To think our economy infantilises young people

[HurryupwiththeteA]

I’ve got a DS who’s 18 and I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I love history and learning about different time periods and when I think what some of the 18-25 year olds used to have vs now it’s stunning. Henry VIII became king when he was 18. Slightly more realistically, up until not so many years ago young people were able to move out, get jobs that actually pay money you can live on, get married, have children, etc. I know some can especially closer to 25 but for many that’s simply not a reality.

Today minimum wage jobs (which are absolutely necessary and often quite skilled) are simply not enough to live on meaning that for many they feel their only option is university.

The student loan system requires you to be dependent on your parents (especially if they earn more) as the maintenance grant simply will not cover living expenses and (back to my last point) they’re only option is minimum wage will does not pay.

After graduating in most areas home ownership is not realistic given the exorbitant cost. This leaves them with the option of living at home for many years to try and save up (or rent and most likely never be able to afford a house deposit).

Because they don’t have their own place, relationships are often either causal hookups or quite short lived. This means that marriage or children if usually out of the question until they are much older.

Many other things such as being treated like they’re not really adults by older people, being marketed crap they don’t need keeping them in the rat race, calls to raise the age to smoke, so many other things.

Sadly I think the answers to these problems just aren’t going to happen. Major house building, distressing the importance of degrees for jobs that simply don’t need them, making the minimum wage enough to actually live on, controls on rent, stopping interest on student loans and raising the repayment threshold. None of these will ever happen, for political reasons, but frankly they should.

Aibu to think that young adults (18-25) are pretty infantilised today. It seems like 25 is the new 18 and until your mid 20s now society often still sees you as a child. Furthermore, Aibu to think this

Yup. Just seeing some of the threads on her of parents with children 17+ wanting to call managers because they don't think their child's being treated fairly, etc shows that 18 is the new 14.....

I was 19 in the 90s. Me and most of my friends were in house shares at that age. I progressed to bedsit with shared bathroom at 21.

I managed to form a relationship when I lived in rented accomodation (I think the suggestion by OP that you need your own place to have a partner is a bit ridiculous!) We moved in to a rented property together and stayed a few years. We finally bought our own place after the birth of baby number 1, when I was mid 30s.

I don't think owning your own property has ever been, or should ever be, a given for young people. There is simply not enough time to earn the money, and we should be learning to save for things when young, and aspire to things, not just have everything handed to us.

I loved my rented places, house shares, bedsits. It's part of being young and the process of getting older ...

It’s all he did, she did about the youngsters.

I know so many elderly people who retired from BA, GPS, teachers, local govt, banks, BP, BT, insurance companies in their early 50s on a final salary. Ok they started working at 16 for a lump of coal but they still worked less than 40 years.

generations now will be working more than 40 years for a crap pension to be honest. Even the public sector pensions are crap now with all of the changes that have been made. why would anyone want to rush into adulthood? Huge mortgages, a govt that wants to erode our rights, pay rapidly falling behind inflation. Looks great!

And this was my experience of teaching at a university too. A load of babied, entitled kids that wanted everything (I mean basically and literally the answers to an upcoming exam) handed to them on a plate. They had no clue how to stand on their own two feet. Most complained massively about group work and several refused to participate in group exercises. A lot would refuse to give a presentation because they 'dont like presentations'. They moaned about absolutely everything (I think them paying the fees for uni now has contributed to their sense of entitlement and really not helped - it was like babies demanding gold plated milk because they are paying for it.) So sad to watch the future workforce acting in this way - and the university I worked for pandered to it so they would get good student ratings in the league tables, and meet various targets, and keep the money coming in.

And the taxpayer just gets to foot the bill for this exploitation then. Apprenticeships are funded in part by public money.

We've had a long time of pandering to unscrupulous employers who will always claim it is too expensive to pay people properly. Under Tony Blair it was tax credits which were just a subsidy for companies that paid too little dressed up as a benefit and now under the Tories we just have the normalisation of poverty wages, wage stagnation and attempts at union busting.

The problem is that without any disposable income in the working population the whole economy suffers. People don't buy goods and services. The Tories have been pretending to be baffled by the lack of productivity in the country when the low wage, low ambition, low investment economy is what they are creating.

The fact that it's acceptable to be like that is representative. How would that person have been viewed in the past? Not able to make a sandwhich at age 25 they'd have been institutionalised.

Yes, but they act about 13. And I simply can't get my head around the fact that Meghan is in her 40s and already been married once, Harry is approaching 40, and they have children. They just seem to act like such teenagers. They really don't seem like proper grown ups!

I wonder whether the structure of society and education have contributed?

Nowadays companies don’t seem to want to train people while employed. Which is why the govt subsidises apprenticeships. In the past, people would move job less often, so it made sense for companies to train people. I guess it is a chicken and egg - people are mobile so can switch job easily, so companies don’t want to invest in training…

a lot of the training is then placed on the education sector - which is different. You also have the requirement for people to be in full time education or training until 18. Even though it might be possible to start apprenticeships at 16, I think many people do it post-18. I don’t really think this benefits everyone. I agree that gcse/a-level English, maths and science courses plus btecs should be available (via day and evening classes) and free for those 16-25 - but some people need to do a job before taking those qualifications (because then they understand why they are important and put in more effort).

