To think that adults are much less resilient than they used to be

[louease]

First of all I'll admit that I'm on the older side of 60 so the weight of my belt onion could be effecting my judgement on this.

I see a lot on social media including here where people say they are upset at words they read on a screen, that they've been triggered, or that it should have a warning attached.

Are we making the world harder to live in by trying to make it too comfortable do you think?

People are a lot more likely to make the most of what they have whereas previous generations who were given more on a plate are more needy/ spoilt and more likely to compare themselves in terms of physical wealth rather than health and happiness.

What a load of tripe. Previous generations started out adult life with so much less than young people do now, they didn't think they were entitled to have it all at a young age - funnily enough I discussed this with a person in real life just this morning. Previous generations had second hand furniture, and often clothing, they didn't go overseas for holidays, they didn't eat out, they didn't demand out of season food at cheap prices, they didn't think the shops should be open 24/7, they didn't require a new phone or car every year. They also lived through recessions much worse than what is happening at the moment.

People are a lot more likely to make the most of what they have whereas previous generations who were given more on a plate are more needy/ spoilt and more likely to compare themselves in terms of physical wealth rather than health and happiness

This is completely untrue. As a young adult in the 80s, I left home at 18. Lived in a bedsit, shared bathroom. No phone, no car, no holidays, none of the things considered normal now.

When I finally got a flat at 24, no fridge for the first month, no washing machine for the first year, second hand furniture. No takeaways, no holidays.

@magicthree is right.

"unusually good long span from the mid-90s to the late 2000s"
Hmmm...I wonder what could have been different about those years #labourgovernment?
This is divide and rule stuff. While we're all bitching about aren't young people/old people terrible the people in charge #tories have been funnelling money upwards for years.
Not to mention the fact that we live in a country where one man (Duke of Beaufort) owns 58000 acres in Gloucestershire and another man (Duke of Westminster, 32) owns half of London and paid no inheritance tax on the 9 billion he got from his old man.
Why the hell do we still have this feudal nonsense, when a million people are using foodbanks and no-one can afford to buy a house?
On a side note, I bloody loved the 70s. Maybe if we had more strikes these days we might all be better off. There's a reason why train drivers are so well paid. Strikes work. Most unions have been made impotent starting with Thatcher and the current lot are trying to make striking illegal.

Labour certainly helped, though the US did at least as well under a Republican government. National government have a limited impact on the economy in a global world (though the Tories managed to fuck the UK up pretty thoroughly with Black Monday in the 80s and Brexit this time round).

I agree that this discussion is pretty toxic. The whole "snowflake" label is just as bad as the "OK Boomer" stuff. In countering these untrue claims about older generations I'm not trying to add to the hyperbole about Gen-Y. But I am concerned about resilience because my own kids, currently teens, are anxious and insecure and easily knocked back in a way I really wasn't, and it hurts to see them that way. I'd love them to have more of the resilience I had. So I do wonder if it's generational and it occurs to me that all our efforts to make them safer may also instill too much fear. That academic pressure is too much, too young. And also that we teach ourselves (and I mean all of us, not just younger people) to care about other people's opinions when we might, perhaps, benefit from a more existentialist attitude.

(And in response to your aside - the threat of strikes and the power of organized labour was a huge factor in better pay and conditions for working class folks, the demise of unions has probably been one of the most significant factors in the increasing income disparity in the UK with people at the bottom gaining very little of the increases in GDP that the UK has seen. Nevertheless, my own experience of being a union member was, uniformly, being used as a pawn by the leadership for others' gain and I know I'm not alone in that. I have very conflicted feelings about unions because of that. Philosophically I'm all for them, but I don't personally want to join one again.)

I loved the 70s too @beguilingeyes. That’s probably got something to do with being young and lots of sex and drugs and rock and roll!

I don't think people are less resilient generally. I think they are outwardly a lot more authoritarian than they were. I do think the trigger warning safe space stuff is a tool is tool designed to manipulate certain outcomes in society. There's only certain topics that are considered to be 'unsafe'. Other areas, that genuinely are unsafe, seem to be a cause for celebration.

I bloody loved the 70s too @beguilingeyes

Ebay, vinted, marketplace and upcycling are huge with younger people.

Under 30s home ownership and car ownership is at its lowest point for decades.

We should be more like the French. We're too passive.
This business this morning of Liz Truss putting the architects of her disastrous budget in the House Of Lords is disgusting. There's no accountability for these people.

