It’s a Millennial World Now — Twelve Things to Know

Inside Source ^ | August 14, 2016 | Paul Taylor

[GuavaCheesePuff]

Choose your truism. Millennials are the most diverse, tolerant, connected, educated, and idealistic generation ever. Or the most narcissistic, lazy, entitled, coddled, distrustful and disconnected.

Or the most downwardly mobile, debt-ridden, unlaunched, unmarried, unchurched, and apolitical. Or a great bunch of kids who play nicely with others, love their parents, respect their elders, want to save the planet, and can’t catch a break. Each of these cliches — and all their wondrous Jekyll-and-Hyde contradictions — have been around for a quite a while. So have millennials themselves. They’re not kids anymore; the oldest are 35.

Since the turn of the millennium, when they began what’s turned out to be a slow walk toward adulthood, they’ve been a big, shiny object of media hyperventilation, what with their tattos, participation trophies, backward baseball caps, online mating rituals and selfies, selfies, selfies.

This year’s presidential campaign finds them in their familiar perch, right in the middle of the Zeitgeist. After going big for Bernie Sanders in the primaries, they’re the most intriguing swing voters (or non-voters) of the fall campaign. At 77 million strong, they’re now the largest generation in the electorate, workforce and population, a distinction they’ll keep for decades.

What kind of citizens will they be? Employees? Spouses? Parents? What kind of America will they build?

Here are 12 observations about what makes millennials tick, based on attitudinal surveys, voting data, and economic and demographic trend analysis, followed by a closing thought about what the generations can learn from one another.

[Luircin]

S’true. To a point. With certain rare and heartbreaking exceptions, bad parenting can be used as an explanation, but not as an excuse. The bad parents bear the blame for being bad parents, but it doesn’t excuse the child in most cases.

Ultimately, we’re all poor miserable sinners. My above post was kind of an expression of frustration about the bad parenting that I see around me, as well as my generation getting slammed every time one of these articles comes up, as if we’re the only ones who have ever screwed up.

[headstamp 2]

Paul Taylor

Paul Taylor is author of “The Next America: Boomers, Millennials and the Looming Generational Showdown” and formerly executive vice president of the Pew Research Center. This essay originally appeared in the summer issue of The Catalyst: A Journal of Ideas from the Bush Institute.

[Wallace T.]

It was the G.I. Generation that for child guidance accepted the permissive child rearing style of Dr. Benjamin Spock. Their children were the Baby Boomers. The G.I. Generation presided over the massive expansion of Federal power under Lyndon Johnson. The pornography explosion and sexual revolution was led by people like Hugh Hefner and Helen Gurley Brown. The Warren Supreme Court, which overturned centuries old rights of association and private property, diminished state sovereignty, and ended restrictions on abortion and pornography, was made up largely of G.I. Generation members. While President Truman and Dean Acheson of the World War I generation pioneered the no win war in Korea, G.I Generation leaders continued it in Vietnam. The shrinkage of American industry under so called free trade started in the 1970s, before Baby Boomers had significant power.

Every generation has its share of sins even Generation X.

[Wallace T.]

It was the G.I. Generation that for child guidance accepted the permissive child rearing style of Dr. Benjamin Spock. Their children were the Baby Boomers. The G.I. Generation presided over the massive expansion of Federal power under Lyndon Johnson. The pornography explosion and sexual revolution was led by people like Hugh Hefner and Helen Gurley Brown. The Warren Supreme Court, which overturned centuries old rights of association and private property, diminished state sovereignty, and ended restrictions on abortion and pornography, was made up largely of G.I. Generation members. While President Truman and Dean Acheson of the World War I generation pioneered the no win war in Korea, G.I Generation leaders continued it in Vietnam. The shrinkage of American industry under so called free trade started in the 1970s, before Baby Boomers had significant power.

Every generation has its share of sins even Generation X.

[SVTCobra03]

There are many of my brother Marine’s names on the Wall. There were many of us Boomers who served and some who died so that you could spout your drivel.

[mad_as_he$$]

roflmao..sad but true.

[hawg-farmer - FR..October 1998]

Figures, quite a broad brush you are using there.

[hawg-farmer - FR..October 1998]

What have the Xers done for us?

[hawg-farmer - FR..October 1998]

And you know that because you were there? heh heh

[hawg-farmer - FR..October 1998]

Thanks, WT, According to Naps, all the world’s ills are because of BBrs.

[mom of young patriots]

Morals started to slide sharply downward in the 60’s and it isn’t too hard to see now how that was detrimental to future family values. Some of it happened before I was born and I was a little too young to understand what was going on with the hippies and the woodstock generation, but looking back on it from adulthood, I can see that the brand of liberalism on display then was particularly toxic. It was self absorption on a grand scale and it propagated through their children and grandchildren. It is really no wonder why the modern family is in such a state. Luckily, there are those of us with good perception who are doing our best to correct for society’s errors.

I know what you mean by the exceptions that can’t overcome. I have a cousin who never recovered. The bad drugs she messed around with in the 60’s altered her personality. It is easy to be mad at her for the pain she has caused, but the rest of the family does their best to understand the source.