family, lived at home until marriage, chose a safe career, never experienced financial insecurity or any other serious threats to happiness, looked to her mum for guidance until her 40s (when her mum died), only time she ever lived outside of supportive family was for a summer at a residential language course around age of 20, and for a year abroad accompanied by fiancee (again residential so no need for arrangements)

That's just one family tree. A couple of pretty tough people, at least one who was more protected than most young people would be today.

I think it depends what you learn and what you have grown up with
If there's a medical emergency, I generally know what to do, never panic and just get on with it. Same with horses, I can deal with anything
But if the sink is leaking? Not a clue
I'm shit at DIY and I'm 35! So I would be argh, help, if water was coming through the ceiling but I'm sensible enough to not touch electrics and ring someone to fix it. It's knowing your strengths and weaknesses, we aren't all great at everything

However, people generally were more stoical about life in days gone by because they had more to be stoical about.

I am in my late 50s and if my memories were anything to go by, stoicism in the olden days were, as it is now, a matter of individuality.

A great many children grow up in poverty today and from what little I have seen I would say some of them are pretty stoical about it. On the other hand, some people in the past had very little reason to develop stoicisim.

And if you are thinking about my generation- born in the 60s and 70s in Western Europe- we were probably as spoilt as any generation is ever going to be. I am 56: I don't think I should have to hold my tongue about the fact that I've had a more privileged life than many of dc's friends who are young today. My mother, the cosseted bourgeois daughter of a middle class family, didn't really have to work very hard on her stoicism either.

I was raised by my Grandparents so I’ve always been told by those my age I’m odd or a bit old fashioned and I’ve been told I’m apathetic (when really I’m rather stoic myself) I’m only 31. I think a lot of people take questions like this to heart though - my youngest sister who is turning 16 this year is a bit of a puzzle to me sometimes and I wonder where the differences between she and I come from in terms of how we both process the world.

I grew up in the 90’s where the mantra was “getting a higher education means getting a much better job” but that’s no longer true unless you can determine from a fairly young age exactly what it is you want to pursue as a career and even then you’re not guaranteed anything as many others have the same qualification. The job prospects have dropped and there’s less to choose from where you can genuinely build a meaningful career if that’s what you aspire to. Some make it still, a large number don’t and I think that leads to a level of cynicism that is inherited by the next generation (if that makes sense?). I think the fear of choosing the correct university as in your example ties into so many other thoughts and fears of the individuals future that they freeze because it is still drilled into a lot of young people that they must have a higher education to succeed in life, they must make the right choice on what to study otherwise it becomes a useless qualification and also, you might not even get anywhere even if you do make all the ‘right’ choices.

I can’t understand the way life was for those of my Grandparents age or my Parents/Aunts age fully because I didn’t live it, so whilst you can learn as much as you can about what life is like for young people today you won’t fully understand it because likewise you aren’t living it, so there’s always bound to be questions/comparisons I suppose and it’s usually expressed negatively so the reaction is defensive.

I don’t think there’s any clear answer on these threads as it really does fall to each individual and we can’t speak to that, only what we know and have experienced ourselves

My great grandfather had a brother born from an ‘affair’ in Ireland where my dads family is from, in the 30s. The way the mother was treated was absolutely appalling by today’s standards and she had what would be recognized as a breakdown. The way things were ‘hidden’ in the past doesn’t mean people were more stoical, it was just that they couldn’t express things as freely imo

Decision making is very hard at this age. We had less choices so in a way life was simpler. Not better, just simpler. We were out in the world working and having babies younger so in some ways had to "grow up" Today universtity delays that process. Thats a good thing for some not for others, those of mine who went to uni matured later than the ones who did an apprenticeship. The latter had no debt and has a very high flying engineering job without a degree. The others had a good time, struggled to get jobs, and had debt. Neither sytem is perfect. They find there own way

Yep I know 7 yr olds who act like 2 yr olds (snatching, tantrums etc) and many men in their late twentieth who still think they’re too young to have children 🤣 There’s a huge number of reasons why, particularly the older age of leaving education and smaller families means less caring for younger siblings etc, but basically young people are being given less challenges and responsibilities and so they mature more slowly.

"If you think I am bashing Millennials, feel free to labour under that delusion, Sonichu. You are finding reason to take offence where none was intended."

So what IS the point of this thread? Please enlighten me so that I don't "labour under that delusion" anymore.

Or should everyone over 30/40/50/60/70/80 (you choose) have the decency to be silent so as not to offend?

This comes across as a bit poor-me, which I don't think is the stoical persona you want to project, OP. Surely it is possible to have a voice on a website like this without suggesting that those of us who are older somehow have access to superior personal qualities? We are not being silenced if people point out that we come across as annoying. Non-snowflakes in their 40s or 50s should be able to cope with that.

I have done a lot of family history and have access to the memoirs of many ancestors. Some were stoical, some were probably just ordinary, some were hardened by life, some were spoilt, some were feckless and unable to face the music (yes, relative who absconded to America leaving my ggf security for your unpaid debts and bringing ruin on a family of 10, I am looking at you; likewise relative who impregnated your servant girl in the early 1900s and then refused to recognise the child).

The fact of the matter is that the world has changed. As people live longer and retire later, and technologies develop to reduce the workforce, there are simply not the jobs for most people to enter the workforce at 16, or even 18. That is why education is now compulsory up to age 18, and young people are expected to be reliant on their parents (to a certain degree) until 25 see this BBC article about estranged students - a student is not classed as 'independent' until age 25.

People can argue back and forth all day about the positives and negatives of this, but saying that young people are (in some ways) less independent than previous generations is not an insult in and of itself, just a fact, and an outcome of the world we live in.