When grouchy old bigots are disappointed in modern youth for “not listening” to them and “complaining” too much and being “too sensitive”, that is often a positive sign that the youth are healthily rejecting the grouchy bigotry.
Nah. Disapproval of spanking as a form of parental discipline has been widespread at least since the Generation X’ers’ childhood. And AFAICT the parents of Millennials have no hesitation whatsoever about using the “taking something of value away” technique. The Millennial kids I know understood what “lose a privilege” meant before they were four years old.
The Boomers were such a large cohort, (hence boom), and the name was given to kids born for such a long period of time, that picking on them is rather like picking on Millennials. Boomers get blamed for the loss in Vietnam on the claim that they would not go fight, yet polls report that over half the Boomers supported the war up until the general society turned against it. Over half the names on the memorial wall are Boomers. Then there is the problem of claiming that the opinions, attitudes, and actions of people born in 1946 are in lockstep with those of people born in 1964. As terrible as they are, as recently as five years ago, Boomers were the most disposed to giving to charities.
Hating any group because of their birthdate will generally result from poor analysis and result in silly claims.
Milennials don’t have a large block of political power that they’ve used to strip mine the economy for their personal benefit at the expense of future generations and remove worker protections that they benefited from. The fact that you ramble on about Vietnam highlights how self-centered boomers are; Vietnam is only accorded it’s special status because it was a controversy that affected Baby Boomers.
Your cite doesn’t show that they are the most disposed towards giving to charities. Instead, it shows that as a group they give the most total. This doesn’t show much about their disposition, as they are a much larger group than any of the other groups, and have much more disposeable wealth than the younger groups. If everyone was equally disposed to give to charity, the largest, richest group would be the one that ends up giving the most.
Claiming that Millennials don’t care about Charity as much as Boomers do because they’re saddled with massive student loan debt and making less per hour (adjusted for inflation) than Boomers did at their age due to the policies Boomers have pushed is also pretty suspect.
It’s always the parents fault. We foolishly fail to foretell what kind of societal changes will affect our children. Parents almost never bother to account for the technological developments that will change the way the world works ten years before they happen so that they could prepare their children. I certainly made no effort to tell my kids about a catastrophic terrorist attack during their mid-teens that would reverberate through the culture and lead to war and economic disaster.
So yeah, blame the parents. We just have no idea what we are doing.
Wellup, I think it’s fair to say that Vietnam is also memorable for being part of a cultural upheaval in the US unequalled at least since the “Jazz Age” 1920s and possibly since the Civil War. It was not just the Boomers who thought it was a seriously big deal.
I would say that in some regards Millennials are better than the generation that came before, and as for their problems, I would blame it more on society, entertainment and culture rather than parenting.
And, how about their music! It’s all eff this and n-that. It’s all screaming and too loud. The drums sound like some African tribe. Music was better in my day, amirite?
–Just about every grandfather ever (with the specific complaints changed, of course)
Jeez, OP, just how old are you?
I just love how the same complaints about kids (and immigrants, for that matter) have all been around forever. My uncle, a solid boomer and classic rock lover, was complaining about music today. I told him he sounds just like my grandfather (his father) who had the same complaints about '60s and '70s rock. Everyone knows that '80s music was the best, anyway – Wide Boy Awake FTW!
By that I think you mean “had”. Millennials are all grown now. In fact I originally parsed this statement as “Millennials have no hesistation whatsoever about…” since I think of them more as parents than as children. Anyone who is still a child is not a millennial.
So you’re saying that the Great Depression, New Deal, World War II, and start of the Cold War didn’t involve enough cultural upheaval to matter? And that Vietnam is so important that it eclipses the end of the Cold War, shift to extreme politcal polarization, 9/11 and the beginning of the endless War on Terror, or any modern upheaval? This is just more Boomer narcissim- “the era that defines me is clearly of more cultural importance than anything that happened to my parents, or anything that will happen to you kids, Vietnam forever!”
Agreed that the real social transformation was not the 60s, but the 30s and 40s. The Depression and World War II changed America radically. The reason Baby Boomers were so different and weird is that they were the ones who grew up in the new America. That was the source of the generation gap.
I’m just glad that everyone has forgotten about Gen X. All the complaining about millennials is just copypasta of the complaining about GenXers in the ‘90s (with some substitutions like “always staring at their phones” replacing "always watching TV’).
As time goes on, the “lazy” generation has moved later and later. The “grumpy” generation seems stuck at “baby boomers” forever.
The film starts with Ann-Margret signing the title song. Can you imagine the effect on a pubescent boy?
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Her voice is like nails on a blackboard. Serious ouch. (And clearly we have different tastes in terms of what we consider sexy, but that’s a more subjective thing.)
What? How can you not think Ann-Margret is sexy? I get that her voice could not be someone’s cup of tea, but it’s freaking Ann-Margret! Are you blind, man?!
I don’t know how old Silver lining is (it doesn’t sound like he himself is a millennial), but something I find fascinating is just how many [conservative] millennials have bought into this notion that millenials are lazy, entitled whiners. It feeds nicely into the conservative superiority complex, like if they sit down next to the crazy old man yelling at kids on his lawn and yell even louder, they get to feel better than their peers.
