Article: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation

[NorthwestMom]

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work

Has anyone else read this article? I am curious to hear others' opinions (as long as they don't bash an entire generation).  I am older than Millennials and my kids are in the generation below them, so I have no skin in the game. 

[Guest]

I just read some of (not all of) the article. I find it false. I have had “errand paralysis” about some things my entire life. For one thing, I hate - loathe! - having to do anything over the phone, especially when I am the petitioner and need some action to be taken on my behalf - issue me a refund, cancel my service, rectify some error on my behalf. I have almost intractable anxiety over such phone calls, even though I used to be employes as a Legal Secretary and, as such, had to make tons of calls exactly like that. (That was even before the internet, texting and filling out forms on-line existed, so there was more need to manage this stuff by phone.) 

I have “eaten” the cost of clothes not returned because I couldn’t get around to it, eaten the cost of poor service because I couldn’t work up the nerve to call for a refund, missed out on opportunities because I couldn’t make myself take the needed steps. I missed a huge opportunity for employment in linguistics with the federal government as a teen, though I had placed very high on an aptitude test that only one other girl in my high school class passed, because I had to get fingerprinted and answer security clearance questions and I didn’t know exactly how that worked. So I sat around twiddling my thumbs until the deadline lapsed. 

So - I have done exactly what the author is saying and I am not a Millenial by more than ten years. 

Additionally, I disagree with his premise that milennials “think they are always supposed to be working.” I think, on the whole, millenials have been kept in a great deal of comfort and do NOT think they are always supposed to be working; they are the generation more likely to believe it’s very important they are not overworked or suffering from stress or doing work they don’t enjoy or find unfulfilling. If anything, I think the message that we must all work our asses off constantly, climb the ladder, make lots of money, was the rallying cry of those of us raised in the 80s. 

[Arcadia]

My brother is born in 1981 and I have a few nephews born between 1981 and 1996. None of them are white though which was how the article was defining the millennials burnout group. 

US had recessions in 1981, 1990/91, 2001 so I won’t say someone growing up in the states in the 80s and 90s did not experience a recession.  Maybe their family cushioned most of the recession effects but my kids definately knew there was plenty of layoffs during the Great Recession even though we didn’t have to cut our family budget spending. My kids knew there is no such thing as job security despite growing up middle class. 

If millennial burnout is due to having grown up in a stable middle class family environment, then why is the millennial behavior mainly attributed to the white. 

From article

“Many of the behaviors attributed to millennials are the behaviors of a specific subset of mostly white, largely middle-class people born between 1981 and 1996.”

[historically accurate]

I'm a Generation X'er and when I was in my 20s, I couldn't get most errands done. Now, looking back at it, I think a lot was anxiety. I had been in school while I was a kid so didn't tag along on errands - my parents usually worked nights and ran errands during the school day, so I just hadn't seen people returning things, voting, etc. "What do I tell them I need at the shoe repair place? Will they know what I'm trying to order at the florist?" I think it was anxiety since now that I've done most of the errands, I can confidently walk up to the Walmart counter, and say, "I'd like to return this." My kids, who are the generation after Millenials, are better off since they've tagged along on errands since they were tiny...

 

[Murphy101]

This very much resonates with me and many of the kids/young adults I meet through my kids.  Yes, I have been there and done that at times in my life too, but it wasn't the definition of most of my life and for many of them it is.  And I do see how it affects them.  It has been foundational to their outlook on adulthood in a way that is very different from their parents and grandparents.

Also, I have said this for many years now, but somehow we need to toss the notion that their 20s are where they find themselves.  What crap.  Imnsho, our 20s is not when we learn who we are, but when we learn who we are not.

Yes some are spoiled lazy and ridiculous, but I know many who are not and have far more stress and pressure and far less belief in the ability to create a secure future for themselves or a possible family.

[MeaganS]

Meh. I'm a white middle class-raised millennial and that doesn't ring true for me and those I know. I have one sister that probably comes close to this, but she's technically too young to be considered a millenial by their definition, and I think it's just immaturity more than anything. But yeah, my siblings (and sibling in-laws) are almost all millenials are all contributing members of society that have our acts together. And that's a large sample size. There's 5 on my side, 5 on dh's side, and all but 2 are married. 

Edited January 7, 2019 by MeaganS

[MeaganS]

I do think our generation is way more likely to examine our emotions and figure out why we feel the way we do, though. Mental health is a much more recognized issue for us, so it's possible you will hear us talk about it more. And we're much more likely to question expectations about the future. 

[Pawz4me]

Oh good grief. I read the first few paragraphs and then scanned the rest of the drivel. What a waste of a few minutes of my life. I have zero patience with stereotyping any one "generation" as if they're a monolith, regardless of whether the stereotyping is in general good or bad.

FWIW--Oldest DS is a millenial. As are all of our nephews and my best friends' daughters. Nothing in that article rings true for me. All the millenials I know are good, capable folks. Sure they have their issues. Just like all of us do. But none of them are whiny excuse makers like the author of that piece.

[Catwoman]

Am I the only one who couldn’t even make it to the end of that article? 

The author went on and on and on and on, and quite frankly, I found her to be more than a little annoying.

My one takeaway from the whole thing was this... At what point did most people assume they would have a job that would enable them to retire at 55?  I know some people do retire early, but the author tossed that statement in as though it was a common expectation among older generations... and I do not believe that was the case at all. Sure, people might have hoped to retire when they were younger than average, but most people never really expected or assumed that it would happen.

[Catwoman]

3 minutes ago, Pawz4me said:

Oh good grief. I read the first few paragraphs and then scanned the rest of the drivel. What a waste of a few minutes of my life. I have zero patience with stereotyping any one "generation" as if they're a monolith, regardless of whether the stereotyping is in general good or bad.

FWIW--Oldest DS is a millenial. As are all of our nephews and my best friends' daughters. Nothing in that article rings true for me. All the millenials I know are good, capable folks. Sure they have their issues. Just like all of us do. But none of them are whiny excuse makers like the author of that piece.

 

You were posting while I was typing! 🙂

I’m so glad I’m not the only one who couldn’t make it through that whiny mess!!!

[Skippy]

I couldn't make it through the whole article either. I have noticed that the younger generations than me do seem to suffer more from errand paralysis. But this may just be due to a lack of maturity, meaning that they haven't been on the planet as long as I have yet. Also, this often seems to be worse when communication is by older forms, such as telephone or mail. Similarly, older generations than me sometimes have errand paralysis when newer forms of communication are involved. 

1 hour ago, Quill said:

Additionally, I disagree with his premise that milennials “think they are always supposed to be working.”

I agree. I don't see a link here. I don't buy it that the errand paralysis is because they "think they are always supposed to be working." 

