This week The New York Times published a titanic article about the a new category in developmental psychology entitled "emerging adulthood." They go on to characterize this population as people who return to live with parents, go through jobs quickly, are not in committed relationships, and are generally unstable. The writer, Robin Henig, concludes that though there is no desire to coddle this group of people, they clearly need some additional help.
Of course, I feel particularly compelled to comment on this trend because it describes me relatively well. I've dodged the bullet of living with my parents, but I'm not in a relationship, I've gone through several jobs, and I have a bachelors degree. What strikes me as so odd about this article is that there is no mention of the great things we were doing as teenagers. People had a lot of hope in our generation. Just a few years ago we were breaking records for community service and being characterized as overachievers academically and athletically. We were ready to be a force in our world.
And now we are being characterized as a group that has been looking for itself so long that its been lost. It seems so unfair. Not to mention, it sounds like a little projection from the Boomers.
Clearly something else is going on here. For myself, I can say that I'm educated and looked long and hard for a position that was well-aligned with my career goals. Instead I work harder than I ever have in my life and make pennies above minimum wage. I'm not terribly bitter about it anymore. I really like my job and I'm getting used to the fact that the effort me and my family put into my education just didn't have an obvious, immediate impact on my value in the work place. So many of the people I graduated with are in similar places doing landscaping, working retail, waiting tables. These are labor intensive jobs. Hard work that doesn't facilitate constant floundering or flakiness, even if it is at worst transitional work.
I've never understood economics, but it seems that is the only missing piece of the puzzle. My generation isn't diseased with extended adolescence. We've worked hard while we've been on this planet. We were the first people to grow up with a concept of sustainability and consumerism. Instead, we are suffering the consequences of a misguided, grown-up, "me generation."
I had an extensive conversation with a boomer about this the other day. We were discussing the value of working for financial gain versus what I will be doing soon as a potential stay at home mother. I think our generation has been wired to see a lack of career as failure, which goes against the very nature of how innovative and creative we are as a generation!
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