To think there's no such thing as a "soft life"?

[TheBestThingthatAlmostHappened]

Working is hard- regardless of if you are slogging away in a minimum wage job and still struggling to make ends meet, or under pressure in a high-stress, high pay role.

Surviving off benefits is hard.

Living off a partner and the stress and judgement that comes with that is hard.

Even being born into money is hard if you believe the stories coming out of those families.

AIBU to think that the current generation of young women being told to seek a "soft life" are being lied to and no such thing exists?

I have young adults and I have seen some of their sm feeds telling them to “follow their passion” to which I said they needed to prioritise eating and having warm clothes, decent shoes, and a roof over their heads first, and a bit of money left over for the emergency fund.

This is sadly why many of our arts are full of middle and upper class youths, in the absence of proper government subsidies and funding.

Not all, but quite a few young women in their 20s or early 30s drifting about the countryside in floaty clothes, dying wool with rose hips or making art paths with windfall apples, and posting on sm about it, are actually being subsidised by someone else.

I am sure there are subsidised young men as well but they are probably gaming instead or foraging with a spaniel.

I have a 16yo and a primary school age child who obviously has no SM. The 16yo did absorb some ideas about how she could have an easy life when she was younger but has thankfully found things she is passionate about and outgrown it. However, several of her friends have fully bought into it.

I really don't care if it comes up on my feed, I'm in my late 30s and even if there was such a life it's long since passed me by.

I'm asking, as I stated clearly in my OP and have clarified since, whether or not it's unreasonable to think that the girls who are seeing it (and maybe your teens aren't, although how you would be able to monitor every post they see I do not know) are being sold a lie which is going to leave them in a very vulnerable situation?

We know that teens are not always able to approach these types of things with critical thinking and are likely to believe what they see, especially if it's from a source they see as cool and relatable.

You sound depressed!

This is why education is so important. Teaching young people to think for themselves and to be curious but also to hold themselves accountable for their decisions. Teach children to question where they get their information from. What else can you do?

I didn't say it was crap. Crap and hard are two different things. Doing difficult things can be very fulfilling. But some level of struggle is to be expected in life and it isn't always fun. As you said, you had to work hard to get where you are and even if you find your life easy now it wasn't just handed to you.

I was a teacher though for a while (one of my many false starts but the experience has done me good) and it was the most stressful and difficult thing I've ever done, so hats off to you!

eh, you said that "Working is hard- regardless of if you are slogging away in a minimum wage job and still struggling to make ends meet, or under pressure in a high-stress, high pay role"

Are you now acknowledging that having nowt but shirt buttons is harder than having oddles of dosh?

And secondly, if ever you are "left with nothing" you go and get a job!

For goodness sake, how many times do I have to say this isn't about me?

I don't want a soft life, never sought out a soft life, worked hard at school and afterwards, made mistakes, made good choices, I have a good life which requires effort but my point is that I think ALL lives require effort and looking for an easy route is storing up problems for the future.

I don't see a problem in people seeking to have a less stressful more enjoyable life. I see no virtue in suffering. I do think its problematic to persuade young women that the route to that is via a man. Because no woman should place the quality of her life within the gift of her partner. A better message I think would be that it's possible to have a happier stress free life if you strip things back, bin materialism and focus on being rather than having.

My point is very clear, that there isn't an easy route and which ever path you choose you're going to encounter difficulty. Trying to set up a path where everything is easy is always going to be disastrous but it's exactly what girls are being encouraged to do.

Because looking the other way doesn't stop it impacting on younger people who believe in this stuff- and a lot do.

I would love to have a soft life, if soft equates to happy. Not sure what OP is trying to describe.

I can believe there is a phenomena "soft life" whereby young people don't push themselves to work hard, and harder still, and exponentially harder than every other generation just to find they still can't afford housing or to have a family. It just does 'not math'

AI, capitalism on its knees, war, monopoly, and lack of opportunities is bound to shape the way that people think and behave, what they can achieve and what they aspire to.

No, it's not very deep, it's actually quite a simple observation but if you don't understand it, that's OK, maybe find a picture book to keep you occupied instead.

I'm glad that you've cracked the code for ensuring your teenagers never see anything damaging on SM or have other negative influences, well done.

I see it on tiktok, it's mainly content creators who have / want to marry rich. They are always in their 20s too and young and beautiful, but you never see older people say things like that, they've probably had too much life experience 🤣
Of course there's always people richer than us or people we may be envious off but everyone has their issues and struggles throughout life.

I live the soft life atm. But it requires compromises.

I sold my home and moved back in with family.
My life is easy. I only have to work part time. So long as I don't get sick, I don't see it changing. Obviously the compromise is sharing a home. But I travel a lot so it's actually not as big if an issue as I worried it might be. I moved home so that I could afford to go see the world etc...

Just don't have kids. That's the biggest mistake you can make if you want to live life on easy mode. Because sometimes...we move back in with you! Haha

I think as long as you keep healthy and avoid having children and learn to say 'no' to people, life is only as hard as you make it. A lot of people are scared to go against the grain with things too becayse they care too much about other people's opinions. I've had people pity me for moving home and I'm like 'I'm living my best life so...'.

I know exactly what you're talking about OP. It's a a combination of Andrew Tate and surrendered wives, isn't it? Women can have a great life in a beautiful home floating from gym to hair appointment to mall, looking beautiful and having nothing more pressing to worry about than where to have lunch. All they need to do is lose all these ideas of careers, because that's just making life harder. Find a man, support him to be successful, make him happy, and its all so much nicer for everyone.

Life is hard, but my goodness some people get dealt more crap through no fault of their own. I've watched things happen to people I love that are far worse than the genuinely shitty things that have happened to me.

I won't make myself popular here, but does anyone know about the links between the civil rights movement and material economic changes happening at the same time? anyone thought about how feminism is reduced to arguments around labour, housework and paid employment in the 70's and looked at what was happening in the economy? how shifts in labour process and changes to what was produced and how seemed to jigsaw so perfectly with feminist demands?

I suspect that these young people that OP derides are on to something. Having read Marx yonks ago "the fragment on machines" points to a crisis from which capital doesn't rally, and a new way of life. AI is literally writing your essay as it spits out your future.

Hard work does not pay, and it hasn't done so for quite some time.