Millennials Aren’t the First Generation Hit By the Unexpected

by | May 23, 2022 | Political Commentary

Today I saw a tweet from a self-identified Millennial who lamented that her generation had spent their adolescence doing all the things they were supposed to do to prepare for a world that was not waiting for them when they graduated.

I had to restrain myself from responding unsympathetically. In fact, I didn’t respond at all. But I thought about responding, and what immediately came to mind was that the kids who turned 18 years old in 1861, 1929, 1941 and 1965 got thrown some unexpected curveballs too.

I grew up in Northwest Indiana, an industrialized collection of suburban communities near Chicago. “The Region,” as the locals call it, relied heavily for several generations upon the steel mills established in the early 20th century along the south shore of Lake Michigan. Up until the 1980s, it was commonplace for “Region” kids to get their high school diploma one day and get a job at one of the mills the next day. The mill jobs were plentiful and paid well, and the hard-won benefits secured by the United Steelworkers union made it possible to retire with a good pension by age 50. But by the 1980s, the domestic steel industry had gone into decline, and the kids who came up with me had to make other plans. Many of them have not done as well as their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, but they’ve adapted and done what they had to do. This is nothing new.

I guess that’s the thing that irritates me the most about today’s younger generations. They seem to think nobody else has ever faced the need to adapt to an unexpected situation. In the preceding paragraphs, I named five groups of people who also faced unexpected challenges when they came of age. I’ve left out many more. Millions upon millions of people throughout human history have made careful plans, played by the rules, did all they were supposed to do, and then saw all of their efforts go up in smoke. It’s not a new or unprecedented phenomenon.

What previous generations seemed to understand that the current younger generations seem not to get is that there are no guarantees in life, and when things don’t go the way you expected, you have to adapt. You can’t just complain and ask older people to bail you out (as we are seeing with the incessant push for forgiveness of all student loan debt).

“But Boomers left us this mess!” Yes, and the adults of the 1920s left their kids a Great Depression, and adults in the 1930s left their kids a world at war for the second time in 25 years. Millions of them did everything they were supposed to do, too, and they got smacked in the face by a world that wasn’t the one they had prepared for.

What seems to separate today’s young people from the ones back then is that their parents didn’t prepare them for the eventuality that things might not go according to plan. They weren’t raised to adapt, or to roll with the punches that life brings, in one form or another, to every generation and every person.

So it’s hard for me to be sympathetic to the complaints of younger people today. I oppose blanket student loan forgiveness, for example. I think it’s a bad idea, and a political loser as well, since most Americans don’t have student debt and will see forgiveness as a giveaway to a privileged minority. I do think we should revisit the law prohibiting bankruptcy relief for student loans, and also make provision for people who truly can’t pay. I would even support a reduction in interest rates on federally backed loans.

But I don’t like the idea that if you can’t buy all the things you want, or take all the vacations you’d like to take, you should just get to walk away from your obligations. I also don’t like the idea that people who don’t make the wisest choices (majoring in a field with poor job prospects, for example) should be absolved or saved from the consequences. And if you want loan relief, a number of forgiveness programs already exist. You might have to do something you don’t especially want to do–say, spend a few years teaching school in an impoverished area, for example–but people have always had to do things they don’t especially want to do in order to get the things they want in life. This, also, is nothing new.

I’m a Gen-Xer. We and previous generations were all taught something that succeeding generations seem not to have been told: Life isn’t fair. Sorry, but it just isn’t. If you’re a young person and you were sheltered from that reality by your parents, I’m sorry, but now, it’s time for you to learn that eternal truth and adapt. And maybe you’ll be able to tell your kids what your parents never told you.