ALPERN AT LARGE-A fascinating article by Brooke Donatone in Slate online represents a fascinating and increasingly-observed phenomenon about the so-called "Millennials" who are approximately 19-34, but are often NOT viewing themselves as adults...and their parents are much of the problem.
After a generation or two of "helicopter parenting", whereby parents become overprotective and overpampering of their children, and now 20-something children become too comfortable living at home with their parents after college (and their parents are too comfortable with that arrangement, to boot), the challenges, trials and joy of adult independence appears to be delayed indefinitely, if not threatened altogether.
I admit to not forcing my own kids to do their chores around the house as much as I had demanded of me when I was a kid, but with the gobs of increased homework and dramatically less free time they have compared to my own childhood experience, my wife and I have had to balance our demands with our desire for them to actually have a childhood.
Fortunately, my son and daughter are on their way to being wonderful, self-starting learners and initiative-grabbing individuals so for now it appears to be working out. Yet lost in the mix of "helicopter parenting" is the need to impart upon both small children and adult children that there is no greater joy in life than the knowledge that you did something, built something or achieved something all by YOURSELF...particularly when you weren't too certain you could do it.
Being granted or given things is very nice at times, but not nearly so nice--and even exhilarating--as the entrepreneurial spirit and work (even exhausting, backbreaking work) that creates successful authors, businessmen, athletes, actors and investors.
Yet what Donatone, a psychotherapist, describes is that helicopter parenting actually INCREASES depression and use of antidepressants, so that the answer is NOT so much that Millennials have to grow up as much as their parents (in other words, my generation and older) need to grow up.
Donatone focuses on the needs and problems facing Millennials, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it's their parents who need a proverbial kick in the rear.
...and it's "popular knowledge" and a rewriting of history by too many journalists and reporters (who also need a kick in the rear) that's also preventing Millennials from recognizing age-old truths that are still true, such as the American Dream that is still alive and well. Frankly, do Millennials even know what the American Dream really IS? What the Melting Pot is?
Or perhaps Millennials need to spit out the spoon that's feeding them history and learn it on their own, in an objective and balanced manner that will lead them to the conclusion that in THIS country, obstacles can almost always be circumvented successfully.
For example, the Puritan work-ethic, so heartily engrained in so many WASP's (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) who founded and built so much of this country and dominated its socioeconomic powerbase for the first two centuries of its existence, has been so heavily demonized as all-racist, all-cruel, all-ignorant and all-enslaving that the church-going, self-starting entrepreneurial spirit behind the "WASPish culture" is now a pejorative paradigm.
As different cultures, such as the faith-based Catholic (Irish, Latino and Filipino) and more secular Jewish and Asian cultures, increasingly compete with, and sometimes dominate, the traditional WASPish culture different regions of this country, the need to balance these other cultures' charity-first approach with their own powerful work ethics is crashing down on the lives and psyches of millennials and their parents.
As Jewish parents, my wife and I have every intention of supporting our children through college and graduate school, provided they wish to go that route. I had that same privilege from my hard-working parents, and it left me starting my adult life virtually debt-free. Yet the point of my life where I was TRULY an "adult" was prolonged into my mid-20's, because I only earned part-time income while I strove mightily to finish my basic and medical education.
Yet my part-time income was one of extraordinary pride to me and my twin brother (a Harvard-educated lawyer), and it involved a considerable amount of janitorial work. My sister (a Tulane-educated lawyer) also worked part-time as well--it came almost instinctively. And we both appreciated but yet resented the loving financial support that our decidedly-middle-class parents had to offer.
While my brother and sister and I all knew that our lives would be easier with the financial support, we still all fought for our financial and thereby adult independence. It was and is a common story, very well-known in Jewish circles, that involves the conflict of needing help and loving our parents, but yet resenting them because their necessary help got in the way of our independence.
Without their help, we'd resent them even more; with it, there was only temporary discomfort. What makes it easier and yet more simultaneously complicated in Jewish circles is that we shower financial support on children from their Bar/Bat Mitzvah on forward...yet demand they become independent as adults. And our children don't have to look too far to find work-ethic role models among adult Jewry.
There are no shortage of Latino and Filipino work ethic family stories, either, yet the balance of obligations to self and family is in flux...particularly in a nation that might denigrate the Puritan/WASP work ethic but yet (often reluctantly) recognizes it as something that makes this nation special. Special in that (at least for now, but it may be in flux) you will achieve success without anyone to stop you if you work hard enough.
In other words, the need to take care of everybody, and to care about everybody, doesn't inherently mean that we have to forget to take care of ourselves first. After all, there aren't any poor philanthropists (or at least none that are too effective).
Conversely, the need to take care of ourselves first is NOT the same as waking up and being a cold-hearted, creepy, non-caring narcissist. Being successful is NOT the same as being cruel.
Which complicates our political and sociological equation--so long as conservatives are painted as being cruel, and so long as liberals are painted as being lazy, we ignore the complicated, thorny and complex adult world of REALITY in which millennials MUST grasp and integrate.
Such as: there are 50 states. If your city or state has no job opportunities, and you've graduated college, it's time to try another state. Millennials, take note: you are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants and settlers who went through purgatory to get to their success. Have faith in yourself, find religion if you must, but move on to another state where life, love and happiness still exist...and the cost of buying a house might much cheaper!
Millennials, take note: capitalism is horrible at times, but every other financial system is worse. Fight to achieve your financial independence and fight that daily fight we must all wage as we balance our desire to meet our own needs and goals versus the desire to save others. Some can and must be saved...others must save themselves.
Millennials, take note: conservatives aren't always cruel, and liberals aren't always lazy--try to meet others of all political bents, regardless of party affiliation, and don't stop making connections to all political stripes to figure out why people derive different conclusions from the same conundrums.
Millennials, take note: stop allowing others to try to save you, and that even includes the President himself. Obamacare is meant for you to pay into the system, and while some like Times journalist Sandy Banks do you a terrible disservice by presuming all Republicans hate the Affordable Care Act merely because they hate Obama, the Reality is that Democrats and Republicans have different solutions to the problem, and they must get over their differences to work together on making health care affordable (which the "Affordable" Care Act does NOT do).
And maybe it's time, my Millennial friends, for you to rebel against the parents you should have rebelled against earlier, in your childhood and teenage years. Helicopter parents behave that way not for YOUR benefit but because of THEIR fears and issues.
Your helicopter parents might have meant well, but they should have told you just how cruel this world really CAN be...and they should have told you just how wonderful this world CAN ALSO be if you become an independent adult. And feel free to rebel against the teachers that probably gave you a warped and unbalanced presentation of the world that left you unprepared for the complex reality that awaits you and your fellow Americans.
Empower yourself, and don't let your helicopter parents get in the way. Grab your own reality, even if means you have to fight your way out of it.
And I look forward to you Millennials joining the rest of us hard-working, sleep-deprived, financially-pressured working stiffs who are the luckiest, happiest and most fulfilled human beings on this Earth.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected] . He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us . The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 98
Pub: Dec 6, 2013