[Corraleno]

I feel like I read a different article than some of the others commenting here. If you read to the end, the author is arguing the exact opposite of the stereotype that millennials are lazy or spoiled or helpless. The first few paragraphs are not very representative of the rest of the article. Her "thesis" is basically this: 

"To describe millennial burnout accurately is to acknowledge the multiplicity of our lived reality... We’re deeply in debt, working more hours and more jobs for less pay and less security, struggling to achieve the same standards of living as our parents, operating in psychological and physical precariousness, all while being told that if we just work harder, meritocracy will prevail, and we’ll begin thriving. The carrot dangling in front of us is the dream that the to-do list will end, or at least become far more manageable."

Replace the word millennial throughout the article with the phrase "many young adults" and it's hard to argue with most of her points. Petersen is saying that "errand paralysis" basically comes from having a To Do List that never ends, so people just keep pushing the lower priority items — things that are less urgent or have a very small payback for the effort — to the bottom of the list. She notes that it particularly affects women, who often work full time and then come home and work a "second shift" doing most of the cooking, cleaning, childcare, and what's been variously termed "worry work" or "emotional labor." 

I thought this comment was spot-on: "The most common prescription [for burnout] is “self-care.” Give yourself a face mask! Go to yoga! Use your meditation app! But much of self-care isn’t care at all: It’s an $11 billion industry whose end goal isn’t to alleviate the burnout cycle, but to provide further means of self-optimization. At least in its contemporary, commodified iteration, self-care isn’t a solution; it’s exhausting." In other words, it becomes just one more item on the To Do List: make yourself less exhausted — in 30 minutes or less, because that's all the time you can spare.

I'm a far from a millennial, and although I can identify with much of what she says about the current atmosphere of economic anxiety, that was absolutely not my lived experience as a 20-30 something. As a "boomer," I had very little college debt, despite putting myself through both undergrad and grad school with zero help from parents, and as a young adult I never worried that I wouldn't be able to find a job or support myself. Not that I didn't have to take some crummy jobs just to pay the bills sometimes, but I never felt like "this is as good as it's ever going to get." And my To Do lists were a hell of a lot shorter, without 37 emails and a dozen texts to respond to, work calls to return while eating dinner, etc.

[Murphy101]

13 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

I feel like I read a different article than some of the others commenting here. If you read to the end, the author is arguing the exact opposite of the stereotype that millennials are lazy or spoiled or helpless. The first few paragraphs are not very representative of the rest of the article. Her "thesis" is basically this: 

"To describe millennial burnout accurately is to acknowledge the multiplicity of our lived reality... We’re deeply in debt, working more hours and more jobs for less pay and less security, struggling to achieve the same standards of living as our parents, operating in psychological and physical precariousness, all while being told that if we just work harder, meritocracy will prevail, and we’ll begin thriving. The carrot dangling in front of us is the dream that the to-do list will end, or at least become far more manageable."

Replace the word millennial throughout the article with the phrase "many young adults" and it's hard to argue with most of her points. Petersen is saying that "errand paralysis" basically comes from having a To Do List that never ends, so people just keep pushing the lower priority items — things that are less urgent or have a very small payback for the effort — to the bottom of the list. She notes that it particularly affects women, who often work full time and then come home and work a "second shift" doing most of the cooking, cleaning, childcare, and what's been variously termed "worry work" or "emotional labor." 

I thought this comment was spot-on: "The most common prescription [for burnout] is “self-care.” Give yourself a face mask! Go to yoga! Use your meditation app! But much of self-care isn’t care at all: It’s an $11 billion industry whose end goal isn’t to alleviate the burnout cycle, but to provide further means of self-optimization. At least in its contemporary, commodified iteration, self-care isn’t a solution; it’s exhausting." In other words, it becomes just one more item on the To Do List: make yourself less exhausted — in 30 minutes or less, because that's all the time you can spare.

I'm a far from a millennial, and although I can identify with much of what she says about the current atmosphere of economic anxiety, that was absolutely not my lived experience as a 20-30 something. As a "boomer," I had very little college debt, despite putting myself through both undergrad and grad school with zero help from parents, and as a young adult I never worried that I wouldn't be able to find a job or support myself. Not that I didn't have to take some crummy jobs just to pay the bills sometimes, but I never felt like "this is as good as it's ever going to get." And my To Do lists were a hell of a lot shorter, without 37 emails and a dozen texts to respond to, work calls to return while eating dinner, etc.

Oh thank goodness. That’s what and how I read the article too. I think too many people in this thread didn’t really keep reading past the word millennial.

I completely agree with you.

And the fear of not knowing what they are going to do/be by 22-24 was unheard of in my generation. Sure we were expected to work and make progress toward independent adulthood - but most adults I grew up with understood that your 20s is not when you find yourself and discover who you are, it’s when you learn who you are not via trial and error and getting some life experience.

[Murphy101]

My parents had a 6th grade education and they still managed to provide an exponentially better life in every way for their 4 children than they had. My grandparents were more poor and provided a better life for all their kids. Even considering all the horrid dysfunction and abuse, yes, absolutely no debate that for 3 generations in both my husbands parents and my parents - each generation did better in health and standard of living than the previous. 

That does not mean each of those generations didn’t have extreme hardship to attain that betterment. 

But the major thing is that the hardship for many did in fact pay off in a better life or even at least in the ability to maintain the previous generation attainments. 

This generation does not feel any assurance of that end and are rightly questioning whether they’ve been fed a bunch of lies about how to make those achievements.

[forty-two]

I read the whole thing.  I'm not sure what I think about it.  On the one hand, I'm an older millennial, and I *do* relate to the errand paralysis thing, a lot.  While I'm not a fan of the word "adulting", I haven't found a better way to explain the feeling other than "adulting is hard".  My millennial sis feels the same way, even though, unlike me, she never went through a "failing at life" period.  And ITU what the author is getting at wrt feeling like getting and keeping a good job where you retired at 55 was the norm for the generations before us - idk, financial security really did feel like a thing that naturally and inevitably would come as a result of working hard and succeeding in school.  Unlike the author, though, when I realized we would never have the financial security of my parents, I also came to the conclusion that the expectations I formed based on 90s prosperity were just wrong - that the norm *isn't* and never has been "work hard and follow the rules inevitably leads to an easy, prosperous life".  That said, I also lost a lot of faith in the "rules" my corner of American society taught me to follow - I do feel like society sold me a false notion of what life is like.  I don't trust what American institutions are teaching anymore - I think common notions of the good life and how to achieve it are fundamentally wrong. 

That's one difference between me and the author: she complains so much about the results of following common notions of the good life - that it promised one thing but delivered the opposite - yet she never seemed to reject those notions of the good life.  I mean, most of the essay is about how following those common notions inevitably leads to burnout, about how following the promised route to the good life didn't actually result in achieving the good life, and while she hates the results, she still seems to think that the promised good life really *is* the right goal to aim at, even as she despairs of ever achieving it.  She doesn't even really seem to see an alternative to the endless cycle she so deplores.

