Why are so many Millennials unhappy/dissatisfied with their personal lives? (anxiety, weight)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Who's the speaker? He looks like he could be in the oldest cohort of Millennials, pretending to be a Gen-Xer, lol.
I think this is pandering to stereotypes. Many millennials did not grow up with helicopter parents who over-protected them. Many are out in the world, developing their careers, implementing a unique vision, or going to grad school in 21-st Century fields, like Environmental Economics. I see a generation of go-getters. I'd like to know the numbers, if there are any; the percentage of those struggling and depressed, among the whole.
I think Millennials often come in two varieties. Either go getters or chronic victims without a lot in between.
I think Millennials often come in two varieties. Either go getters or chronic victims without a lot in between.
I've noticed this too. It seems related to culture, which has become very polarized and extreme, and seems to encourage people towards ends of the spectrum. Previously, the middle was where most hung out at. There was a balance and stability (not to mention peace) that grounded living, attitude, and well-being. That's been hacked to pieces, with extremism encouraged and even celebrated. So sad.
There are still a lot of economic and psychological scars for older Millennials like myself that graduated into the Great Recession.
I'm 32 and graduated in 2010. It took me four years after I graduated to find a career-track position that paid a living wage. During that time, I relocated twice, and had no benefits of any kind for about half that time. I didn't have much student loan debt, but in late 2013, I had bottomed out just under $10/hr on a 40/hr equivalency wage and was suicidal. I didn't see any hope for the future.
While I did get a much better job, moved again, and got my life on track, my 20s were essentially blown by that point. At 28, I was where I should have been at 22/23. Even though I've never been as low as I was back in 2013, I still have that Recession mindset. I never feel truly secure at a job - in some ways, I always have "one eye open" professionally. Psychologically, I can't "settle down" in one area like a lot of my peers have, and I'm sure part of that goes back to some of my economic fears.
Congratulations on getting your career track set up! I just want to say that this idea that everyone should almost effortlessly graduate from college and segue into a career-related job is an ideal. A few students manage to pull it off, by working to get all their ducks in a row while they're in college (internships, etc.), and transitioning into a career-track job. A lot of students struggle, though. Every generation has gone through this struggle, because every generation was faced with a recession upon graduating, for at least part of their generation. And many graduates don't even try to get jobs related to their major; they take whatever they can get that a generic BA can land them.
The difference between "then" and now, is that the COL in many areas around the country has risen to the point that barely skating by on a barrister job, or a part-time waitressing job, or whatever, until the Big Break happens and graduates can get a "real" job, is no longer possible. There's a lot more pressure on grads than before, in some regions. So we shouldn't knock them, if they have to spend a few years job-searching from their parents' home.
I cannot give you names of any experts, but I read literally dozens of books when my kids were young in an effort to help them, and almost all of them focused on "attachment" and not damaging a child's self-esteem.
One book had to do with "Oppositional Defiance Disorder" -- one of the diagnoses my daughter received, with very good reason -- and that expert (either a psychiatrist or psychologist) advocated setting aside one hour each night with both parents doing WHATEVER the child wanted, no matter how silly it might seem. (This was supposedly to give the child "control" for one hour so she wouldn't feel the need to be so rebellious and argumentative the rest of the time.) Well, we did that faithfully for about two weeks, but all my daughter wanted to use her hour for those 14 or so days was to eat all the ice cream she wanted and have us watch cartoons with her -- and nothing changed in her behavior the other 23 hours, despite the suthor's assurance that we would see a miraculous change. In fact, our daughter just seemed delighted that this was just one more way that she could control us and get her own way.
That is just one example. (And, no, we never considered parochial schools for many reasons.)
Where is a SuperNanny when you need one?
Thank you for sharing your personal experience. It goes to show there's a lot of gobbledygook out there, in the Child Psychology world.
The way student loans for this generation are being handled is nothing short of scandalous, IMO. Never before in history have students been stuck with loans at commercial interest rates. And the loophole that some Boomers used, of simply not paying their loans and quietly disappearing into the woodwork, has been closed. As it should, of course, but those loans way back in those days were federal low-interest loans. The loans today are a whole different beast. IMO it's wrong, but I guess the gummint got tired of being stiffed for loans, and wasn't set up to chase people down, so they sloughed off the whole issue to the banks.
More, and bigger, Pell Grants are needed.
edit: how yeah, how could I forget to mention that state support for higher education has vanished, so students have had to take up the slack, with an overwhelming amount of debt? Public university tuition has gone from virtually free, in CA, for example, to a good portion of low-income parents' annual earnings, per tuition year.
I am a Boomer and an early Boomer at that, so I can only speak for my people.
We graduated from high school and college and understood that we were not going to start out on the same level as our parents had worked their way up to. We were going to take low-paying jobs until we moved up. We were going to have to live in cheap apartments for a few years until we bought a starter home and fixed that up so it could be sold five years later for a bigger home. Rinse and repeat. We were going to drive old cars until we could afford our FIRST.NEW.CAR, which sure a heck wasn't going to be a Corvette or a Lexus that time out.