Even rent is crazy round our way so no, it isn't easy to just move out especially if you are a single person on NMW or with health issues.
Of course it was more do-able back in the 80's/90's.
Some very judgemental responses on here. I know plenty of older people who act like kids and who are terrible to work with. I also know a 40 something who lives at home and at times gets a lift into work. She has RA and it's just a supportive thing that a family member can do for her at the end of a long day. She's our hardest worker and liked by everyone. We don't always know what's going on in someone's life.

good article today in the Times about what younger generations face.

"Since the 2008 recession there has been very little increase in real earnings, meaning that millennials and Gen Zers are seeing much less income growth in their working lives than previous generations,” said Tom Wernham from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)."

"Houses are more unaffordable than at any time since 1880, according to Schroders."
"In 1972 the average monthly mortgage payment for someone with a 25 per cent deposit was £46 (about £500 at today’s prices) compared with £1,395 today, the estate agency Hamptons said."

It's deliberate though isn't it? In the same vein as the education system entirely discouraging independent thought. Good little wage slaves who will fight for nothing.

I love history and learning about different time periods and when I think what some of the 18-25 year olds used to have vs now it’s stunning. Henry VIII became king when he was 18

I sometimes think about this OP. But in reverse. Today our political leadership are people in their 60's.

In the past, as you say, political leaders may have been men in their 20's or 30's.
Different perspective, greater levels of testosterone, perhaps more to prove. I sometimes wonder how things might have played out differently if older people had made some of the key decisions in history.

In the Cuban missile crisis; John F Kennedy was 45. Nikita Kruschev was 68. It was Kruschev who made the first move to deescalate.

"We and you ought not to pull on the ends of a rope which you have tied the knots of war. Because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And then it is necessary to cut that knot, and what that means is not for me to explain to you. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. For such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles and then mutual annihilation will commence"

That's very much the perspective of an older man.

It really was not the norm for most girls to be getting married and having children at 12/13 - that was nearly only the most aristocratic families. The majority of women throughout history didn't marry until their mid 20s on average.

And even then 12/13, was considered at the very young end of the scale and those married at that age generally wouldn't live with their husband or share his bed. They'd either stay with their parents or would live in some appropriate place in their husband's household such as with his parents. 15-16 was more acceptable and consummation almost never took place prior to around age 14 for health reasons (outliers excepted).

The whole Maragaret Beaufort situation was shocking even by standards of the time.

Yes, this is how it should be, so no wonder you look on it with nostalgia.

However rents are so staggeringly high now that it is often impossible to save adequately to buy. Once people begin renting, they are trapped in the cycle of spending the vast majority of their pay on unstable housing. It’s savvy to stay with parents until you can buy, not immature or entitled. It’s virtually impossible to buy a house without family input now, be it help with the deposit or years spent saving in the family home.

Which is not to say that all young adults who stay at home are being savvy, but that once you begin renting privately it’s painfully difficult to extricate yourself.

OP, you may enjoy this article about the capabilities of young people. It echoes some of the things you are saying: www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-teen-brain/

@Saracen excellent article, fascinating, and clarifies absolutely what I've suspected for some time about the erroneous conclusion/overstatement of the "brains don't mature till 25" thing that I see constantly trotted out on here to excuse all sorts of immaturity and over-protective parenting.

I agree that in most societies, including ours until recently, the teens were a time of learning from adults when the brain is most adept and quickly absorbing that knowledge, and it was also a time of learning and taking on greater adult responsibilities.

I think the average age amongst common people was about 35 in the 16th century.

People had to grow up fast.

"I paid NI during my 16th, 17th and 18th years because I worked all the holidays. I had my 35 years NI paid by 50s so I can retire if necessary."

I have done the same

The paid work & volunteering that I started in my teens was the making of me & led to so many opportunities & meeting different people.

My older relatives left school at 14, 15 with no higher education. I completed a degree, then started earning a better wage.

I think that some young people have greater expectations; like not sharing accommodation, gap years, not working, less respect, poor time keeping, entitlement (but not everyone)

In my generation (graduated in the 80s) I think it was pretty common for young people to house/flat-share. I really get the feeling that these days people seem to 'want their own space' and not be so willing to flat share including bathroom / kitchen share with others.

I agree, don’t think there was ever a time you could buy a house straight after graduating. But now there seems an expectation that one should be able to do this. As you say people used to flat/house share or live in bedsits with shared facilities.

Lol. Yeah there was. My parents bought with 100% literally weeks after they graduated. As did many of their peers.

I agree, don’t think there was ever a time you could buy a house straight after graduating. But now there seems an expectation that one should be able to do this.

who on earth expects to buy straight after graduation?

Neither of my uni age children have en suites or parking spaces. Shared grotty bathrooms and tiny kitchens all the way.

I can say the reason I’ve driven them is cost. For ds2 to get to uni by train it’s over £100 for a single. A coach is half the price but it’s 14 hrs. Nearly 3 times the time it takes me to drive them and I can visit my parents en route. It didn’t cost me nearly that amount to travel long distances when I was young.

In a lot of places in my area a room rental is between 1000-1500 a month.

most young people do not live alone and have probably never.

Exactly - people have no idea the cost of rent. My friends stayed at home until 30- why- because their parents wanted them to save £1k a month on a deposit rather than waste on rent. This means bills etc are new to them come 30- the system is a mess.

today we were looking at en suite uni rooms with parking - I mean wtf????

were they free?