I thought she was bang on with self-care as an industry, as yet one more thing to do instead of a respite from things to do.  Also, I thought her observations about the centrality of the optimization of life and how people treat efficiency as the ultimate path to success - even though the empirical results of more efficiency are a decrease, not an increase, in the markers of success - were insightful, though.  Made me think of a book on my shelf: "The Cult of Efficiency".  I think there's something there about the assumption that life can and should be optimized that makes it hard to do un-optimizable tasks.  And I definitely think the whole quest for efficiency kind of closes you off from whole swaths of life.  Which is why I'm deliberately trying to disentangle efficiency from my views of the good life.  And it's where I get frustrated with her, because for all the systemic aspects of millennial life she describes as contributing to burnout, she still seems to be unquestionably accepting their fundamental validity.

But despite how a lot of things in her piece resonate with my experience, I just don't think the core explanation is burnout.  For me personally, I tend to attribute it to a combo of anxiety and that stereotypical "special snowflake" fragility.  But bringing up anxiety reminds me of something - when she was mentioning burnout symptoms in history, her Ecclesiastes example is something far more than her "too much for too long" burnout.  That kind of "world weariness" is more a result of chasing after the *wrong* things for too long.  Which, honestly, is what she seemed to be describing to me - the negative effects of chasing after the wrong definition of success for too long.   Her take seemed to be the negative effects of chasing after success but never achieving the results which success was supposed to give you (no matter how much you succeeded) - but at what point do you conclude that the impossibility of achieving the good life no matter how much you succeed is because *there's something fundamentally wrong with what you are aiming at*.

[Ausmumof3]

2 hours ago, Quill said:

I just read some of (not all of) the article. I find it false. I have had “errand paralysis” about some things my entire life. For one thing, I hate - loathe! - having to do anything over the phone, especially when I am the petitioner and need some action to be taken on my behalf - issue me a refund, cancel my service, rectify some error on my behalf. I have almost intractable anxiety over such phone calls, even though I used to be employes as a Legal Secretary and, as such, had to make tons of calls exactly like that. (That was even before the internet, texting and filling out forms on-line existed, so there was more need to manage this stuff by phone.) 

I have “eaten” the cost of clothes not returned because I couldn’t get around to it, eaten the cost of poor service because I couldn’t work up the nerve to call for a refund, missed out on opportunities because I couldn’t make myself take the needed steps. I missed a huge opportunity for employment in linguistics with the federal government as a teen, though I had placed very high on an aptitude test that only one other girl in my high school class passed, because I had to get fingerprinted and answer security clearance questions and I didn’t know exactly how that worked. So I sat around twiddling my thumbs until the deadline lapsed. 

So - I have done exactly what the author is saying and I am not a Millenial by more than ten years. 

Additionally, I disagree with his premise that milennials “think they are always supposed to be working.” I think, on the whole, millenials have been kept in a great deal of comfort and do NOT think they are always supposed to be working; they are the generation more likely to believe it’s very important they are not overworked or suffering from stress or doing work they don’t enjoy or find unfulfilling. If anything, I think the message that we must all work our asses off constantly, climb the ladder, make lots of money, was the rallying cry of those of us raised in the 80s. 

FWIW though this author is 38 which would make her an 80s child.  I would have thought that made her gen x but I’m fuzzy on that stuff?

[Arcadia]

2 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

FWIW though this author is 38 which would make her an 80s child.  I would have thought that made her gen x but I’m fuzzy on that stuff?

 

My brother is born in 1981 and would turn 38 in May. So if the author is 38, she would likely be born in 1980 and by her own definition of millennial in the article would make her the tail end of Gen X.

[forty-two]

2 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

FWIW though this author is 38 which would make her an 80s child.  I would have thought that made her gen x but I’m fuzzy on that stuff?

The author defines millennial as born 1981-1996.  I'm right there with her, in that depending on the definition, I could be classed as either a young gen-x'er or as an old millennial.  I have a lot more in common with millennial experiences than gen-x, so I tend to include myself in the millennials.

[Ausmumof3]

45 minutes ago, Skippy said:

I couldn't make it through the whole article either. I have noticed that the younger generations than me do seem to suffer more from errand paralysis. But this may just be due to a lack of maturity, meaning that they haven't been on the planet as long as I have yet. Also, this often seems to be worse when communication is by older forms, such as telephone or mail. Similarly, older generations than me sometimes have errand paralysis when newer forms of communication are involved. 

I agree. I don't see a link here. I don't buy it that the errand paralysis is because they "think they are always supposed to be working." 

I was thinking this. I’m horrible at procrastinating about face to face errands but my older family members will go to great lengths to achieve something without using a computer or phone that could’ve been done in two minutes otherwise.

[Ausmumof3]

A lot of it resonated with me even as a non working non PHD homeschooling mum.   The thing about optimisation was the biggest one. My sisters homeschooled.  My mum homeschooled for a while.  They bought standard out of the box curriculum or whatever education bookstore stuff was for sale. I have spent far too many hours trying to create the “perfect” curriculum for my kids. This is not enforced or anything but I think it is an extension of that optimisation mindset.

another thing that I think she skirted around is the lack of value placed on domestic or care labour. In an era of optimisation anything that doesn’t have a dollar value is perceived as totally valueless.  Also I notice with dhs company they seem to employ too many managers who sit down with spreadsheets figuring out how to minimise issues and not enough people just going around maintaining the machines they are meant to maintain.

i did find it too long and fluffy and kept falling asleep.  But there were definite elements of truth to it.

 

[Frances]

5 minutes ago, OKBud said:

I'm a millennial and the biggest difference I see between us and ppl my parents and much older siblings' ages is that we're unmoored in what I gather are unprecedented ways, en masse. 

Our parents seemed to be disallusioned with everything (marriage, religion, democracy....). We grew up with the internet. Decision fatigue factored heavily into our lives from very early on. The future seems really intangible and we have few or no irl institutions to buoy us (and what we do have, we've wrought for ourselves, we weren't, like, initiated into the club...). Many of us live scattered  far from family. There are more ways to "be yourself," but pressure to have the correct opinion about every little thing is higher than ever.

Some people have always dealt with all those things, but I don't think it's at this scale. 

I did read the article and disagree with some of it, and agree with some of it 

It’s actually more likely now that a millennial will live closer to family than some previous gerenations. Migration within the US has been decreasing drastically since the 1980s. While those with more advanced education are more likely to move away for jobs, more and more people are staying near family. 

As a parent of a very young millennial, I don’t see myself or my peers as disillusioned with marriage or democracy. Many of us have left religion, but at least for me it wasn’t due to disillusionment. Maybe I’m not the cohort you’re discussing, as I’m just barely a baby boomer.