Maybe our "lesser expectations" led to more acceptance of what our lives were like. A lot of kids today just don't understand why they can't immediately have the five bedroom, four bath pool home with the grand entrance and the three car garage that their parents have now. It's such a "step down" for them that it sends them into a grand funk.
I am a Boomer and an early Boomer at that, so I can only speak for my people.
We graduated from high school and college and understood that we were not going to start out on the same level as our parents had worked their way up to. We were going to take low-paying jobs until we moved up. We were going to have to live in cheap apartments for a few years until we bought a starter home and fixed that up so it could be sold five years later for a bigger home. Rinse and repeat. We were going to drive old cars until we could afford our FIRST.NEW.CAR, which sure a heck wasn't going to be a Corvette or a Lexus that time out.
Maybe our "lesser expectations" led to more acceptance of what our lives were like. A lot of kids today just don't understand why they can't immediately have the five bedroom, four bath pool home with the grand entrance and the three car garage that their parents have now. It's such a "step down" for them that it sends them into a grand funk.
Ugh, I am not a Millennnial but I get tired of statements like yours. You don't understand how things have changed. Starter homes in many areas are $450k+. No, these are not "five bedroom, four bath pool homes" but literal shacks that our grandparents would have bought on one income from a factory job. In many cities there are no "cheap apartments" either. I am just shy of boomer age and I remember how easy it was to go to college both getting in and affording it. Costs have skyrocketed now in a way that no generation has ever seen. Try paying rent AND student loans AND saving for your imaginary affordable starter home.
I am a Boomer and an early Boomer at that, so I can only speak for my people.
We graduated from high school and college and understood that we were not going to start out on the same level as our parents had worked their way up to. We were going to take low-paying jobs until we moved up. We were going to have to live in cheap apartments for a few years until we bought a starter home and fixed that up so it could be sold five years later for a bigger home. Rinse and repeat. We were going to drive old cars until we could afford our FIRST.NEW.CAR, which sure a heck wasn't going to be a Corvette or a Lexus that time out.
Maybe our "lesser expectations" led to more acceptance of what our lives were like. A lot of kids today just don't understand why they can't immediately have the five bedroom, four bath pool home with the grand entrance and the three car garage that their parents have now. It's such a "step down" for them that it sends them into a grand funk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coloradomom22
Ugh, I am not a Millennnial but I get tired of statements like yours. You don't understand how things have changed. Starter homes in many areas are $450k+. No, these are not "five bedroom, four bath pool homes" but literal shacks that our grandparents would have bought on one income from a factory job. In many cities there are no "cheap apartments" either. I am just shy of boomer age and I remember how easy it was to go to college both getting in and affording it. Costs have skyrocketed now in a way that no generation has ever seen. Try paying rent AND student loans AND saving for your imaginary affordable starter home.
^^^ This.
I am also not a Millennial, but the paradigm of "working your way up" on a strictly increasing trajectory is not a reliable thing anymore. You can't count on stability these days - so many jobs that would formerly have been 40-year white collar office jobs are now temp/contract in nature, and with "right to work" and "at-will" employment, companies can eliminate your job on a whim even if it's not performance related. I certainly can't blame the upcoming generations if they are not naively patient enough to wait for their golden goose to materialize if they just sacrifice a bunch on the front end.
Ugh, I am not a Millennnial but I get tired of statements like yours. You don't understand how things have changed. Starter homes in many areas are $450k+. No, these are not "five bedroom, four bath pool homes" but literal shacks that our grandparents would have bought on one income from a factory job. In many cities there are no "cheap apartments" either. I am just shy of boomer age and I remember how easy it was to go to college both getting in and affording it. Costs have skyrocketed now in a way that no generation has ever seen. Try paying rent AND student loans AND saving for your imaginary affordable starter home.
Right on! I'm a boomer and got my first starter home at the age of 22, as a waitress. This was in Mission Viejo, CA---that home now selling for $700,000 and it didn't get any bigger! It was $72,000 in '76. I sold a horse for the downpayment.
I have NO idea what younger people starting out can do, now. I feel badly for what they have been handed.
I grew up "free-range" too, no supervision at all. And no one-on-one time from either parent. We didn't expect it, too busy having our own fun.
I think Millennials often come in two varieties. Either go getters or chronic victims without a lot in between.
All generalizations about generations (or any sociocultural group) are just that. Some people fit some of the stereotypes. Some fit many. Some fit hardly any or none. Individual context and experiences can challenge norms, and while categorizing people is an automatic, adaptive behavior, there are a lot of inherent flaws in assuming how much or how little individuals stack up to rules of thumb based on their membership in a given group. Generalizations aren't bad as starting points for understanding different perspectives, but they're not very useful when interpreted as rigidly adhered-to checklists for supposed immutable characteristics. There are so many outliers that they start to not be true outliers, anymore.
Overall, generalizations are of limited use and lazy, at best, and really poor, ineffective tools for gaining actual understanding of individuals, at worst. At absolute worst, they feed bias and bigotry.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