I think we definitely should be more like the French.

The fact that a lot of people think that the only other option is some kind of extreme return to he worst type of repressive social scenario is ...interesting.

What strikes me is that in a lot of cases, the best practice advice s that the kind of mental coddling that we often see now for people who suffer from anxiety or even in some cases mental illness is actually counter-productive.

Especially for anxiety, things like trigger warnings, avoiding normal everyday references and situations, is pretty much the opposite of healthy coping. Constantly talking about problems can also be harmful rather than helpful.

Speaking of the French … or looking at this issue from a more European perspective… it would be interesting to know if there is the same issue in France, Germany the Netherlands for example?

I could be wrong as this sort of thing is very hard to pin down but from the little I know, I don’t feel there’s quite the same crisis of anxiety and sense that “someone else is going to take care of this” as there in the uk, in other words , there is a certain “continental resilience” or encouragement of self-reliance.

Could this be about different education systems? We all know about some Austrian and German children walking to school alone at a very young age and presumably it’s assumed that the public will step in if ever there’s an issue? Perhaps that stronger sense of community gives you more confidence in life?

This is far too simplistic a theory but I would be interested to know what others think?

Maybe it simply boils down to the fact that all the time you spend on a screen, takes away from the time you are out in the world experiencing reality and actually practicing skills, so despite their greater theoretical knowledge, adolescents are simply less well prepared for practical life?

@MintJulia completely agree - we lived in some dreadful properties in the 90s and it’s made us much more appreciative of what we have now. There are much higher expectations nowadays among those who’ve grown up in m/c households.

I’m quite surprised at the pps here who have such happy memories of the 70s. There was certainly more freedom for adolescents I think and not as much academic, or career pressure for young adults. As someone said down thread, it was ok to just “be” and live an ordinary life.

But, in my experience, that was set against a background of significant material poverty and lack of opportunities, especially for women. And the legacy of WWII still loomed large in my house; both of my parents had been evacuees during their adolescence and a certain “make do and mend” mentality prevailed.

Maybe it was different in the south, but I lived just north of the Midlands as a child in the 60s and 70s, and honestly, it wasn’t pretty. Maybe there was more of a community spirit as people moved around less, but it’s been impossible to convey to my children the dearth of choice and huge difference in levels of material comfort as compared with today.

If any younger posters on here are interested, take a look at the series about the Yorkshire Ripper on Netflix. Not only will you by outraged by the misogyny, you will be pretty shocked by the scenes of the north of England in the 70s. It’s pretty grim.

At least she didn't drag us into an illegal war on the strength of a fictitious dossier, dreamt up by her spin doctor, that destabilised an entire region.

Talk about standing at the despatch box and lying through your teeth , Jeeze !. I mean, it only killed 100,000 ppl and cost a fre £billion !.

Spectacledbear67 I think all of those things are true. But on balance I still preferred the live and let live against that backdrop, than how it is now.

Classic bit of wharaboutery there. They're both terrible things. It's possible to be angry about more than one thing at once.

Interesting the op hasn't been resilient enough to come back.... 😂

Heres your problem..a generation is not one thing. It’s lots of contradictory things all at once. Poor/rich, progressive/inward looking

Aren't you contradicting yourself? If it hadn't been for the boomers you would still be machinists, secretaries if you were lucky and cleaners while the men ran the country and little women stayed home once married.....if lucky enough to have a home if you lost your home your children were taken away and home was a rented room in someone's house.

I do not think it is about resilience. There is too much focus on ourselves from how we are feeling to physical exercise. Although that has some good points, being too focussed on yourself is terrible for mental health. And social media makes this worse.

Not entirely true. My mother was pre boomer, silent generation. She was a computer programmer. Her sister was a translator. Women joining the workforce was the work of more than one generation. Still a work in progress, I would say.

I bet they only got those opportunities because of the war. Lots of women did. Then when it was all over it was back to the kitchen for them. Anecdota about outliers proves nothing.

@jannier is entirely correct.

My mum was a pre boomer too. She successfully ran her own business and was financially independent.

The lot of your average working class woman which certainly at that time made up the majority of women was basic, shops hairdressers, bus clippys and if you were extra clever secretaries you can't say the typical woman of the generation was a computer programmer ( not many computers about even late 80s was big main frames with a few pcs starting to appear) and not that many translators either after the war when most women were pushed back to their pre war roles .