[Ausmumof3]

42 minutes ago, StellaM said:

I reject the idea that what is happening to millenials is something new. 

The post war bubble of single income security and rising standards of living (in the West) appears, the further we get away from it, to be a  historical anomaly, a blip. 

Even then, boomers lived in the shadow of the atomic bomb and the Cold War. Gen X  graduated into a recession (at least where I am). As a generation, we were also impacted by the threat of nuclear war.

Other generations grew up into the Great  Depression, or went to war, or worked on the home front. And that's just the 20th C. 

Working class people through history (the vast majority of people) have always worked till death or disability, have been food and housing insecure, health care insecure. If you were female you could not control your fertility reliably - not till the 60's! - and birthing was even more dangerous than it is now. 

Life is hard, historically. The exact challenges change; the fact that it is difficult remains the same. This is not unique to Millenials. The idea that the millenial to-do list is somehow uniquely long is a difficult one to support. 

I don't buy the idea that millenials are a snowflake generation. But the flip side of that is that I don't believe millenials are 'special' in having it hard.

This kind of reminds me of the chapter about the Black Plague in Sotw. Afterward there was a big increase in living standards for the survivors. Maybe after any mass disaster for humans (war, revolution, disease) that reduces the population we get a bubble of prosperity.

[Corraleno]

27 minutes ago, forty-two said:

That's one difference between me and the author: she complains so much about the results of following common notions of the good life - that it promised one thing but delivered the opposite - yet she never seemed to reject those notions of the good life.  I mean, most of the essay is about how following those common notions inevitably leads to burnout, about how following the promised route to the good life didn't actually result in achieving the good life, and while she hates the results, she still seems to think that the promised good life really *is* the right goal to aim at, even as she despairs of ever achieving it.  She doesn't even really seem to see an alternative to the endless cycle she so deplores.

 

<snip>

That kind of "world weariness" is more a result of chasing after the *wrong* things for too long.  Which, honestly, is what she seemed to be describing to me - the negative effects of chasing after the wrong definition of success for too long.   Her take seemed to be the negative effects of chasing after success but never achieving the results which success was supposed to give you (no matter how much you succeeded) - but at what point do you conclude that the impossibility of achieving the good life no matter how much you succeed is because *there's something fundamentally wrong with what you are aiming at*.

What is the alternative though for people in their 30s, who already have a lot of debt and who have been working their butts off since high school in the hope of just having a good stable job that would allow them to own a house, raise a family, afford healthcare, and someday retire with a decent income? And why shouldn't people want those things? I certainly didn't get the impression that she was complaining she couldn't afford a McMansion and a BMW and private school tuition for kids — she came out of grad school with a lot of debt and has had to work her butt off to find a job in a market where there are far more PhDs than jobs, and tons of competition just for crummy low-paid adjunct positions. How do you get off the treadmill if you have to work two jobs just to cover your student loans, rent, and health insurance premiums? I don't think it's so much that she wants the "wrong things" as it is that the current economy makes it difficult for lot of young adults to have even the most basic things — at least not with any sense of security. 

Edited January 7, 2019 by Corraleno

[Ausmumof3]

Ironically as I scrolled away from this my phone came up with the automated reminders.  In order there was a news article saying “how much exercise do you really need to keep that New Years resolution” followed by a personal habit training app “so it’s not that hard to drink your water is it?”  Followed by a “quick brain training games now!” Reminder.

optimisation!

I do think it’s less that we have more to do and now that there’s less of an immediate payback for Undone tasks.  With my farm chores If I don’t feed stuff they die.  With more modern tasks there’s smaller consequences.  If I don’t exercise I will die sooner but not tomorrow.  When work was more physical no one probably needed a reminder to drink water.  

[Frances]

24 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:

My parents had a 6th grade education and they still managed to provide an exponentially better life in every way for their 4 children than they had. My grandparents were more poor and provided a better life for all their kids. Even considering all the horrid dysfunction and abuse, yes, absolutely no debate that for 3 generations in both my husbands parents and my parents - each generation did better in health and standard of living than the previous. 

That does not mean each of those generations didn’t have extreme hardship to attain that betterment. 

But the major thing is that the hardship for many did in fact pay off in a better life or even at least in the ability to maintain the previous generation attainments. 

This generation does not feel any assurance of that end and are rightly questioning whether they’ve been fed a bunch of lies about how to make those achievements.

While this is certainly true in the US, it’s interesting to note that overall in the world, things are significantly better. Globally, we’ve made significant progress in terms of hunger, poverty, literacy, healthcare, etc. But in some countries like the US, we seem to be going backwards in many ways due to the ever increasing wealth inequality. The majority of resources are becoming more and more concentrated in fewer hands, while everyone else is left to figure out how to secure affordable healthcare, afford a home, fund retirement without a pension, and pay for college. Time magazine had a very interesting article about this phenomenon last year. 

[Ausmumof3]

2 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

My boomer Dad left the Navy at 55 and promptly got a job in the community sector. He went p/t at 68, and only retired at 72.  My Mum started work when I was 12 and my sister was 7, and then she worked till she was 68, only going p/t in the last year. 

Maybe it's normal for the very wealthy to retire at 55, but not for ordinary people.

Also I think retirement looked different.  My dad did retire pretty young but grew all the family fruit and veg and meat on a hobby farm and did most repairs on the rentals that were funding retirement.  (Other than stuff that needed a licensed tradesperson).   It’s a retirement of sorts but one where so much is done from scratch or in a self sufficient way that they aren’t just sitting around.  They’re working in different ways to afford the step away from paid employment.

[Corraleno]

10 minutes ago, StellaM said:

It's not just young adults. 

Our societies are full of people of all ages struggling for the basics, of all kinds.

Maybe this is a shock to some middle class 38 year olds, to find themselves in this cohort. 

I think it's a shock to many young adults because they grew up with the myth that anyone can be successful and financially stable if they just work hard enough. They grew up being told that the reason poor people are poor is because they're lazy — if they just worked harder, they wouldn't be poor. So many of them worked their butts off to get good grades in HS, get into good colleges, take loans to get the degree they were told would guarantee a good job — and then they ended up poor anyway. The exact same labels and arguments that are being thrown at millennials have always been aimed at poor people. But now there are lots of people who did not grow up poor, who have played by the same rules their parents did and expected to have the same outcomes, but who have now discovered that working hard does not keep you from being poor. 

 

12 minutes ago, Margaret in CO said:

Whine, whine, whine. Yeah, life is hard. It is for every generation! All of my children are technically millennials, and ya' know what? ALL are launched save the one still in college. Yeah, their dad with terminal cancer is still working 7 days a week. What else is he going to do--see above comment. We still have one in school. No, the boomers did not retire at 55--I don't know ANYONE who retired at 55! Good heavens--what would they do--go on cruises for 30+ years? My dad didn't retire until almost 70. Hard to get off your rear to pick up the dry cleaning? Poor pitiful you. Hard to schedule a dentist appointment. Ah...poor little darling. Grow up. 

