Our parents* worked hard to give us a better life. Now stop holding it against us.
If you have read an op-ed piece in the last 10 years, you’ve probably come up with some variant on this phrase, “ millennials… who have been spoiled …sports coaches who bestowed trophies on any player who showed up.” (source).
If you read these op-eds, you will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that this generation, my generation, the so-called millennial generation, has been hopelessly spoiled, completely ruined, entitled, weakened by these $3 plastic trophies given to us by loving soccer coaches at the end of a season. For the record, I only received one of these participation trophies, and you know what? I proudly displayed it for years in my bedroom, a glimmer of hope in an otherwise pathetic athletic career. Don’t worry, two years of trying out in for the varsity soccer team, where participation trophies are not given out, demolished any sort of athletic self esteem I had.
And while I liked that little trophy when I was 6 and pretended I would one day be Mia Hamm when I was 10, by the time I turned 21 I had realized that the $3 participation trophy did not mean that I was entitled to a 100k starting salary, a brand new house, or an iPad.
A couple years ago, I attended an event at Gonzaga to listen to a poet-activist speak. After she read her poems, she opened the floor for questions, an opportunity one woman took advantage of.
“Would you say that today, this generation here, is completely self-entitled and interested only in themselves and not others?”
To which the poet replied, “well, no. No, I wouldn’t.”
She pressed on, “But this generation doesn’t get involved in social issues. They don’t hold protests, they don’t have rallies, they don’t march in the streets. They’re lazy. They don’t care.”
I had to laugh. I was sitting with my Jesuit Volunteer housemates, eight people who had given up a year of their life to service this community. I was sitting in a room full of Gonzaga University students, a school which requires participation in service for all students, a minimum many improve upon. I knew hundreds of other people also serving for a year or more around the country in the world.
No, we weren’t into marches and rallies. We decided to do something a little more useful.
The act of bashing the generation that comes after your own is nothing new. The one calling us lazy entitled kids was criticized for their long hair and peace signs. So while the act is not exactly original, and I’m sure I will relish the day when I criticize my children and employees for being too lazy to drive to work and teleporting instead, I would like to address a few concerns.
We know we have it easy. For the most part, we grew up with shoes on our feet, a vaccine for polio and smallpox, in a post draft world that had already put a man on the moon. We aren’t complaining.
But please don’t forget, we saw our high schools shot up during Columbine. We watched the towers fall as we turned fifteen. Our classmates entered wars we wouldn’t win as we graduated from high school. Five months after finished college, our country entered the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Unemployment was the highest it had been in decades.
We’re criticized for wanting well-paying jobs. Some of us need them, as college costs have tripled in the past thirty years as have housing costs. Real income has increased by a much, much smaller amount. We’re criticized for wanting jobs that mean something, after years of being told we need to change the world. We’re criticized if we take a low paying job in a high rent city and we’re criticized if we move back in with our parents. We’re criticized when we are ambitious, and told that we shouldn’t be so entitled.
We’ve had a hand up, we’ll admit it. But we’re here now and we’re willing to work hard.
Let’s not forget one important fact. It was the boomers who gave us those trophies. They had studied childhood psychology, remembered their youth, and decided it was a good idea.
We’re not kids anymore. We aren’t expecting trophies for showing up to work. It will be enough for you just to stop calling us lazy and entitled.
*this is in no way directed to my parents, or my husband’s parents, or any of the wonderful people who helped raised us. We appreciate all the opportunities you have given us and think that they will help to make us good, successful people. God willing and the creeks don’t rise.
Excellent Post!
Thank you for this! I agree wholeheartedly.
Thank you for this. We, millenials, are lucky to have so much, but there are so many of us who are still doing much and working against so much as well.
I agree – our generation isn’t so big on rally’s, demonstrations, etc., we’re into a direct, quieter form of action whether it’s the peace corp, JVC or just a general spirit of volunteerism. In fact it’s a rather Christian way of action – we live well to set a better example and hopefully start change at the most basic levels – laws and regulations can only go so far if the need is still there.
I didn’t realize this applied to our generation – since I see it so much more with my younger siblings (who all had cell phones long before I was ever allowed one!). The worst for me is when I once mentioned how my husband and I had made being debt-free a big priority for us, but when we achieved it my SIL said “but you both had help paying for college” – like that some one voided our working and saving and budgeting and getting good grades to earn those scholarships.
I think this applies to generations, but individuals as well. I am always reminding myself that another person’s struggles are real and big to them, even if they seem stupid and small to me. It’s impossible to know exactly what another person, or generation for that matter, is experiencing, and it is impossible to judge from the outside.
We’re in the same boat. My parents paid for college but I’m paying for grad school all on my own, and I’m pretty proud of the fact that I’m doing so debt-free. But we’re living off of a little seed money that my parents gave us as a wedding present (well actually, they were going to give me a car for a graduation present but I said I didn’t want a car so they just held onto the cash and I realized I’d much rather live off the money and not go into debt than buy a car we don’t really need and have it just depreciate).
I know many people do pay for college by themselves and I really admire it, but I also always want to point out college is 3x more expensive than it was for our parents, so yeah, I think it’s a little more reasonable to get some help from the parents. It’s not mooching or refusing to grow up, its just a fact of life now that at 18, not many of us can do it all on their own.
Amen to this. I have never seen much value in painting an entire generation or culture with one broad brush. For pretty much any generalization you could want to make about a group, there are people within the same group who fit the exact opposite description. Why exclude those people, and all the people in between, with your assumptions?
Agree.
One of the most laughable things I read in one of the op-ed pieces said “41% of job offers are turned down” and then went to talk about how it was all our generation and they were too lazy and wanted to wait for the perfect job.
Sure I know people who turned down job offers. Because they had accepted a better one. I’m quitting my job for a better paying one with more hours. Does that make me lazy?!?
You’ve hit on another one of my pet peeves, the careless use of statistics. (Not surprising, since I was a journalism major and now work as a data analyst!) It’s easy to throw out a statistic like that to back up a point you want to make, but what’s the story behind it? That’s a statistic about the percentage of job offers turned down–what’s the percentage of unemployed people who have turned down job offers? Have you accounted for people, like you mentioned, who have turned down job offers to take better ones? It’s a meaningless number until you can explain the context and who it includes and doesn’t include.
Thank you!
Well said!