 

6 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

My boomer Dad left the Navy at 55 and promptly got a job in the community sector. He went p/t at 68, and only retired at 72.  My Mum started work when I was 12 and my sister was 7, and then she worked till she was 68, only going p/t in the last year. 

Maybe it's normal for the very wealthy to retire at 55, but not for ordinary people.

My stepfather retired at 60, after working as a lineman for the power company for thirty years. And yes, going on cruises was exactly what he and my mother did. They were far from wealthy —  they were very much blue collar, my mother never worked, but he had a good pension, their house was paid off, they paid nothing towards my college education (and none of my siblings went to college), and they had no debt. Many of their friends — all blue collar/working class — retired around the same ages and had the same standard of living. So it was not at all uncommon among "ordinary people" that I knew growing up.

[Murphy101]

36 minutes ago, forty-two said:

I read the whole thing.  I'm not sure what I think about it. 

that the norm *isn't* and never has been "work hard and follow the rules inevitably leads to an easy, prosperous life".  That said, I also lost a lot of faith in the "rules" my corner of American society taught me to follow - I do feel like society sold me a false notion of what life is like.  I don't trust what American institutions are teaching anymore - I think common notions of the good life and how to achieve it are fundamentally wrong. 

That's one difference between me and the author: she complains so much about the results of following common notions of the good life - that it promised one thing but delivered the opposite - yet she never seemed to reject those notions of the good life. 

I thought she was bang on with self-care as an industry, as yet one more thing to do instead of a respite from things to do. 

But despite how a lot of things in her piece resonate with my experience, I just don't think the core explanation is burnout.

 That kind of "world weariness" is more a result of chasing after the *wrong* things for too long.  Which, honestly, is what she seemed to be describing to me - the negative effects of chasing after the wrong definition of success for too long.   Her take seemed to be the negative effects of chasing after success but never achieving the results which success was supposed to give you (no matter how much you succeeded) - but at what point do you conclude that the impossibility of achieving the good life no matter how much you succeed is because *there's something fundamentally wrong with what you are aiming at*.

I got the impression she was speaking as someone who has come to these realizations and is struggling as so many of us are these days with an "Okay. That was BS. Now what?" life crisis question.

It's easy to say just have better work/personal life balance, but it's not so easy when your boss pays you $9 an hour and expects you to give your cell phone number and pick up whenever they call.  Ttrue story of my 20 yr old last week.  And he had no idea why I was upset about it.  Because that's the only way to keep a job these days.  They wouldn't give a shift, they said they'd call when it looked like business was picking up. What the hecken?! Oh you better pay more than that if you want on call service imo.  That would NEVER have been suggested when I was 20. It's easy to say have different expectations, but then they get called lazy do nothings who can't keep a job.  And the truth is, we have a consumer economy, and the LAST thing an already struggling consumer economy wants is for an entire generation to decide to opt out of spending more. There's a LOT of pressure to have a certain standard of living to fit in social dynamics.  There shouldn't be, but there's no denying that there just is.  I don't know that it's reasonable to say expect that bucking and walking away to be easy or manageable.

[Ausmumof3]

5 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

I think it's a shock to many young adults because they grew up with the myth that anyone can be successful and financially stable if they just work hard enough. They grew up being told that the reason poor people are poor is because they're lazy — if they just worked harder, they wouldn't be poor. So many of them worked their butts off to get good grades in HS, get into good colleges, take loans to get the degree they were told would guarantee a good job — and then they ended up poor anyway. The exact same labels and arguments that are being thrown at millennials have always been aimed at poor people. But now there are lots of people who did not grow up poor, who have played by the same rules their parents did and expected to have the same outcomes, but who have now discovered that working hard does not keep you from being poor. 

 

 

My stepfather retired at 60, after working as a lineman for the power company for thirty years. And yes, going on cruises was exactly what he and my mother did. They were far from wealthy —  they were very much blue collar, my mother never worked, but he had a good pension, their house was paid off, they paid nothing towards my college education (and none of my siblings went to college), and they had no debt. Many of their friends — all blue collar/working class — retired around the same ages and had the same standard of living. So it was not at all uncommon among "ordinary people" that I knew growing up.

It’s peobably more common with blue collar workers because the heavy physical labour becomes too taxing on older bodies.

[Arcadia]

2 hours ago, Quill said:

Additionally, I disagree with his premise that milennials “think they are always supposed to be working.” 

 

1 hour ago, Skippy said:

I agree. I don't see a link here. I don't buy it that the errand paralysis is because they "think they are always supposed to be working." 

 

I had a workaholic country sales manager who thinks everyone in his office location should work 24/7 because they (including secretaries) have company issued laptops and cellphones. I didn’t need the job that badly so I told him off from time to time. I have internet since 1988 and a cellphone since 1991. I do think people’s expectations of turn around time becomes shorter as technology advanced.

Before cellphones, bosses expect you to call back on receiving a page when you find a landline or public phone. Public internet access was rare so companies either paid for their employees cellphones’ data plans or be patient in waiting for email replies. SMS cost was high too so bosses were less likely to send a dozen SMS per day to employees. Now my husband’s colleagues would be sending WhatsApp messages a few times a day every day, emails and also call if they can’t wait for a WhatsApp reply. My kid’s tutor sent me an email around dinnertime and SMS me ten minutes later because I haven’t replied. He could have sent a chaser email after 30mins before sending an SMS. 

I don’t see it as a millennials only thing but the widespread use of internet and smartphones/tablets did seems to imply an “always connected” existence and the line blurrs between work and personal time.  My family doctor sent me an email when my immunity results and cholesterol results came out even though it was before 7am and she officially start work at 7:30am. My lab results were posted online at 6am but I won’t have mind if the family doctor sent me a follow up email when she is free during her office hours (7:30am to 6pm).

[Corraleno]

55 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

This kind of confirms my impression of the article - relatively privileged youth grow up and discover what poor people knew all along.

Life is hard. It's often not fair. There is too much to do, and not enough energy, time or money to do it. 

Poor people have always known that working hard does not mean you will escape poverty.

 

Not in this country. You would be surprised by how many people who are just barely making do are convinced that anyone poorer than they are is just lazy and not working hard enough. There are people who are themselves on public assistance who think other people on public assistance are just lazy moochers. There are people on food stamps who vote for politicians who explicitly say they want to cut food stamps. The cognitive dissonance is truly bizarre. It's really not just a matter of clueless privileged middle class kids who never knew what the poor have always known — it's a fundamental and pervasive part of the American mythos that many poor people buy into as well. 

Edited January 7, 2019 by Corraleno

[Murphy101]

 

28 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

What is the alternative though for people in their 30s, who already have a lot of debt and who have been working their butts off since high school in the hope of just having a good stable job that would allow them to own a house, raise a family, afford healthcare, and someday retire with a decent income? And why shouldn't people want those things? I certainly didn't get the impression that she was complaining she couldn't afford a McMansion and a BMW and private school tuition for kids — she came out of grad school with a lot of debt and has had to work her butt off to find a job in a market where there are far more PhDs than jobs, and tons of competition just for crummy low-paid adjunct positions. How do you get off the treadmill if you have to work two jobs just to cover your student loans, rent, and health insurance premiums? I don't think it's so much that she wants the "wrong things" as it is that the current economy makes it difficult for lot of young adults to have even the most basic things — at least not with any sense of security. 

Right?! 

And keep in mind, we old farts in this thread are calling her a "young adult" - she's 38! 

I know I used to think that somewhere around 40ish, life was supposed to have reached more of a precipice, or at least a plateau.  Sure we'd still need to work and live life, but we'd have reached a point where we could start to see some result of the labors. 

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm a bit resentful that was apparently just more bullshirt.

So you bet I decided not to be crazy.  Damned if I'm going to do all the same "responsible" "right" things I've always done in hopes of a different result if I just give it another 26 years of my life. Screw that.  I'm going to the Caribbean.

[Corraleno]

I think millennials are in a no-win situation, because older, wealthier people tell them that it's their own fault they're poor, and when they complain that no matter how hard they work they can't get ahead, the long-term poor tell them to stop complaining because life sucks and that's just the way it is.

What we're seeing now is a whole lot of 20-30 years olds saying but it shouldn't be that way. In a country as rich as the US, people who go to school and work hard should be able to afford to raise a family and have a roof over their heads and see a doctor when they need to. It blows my mind that people wanting to be paid a living wage and not die from preventable diseases or lose their homes because insulin costs more than their monthly rent get told they're just lazy and entitled snowflakes who need to grow up. 

[Murphy101]

22 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

This kind of confirms my impression of the article - relatively privileged youth grow up and discover what poor people knew all along.

Life is hard. It's often not fair. There is too much to do, and not enough energy, time or money to do it. 

Poor people have always known that working hard does not mean you will escape poverty.

 

Wait.  Is it whining when minorities and poor people have these issues?

You are absolutely right that poor or poorer people, regardless of color have always known what this woman is talking about.  Is that worthy of dismissing the issues out of hand?

I don't think so.  

I keep hearing this kind of talk and have my whole life.

Instead of calling it whining, why don't we ever fight to change it? I can't do much, but I'll lend my voice to cheering them on.

So what if poor people have always known that?  - I am not a better person for having endured being poor or for having avoided being poorer.  It didn't build character.  It just added to my knowledge of ways humanity sucks.  I want better for my kids and future grandkids and society in general.

[Corraleno]

30 minutes ago, kdsuomi said:

 

Not necessarily. I was middle class growing up but went to school with a heck of a lot of poor kids. We were ALL told that if you went to college, took student loans (yes, our high school administrations told us to take as much in student loans as possible for college), and graduated from that college you would then have a nice and easy life. Too bad it was a lie, and even the poor kids believed it. Where I live now college graduates of a very respected college will often fight tooth and nail for jobs that pay $14 an hour and in an area where houses cost close to 1 million dollars for starter homes. Sure, they could move out and many do, but that exodus just leads to all of the other areas becoming unaffordable for most people to live in. (A one bedroom starts at $1500 with two bedrooms going for only $2000 and up, so that's not a much better option.)

I was a poor kid (really poor before my mother remarried), and the thing is that for Boomers like me, this wasn't a myth. I did put myself through college and I did escape from poverty. And even my siblings who didn't go to college still ended up owning their own homes and have had a much higher standard of living than what we grew up with. But now, for many many people, the situation is reversed, and people who grew up in middle class or even working class families are realizing they may never achieve their own parents' standard of living, let alone improve on it.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Corraleno

[JaLeSherman]

Despite the verbosity of this article, and the strange structure, one thing is right; We work so hard, harder than we can possibly handle sometimes to the point of tears, and we get NO WHERE it seems.

I'm 31, my husband is 35. Before I stay at home to raise children, I worked no less than two full time jobs, and have been working that way since I dropped out of school at 15 to support and raise my little brothers so they could eat and have clothes. My husband always works, and constantly stays on call, and is always available to go in or travel, even when on vacation (when he does take them) --- and he is no where near Ph.D status. It's absolutely exhausting to see him work so hard, and continue living in poverty. And we have no debt beyond student loans! Yet live in constant fear of just one illness/medical issue robbing us of our very, very delicate balance.

And that constant, constant stress does have it where little things slide. But I think it has so much to do with socio-economic status versus generational. 

Edited January 7, 2019 by JaLeSherman

[Murphy101]

I hope to see legal changes for some of this too.  There needs to be a way for people to either log their outside the "office" work so they can have that added to their pay/work expectations or we need to have a legal way to hold companies accountable for not respecting off hours.

I suspect the next bubbles to collapse will be medical costs and education funding. And I hate it, but obviously our country can't manage to head off stupid crap like this that obviously needs correcting before there's a cluster mess.  So though I hate it, I hope that at least the fallout will result in some restraints and regulations to the betterment of society.

I also think a minimum wage is inevitable barring some tragic horror events.  As science progresses and we get better at using less to do more, there's simply not going to be enough paid work for everyone. And that is not all bad either.  I'm curious to see what arts will expand if more people had more education and the time to pursue their creativity and curiosity.

[NorthwestMom]

I think I agree with most posters that the author wrongly attributes some elements (ex too much work all the time) to her generation when it applies to all adults.  I think previous generations faced a wide variety of hardships that are unaccounted for in this article, and I think the number of people who retire at 55 is vanishingly small. But I also agree that it is harder in some ways to be financially stable as an adult than it was in the second half of the 20th century for college-educated adults.

One thing that I think negatively affects people below the age of 40ish is the tremendous amount of connectivity and feedback they have received their entire lives about all types of information and decisions 24/7. I  wonder if the rates of anxiety and depression are higher for those who have never known the world without 24/7 news; who hear about every tragedy the minute it happens (often with live video); and then who see on social media a glorified, glamorous, pinterest version of the peers' lives lived in real time. Wouldn't that have a terrible effect on how they perceive their own lives?  Of course we have always had the pressure to conform to certain standards; ask any woman who was married with children in the 1950s how that felt. The difference is, they weren't confronted with the visual evidence of their failure to meet unrealistic standards via the neighbor's staged Instagram story. I think the modern adult is drowning in news, opinion, and feedback from too many distant judgmental sources and it is making many people nuts. 

[Corraleno]

9 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

Yeah, to me it was pretty clear it was a fib from early on, but hey, maybe that's the benefit of some readings In Marx at 17.

 

 

But for Boomers like me, it wasn't a fib, and I think that's one of the reasons millennials are so ticked off. For a lot of people — many of them parents of millennials — college and hard work was a way out of poverty, and their children expected that if they worked even harder and got even more education than their parents then they should at least be able to achieve the same standard of living. 

[Murphy101]

25 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

So it's not a huge surprise, and I am surprised that some 38 yr olds are surprised enough to publish on it as if this is something completely new and unique to her generation.

I don't think I suggested the issues should be dismissed ? I seem to remember posting about feeling sympathy for those millenials dealing with things like housing and job insecurity ?

My politics lean towards social housing, socialised medicine, and worker's rights; I vote and work that way, so I'm not really interested in being judged for whether or not I'm performing proper deference to the writer of the article. 

 

 

You came off as dismissing her as a spoiled well to do white girl whining about her life.

I posed the genuine question as to why does it matter if she's white or came from middle class parents? That's not intended as an attack against you or your politics.

Given the number of people in this thread using words like privileged and whining and other very dismissive terms, I think that illustrates exactly why a 38 yr old author felt the need to write the article.  To explain why this isn't just whining of people that haven't grown up.

Like another poster noted, it is NOT just poor people who know this.  Many don't.  Especially poor people under 40/45ish.  Because any time anyone says anything they are accused of whining, of being ignorant of poor people lives, or lazy or just plain too stupid to have not caught on sooner. Because we are tit fed on a myth that hard work always equals success. Because it's no simple thing to be middle aged and face that you based your life goals on a lie and there's not a lot of alternative options.

So I guess we just shouldn't talk about it.

eta: just read your apology for crankiness after I hit post on this.  Of course.  Sorry you are having a cranky day.  

Edited January 7, 2019 by Murphy101

[JaLeSherman]

5 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

But for Boomers like me, it wasn't a fib, and I think that's one of the reasons millennials are so ticked off. For a lot of people — many of them parents of millennials — college and hard work was a way out of poverty, and their children expected that if they worked even harder and got even more education than their parents then they should at least be able to achieve the same standard of living. 

^^^This right here.

I described earlier how hard I started working at 15 because as a child I grew up in the depths of poverty, and was desperate to escape. I have a fond memory of the Food Store driving up to our home, bringing turkey, sides, and leaving us excited for Thanksgiving since just minutes before we were trying to split a loaf of bread between the four of us at the time, and half a pound of sliced turkey meat. I didn't want that for my future and did go to college, graduate from full time at school while working two jobs, so that way my children would never know what it was like to grow up without food or have clothes that didn't fit.

While we are a delicate balance above that, I am miffed that we didn't escape the poverty circle. I thought we worked hard enough, I thought more education would help. And that's where I, and so many of my peers, are so very frustrated. 

[Murphy101]

7 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

You think I don't know this ? (she says, trying to get a f/t job after 23 years out of the workforce because her spouse is really sick and does not have sick leave or any employee benefit because of being employed on continual contract in academia, as she worries about getting together the rent for next week nd regrets, minute by minute, that the she ever listened to the idiots telling her to follow her bliss for maximum success). Don't lecture  me. I get it. I just hated the article. And I am mad at millenials who don't vote. Vote, for God's sake, it's not like we have many other tools.

 

I'm not lecturing you.  While I did quote you, this is an online discussion.  I mentioned your comments and several other peoples comments.  I have mentioned in previous thread that *I* am right here next to you in getting this.

You had said you thought it more surprising that she didn't know this by her age.  Well, I pointed out many just have not come to a point of accepting this reality.  God bless them, some people have been ever optimistic that if they just kept their nose to the stone long enough eventually some day they'd be able to look up and see a better life.

I'm not targeting you.  I'm trying to have a discussion and possibly your admitted crankiness (?) is making me seem more personal then I intend? I apologize if that's the case.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Murphy101

[Frances]

On 1/6/2019 at 9:05 PM, StellaM said:

OK, I acknowledge I am bringing unrelated crankiness to this thread, but before I go and stick my head in a bucket or something...the US must be a very strange place if millenials are the first generation to acknowledge it's not fair to work and not 'get ahead' (they're not...what do people think the basis of trade unionism was ?!)

I absolutely abhor both extremes of seeing millenials as snowflakes, or as sainted prophets who do better than all before them despite life being simultaneously harder for them than anyone else.

This whole generations thing is a very limited way of looking at the world. I agree with the poster who mentioned socio economic class being a more pertinent thing than generation. Plenty of wealthy, home owning, retirement building millenials out there - many of whom benefited from the financial and social capital of their wealthy parents. A couple just moved in next door to my parents. The house sold for over 2 million. 

Head in bucket now, sorry to bring the crankiness here. Gen Xer dealing with all the same problems as millenials, including insecure housing, insecure employment, student debt...and worrying about how to make rent for next week...it's colored my impatience with people who can't get it together to enrol to vote. 

 

I think there are both generational and socioeconomic components to the current situation with globalization also being a factor. My husband and I are at the tail end of the baby boomers, and we definitely grew up in a time and place where kids like us from us lower middle class backgrounds who completed college did, in general, end up significantly better off than their parents. Unless you count nursing school for an RN, I had only one high school classmate who had a parent with a college degree. Despite coming from a small, rural high school with no advanced classes, the majority of my classmates earned college degrees and several of us went on to earn advanced degrees from some of the top universities in the US. My husband and I truly believed and actually experienced that hard work and a great education would pay huge dividends. While that kind of social mobility is still possible in the US, it is not happening to nearly the degree it did during my generation. And those of us who made it to the upper middle class and now feel fairly secure about our own futures, are still very concerned about the futures of our own children. And this, along with numerous other factors, has itself contributed to the ever increasing concentration of wealth and power. 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Frances

[frogger]

These articles cherry pick what other generations went through. They ignore for example the oil embargo, run away inflation, job losses, and super high interest rates in the 70's and early 80's.

 

I think the younger generation also has struggles. The cost of education and housing. The craziness of the health care system in America is getting every age of course. Those are issues but every generation has issues. I don't think that simply because there are some issues you should roll over and die. We do need to make our decisions based on the world we live in and not a fairy tale. We also should work to change some things. Most people in this world have much more difficult things to work through than student loan debt.

 

I do agree certain lies that are constantly thrown at all people now. The self care industry, the wedding industry, people thinking they HAVE to do certain things to "live".  

Though some stated things in the article are true for the most part there isn't some specially difficult circumstances for the millenials. It's just life.

 

 

 

[Tanaqui]

1. Sure, it's true that the period that the Boomers grew up in was unusual, but nobody believes this and fewer want to believe it.

2. Additionally, many of the things that made that time so secure and profitable for that generation weren't a result of WWII but of New Deal provisions that have been systematically stripped. That makes it worse.

3. As far as voting, I don't know what it's like in Australia, but here in the US voter suppression and gerrymandering is alive and well. Our votes only do so much.

[Carrie12345]

Meh..

Dh and I are youngish X'ers. We both hate errands. Adulting IS hard.

The millenials I know cover the same spectrum as my fellow X'ers. I could pick on some and praise others, but they were all born in the same era, so it means nothing.  

One of dh's higher ups (a boomer) is constantly complaining that they can't find young people to WORK. What she's looking for is people to put in 50 hours regularly plus another 20 or more when needed and travel at a moment's notice, at a low salary with crummy health care options. And they should do it with a smile and expressions of gratitude even while being chewed out. Meanwhile, dh knows what that did to him for many years (though he used to have great health care) and believes there's a better way.   

If I'm going to generalize, I think millenials are spot on that there's no good reasons that most things should be as hard or complex as they are. In most cases (take registering to vote in some states) there are simple ways to, well, simplify. But many X'ers and boomers are stuck in "the way it's always been". 

I do have some issues with the way millenials have been educated, but that was NOT their doing.

[Momto6inIN]

I didn't read the whole article (whew that was long!) but I had a couple of thoughts about what I did read.

#1: A lot of the drive to always be working applies to non-milennials as well and in my experience came along with cell phones and Wi-Fi and constant availability, not just to emoyers/customers but friends and family and social media too. I am old enough to remember the days when I had tons to do and errands to run but when DH came home at 6pm he was off the clock and things like the post ofdice were closed and no websites to do paperwork on and so we did life together. We still do, but it sure looks different now! Lol

#2 The mental burden she describes is primarily self imposed. We *choose* to buy into the thought that our kids every waking moment has to be "an experience" and that our jobs have to be thrilling and rewarding. It's pervasive, yes, and it's difficult to live counter culturally, but it is a choice. That's what my DH has noticed most about milennials he works with. They somehow miss the fact that they are responsible for their own choices and think if life (or a project or whatever) doesn't go the way they think it should then it has nothing to do with their own choices and the fault lies outside of themselves and is somebody else's responsibility to fix. Much like the author blames the economy, the parenting style they were raised with, politicians and political systems, etc. I agree that politics and policies can affect quality of life (duh) and sometimes systemic change is needed. But that seems to be the "go to" response of milennials instead of first looking at how they themselves could be contributing to their own unhappiness.

[Skippy]

One thing I have noticed that seems to be more common with the millennial generation is the need for constant approval and affirmation from others. (I don't know, but maybe this is from the everyone gets a participation sticker/trophy thing.) They can't stand the thought that someone out there may disapprove of something they are doing.

I believe my generation seemed to have more of an attitude of "I don't care what you think. I will do what I want anyway."  And actually we tend to have a rebellious/independent streak and sometimes enjoyed ourselves more if you do disapprove.

[frogger]

3 hours ago, Carrie12345 said:

 

If I'm going to generalize, I think millenials are spot on that there's no good reasons that most things should be as hard or complex as they are. In most cases (take registering to vote in some states) there are simple ways to, well, simplify. But many X'ers and boomers are stuck in "the way it's always been". 

 

 

 

Realy? I think all generations think it should be easier to deal with the government, insurance companies, etc.  Heck , even going to the grocery store is complicated. They can't just have a sale on stuff they overstocked on, no, now you have to mix and match 5 items (sometimes of varying prices) and still try to get a good deal.

 

I have been trying to schedule a road test for my daughter for two weeks. First I accidently scheduled an appointment to schedule a road test (thought it was the road test) and went and sat at the DMV in a different town no less, as ours doesn't do road tests, only to find that the driver's test was scheduled 6 weeks out. Was so fed up by this point I decided to go with a private company so I called them, found out the price, gave them info only to have them tell me a manager had to call back to schedule for a road test. So yes, I've spent many hours on this and have gotten nowhere.

 

You can't just talk to a person as many older people will complain about.  You have to navigate web sites, some which are simple and some set up by people who like mazes and riddles I swear,  and hope you did the right thing but it could be the wrong thing. 

 

This isn't a millenial issue though. We are all stuck with it and I think older people complain more than younger people about those types of things. The younger people don't know that "simple" tasks used to be easier. Paying a doctor bill when the price changes on you multiple times, filling out forms just to get different forms. Some comes from businesses trying to trick you out of money. Some comes from ridiculous regulation by the government but yes, I think people from all generations would like simple things to stay simple and I personally think they've gotten more complicated. 

Edited January 7, 2019 by frogger
Just spelling

[BlsdMama]

14 hours ago, NorthwestMom said:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work

Has anyone else read this article? I am curious to hear others' opinions (as long as they don't bash an entire generation).  I am older than Millennials and my kids are in the generation below them, so I have no skin in the game. 

"I remind myself that my mom was pretty much always doing errands. Did she like them? No. But she got them done."

Millennial - Birthdates 1981-1996

So, I missed it by four years and my oldest daughter is one.

When an author makes a statement that is foundational, I like to ask, "Is it true?"  Or, "And?"

My mom didn't.  She didn't do errands.  She worked at a grocery store and essentially picked up groceries once a week on the way home.  She never "ran" to a place to pick up pizza - not kidding.  We went out for pizza once a year after seeing Christmas lights in a small rural town once a year.  I cannot remember a SINGLE time she dropped off dry-cleaning.  She rarely just ran to Wal-Mart even.  I did one sport and even then it was stay after school and not until 8th grade.  Tutoring? LOL.  My parents idea of socializing the children was school and cousins. 

Fact is? Fact is my mother didn't do errands.  Did she pay the bills? Yup.  Slapped a stamp on it and threw it in the mailbox at the end of the driveway.

I reject the premise that it is fear.  I reject the premise the paralyzation results from debt.

Here is what I propose:
We do not have free time.  If we did and we honed on what is IMPORTANT rather than going shallow across a broad range, we would not be so paralyzed.

And I KNOW it's true.  My whole adult life, since I started staying home, I went deep in a small number of things in which I was deeply invested.  I NEVER felt burned out.
Then I decided to scatter myself - a couple co-op classes, a couple errands... Then I decided to take a couple classes too oh and lots of doctor appointments.  All of a sudden,  I couldn't do the little things.  It was just too much.  They were the straws balancing precariously on the camel's back!  If I touched them, everything might be out of kilter!

I cancelled most of the kids' classes last month.  Most of the doctor appointments are coming to an end and becoming predictable.  I've had the past three weeks off school.  Know what I had the energy to do last night?  Go through my room, my closets, my drawers, my paperwork - toss, donate, shred.  I needed space and energy to be able to focus and direct my thoughts to the "list" rather than run around to the left - only to zag right and then cut left again, chasing my tail in a never ending to do.  No, we are paralyzed because we can't go deep and we lack time to become deeply invested in things like loving our house as a home.  Just my .02.