Thanks everyone for your comments! This post seems to be getting more traction than usual, so I might not be able to respond to everyone.
A lot of people are commenting that I have omitted any discussion on Gen X... the short answer is that Gen Xers are usually very understanding, and I have never had one pick a fight with me on the subject of work ethic! This post was written in response to a number of Boomers who were all saying that Millennials don't know how to work hard, and after much mulling over, I decided to collate my thoughts off the back of those conversations and write this essay. I never expected it to reach so many readers, so thank you very much for your helpful comments!
I will be making a follow-up post that focusses on cultivating hope, and will certainly take into account some of the helpful feedback you have given. Feel free to subscribe if you'd like to receive it when it drops. Peace!
I'm 45 so born right on the cusp of Gen X and Millennial. I experienced the workplace cultures of both and I have to say I agree with you. Workplace culture was worse in the 90s but the general vibe of life was more positive and there was more hope for the future. I still had to find a partner to buy a house in my late 30s, and I had to move to a tiny rural area. I have nothing but compassion for Millennials and particularly Gen Z. I have so much hope in the young people I meet because they seem to be aware of themselves, the world and others in a way we were not during our apathetic to be cool, grunge days in the 90s. And you're 100% correct about smart phones, the fact that Steve Jobs refused to let his own kids use them says everything we need to know. I'm an atheist myself but I think you're right about the need for meaning and transcendance. I find it in nature, but I live in a farm, I can find it any time. What are people supposed to do without access to experiences that will allow themselves perspective on their smallness in a grander universe?
Superb post Sarah! I fully agree that cultivating hope is the direction to focus on. My husband and I have been endeavoring to offer practical guidance and hope for this age of technological upheaval, and can affirm that people are eager to return to a life that is relational, engaged in reality, and spiritually centered. I'll look forward to your follow-up piece!
Great article and thorough. When I was in 7th grade, our English teacher explained that we were the first generation expected to decline relative to our parents regarding test scores, finances, morality, etc. He meant it as a condemnation of our lazy attitudes, not as a way to help us see anything new about how we approach the future. I had no idea how to respond because I was in 7th grade! What was I going to do with at least another 5 years before I could meaningfully enter the economy, vote, or start a family? I was trying to pass the next spelling test and learn algebra too!
I think many boomers did not understand, as you point out, what was going on. They thought many of the tools, formation, and education were in the cultural ether waiting for us to be diligent enough to employ them. They had destroyed many of the traditional institutions of family and religion that they themselves had been formed by before their rebellion. They thought we knew what to do without those institutions and we were only choosing not to be better people. CS Lewis points this kind of thing out in The Abolition of Man “We remove the organ, and demand the function. We castrate and bid the gelding ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’”
“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” It’s a great quote, and apropos here.
I never understand that perspective since Boomers are the parents of Millennials so if there's some terrible defect in Millennial morals or attitudes, shouldn't we blame the parents who raised them?
This is a superb essay. As a boomer, I appreciate Sarah’s thoughtful and thought-provoking take on this issue. But C.S. Lewis wrote The Abolition of Man in 1943 before the first baby boomer was born. The forces that led to where we are today were in play even before boomers came on the scene and affected their upbringing, too. And just one tiny defense of boomers — the apocalyptic fear of boomers was mass destruction by atomic bombs, which was pretty scary during a cold war that came close to turning hot in 1962. At least as scary as climate change.
I feel this very deeply and it’s something I’ve had a hard time articulating. I have a well paid job, work from home and have reasonable hours yet I’ve gotten to the point where I feel overwhelmed. It’s not the work, it’s the lack of community, the emptiness of our society and the destruction of our nations shared values. Thankfully I have a family and am extremely blessed by that; if I don’t have that, I don’t think I’d have sufficient motivation to stay on the hamster wheel.
It really is a shame. I'm not a nihilist, but working in isolation at my computer, year after year, does make you wonder what's the point of it all. As a Christian I'm grounded in a higher truth, but day-to-day it can be quite soul-sucking. Slaving away all day would be worth if it I had a community and town that felt like home and supported my family, but that's not the reality in suburbia. You end up living in isolation, at home almost all the time. It's not healthy.
It's sad, because things used to be different. My father grew up in Indiana in the early 70s; the way he discusses his childhood is just mind-blowing. As a young boy my father and his friends would disappear on their bikes, exploring and playing, with zero oversight by parents - they were free. Unfortunately my kids can't experience that kind of childhood because we no longer live in a high trust society. Truth is wokeism, smartphones, and mass migration have destroyed social cohesion and our sense of shared values.
I grew up much like your father, but in the 90s in rural California. We used to wander around all day in summer on federal property hunting squirrels and birds with .22 rifles. Nowadays that’s at least 3 scandals at once, but back then it was childhood.
The wokist people I know are fine letting their kids out to roam all day, and some of the more conservative are too afraid to. Its anecdotal, but I think it's lazy to blame everything like that on wokeness.
I’m Gen X, mid-50s, with kids in middle school (ages 12 & 14). Nate’s comments, as well as this excellent article, resonate deeply with me.
My family is fortunate to have a household income that allows us to put our kids in excellent schools and live in a safe upper middle class community in a Midwest metro of the US. We have a harmonious home life, spend lots of time together as a family, and the spouse and I are generally “on the same page” when it comes to making decisions about our kids schooling, financial decisions, etc.—which minimizes conflict. We’re doing well within the system, but I’m ambivalent about this hamster wheel.
Our town is filled with other families who prioritize their kids’ education, etc. People are friendly. But, I don’t feel like I have a community. Maybe this is because my sense is that most people in my area perhaps like the hamster wheel they’re on? Not sure.
I often reflect on David Goodhart’s Somewheres and Anywheres. I was raised by Anywheres on the west coast and have lived my adult life as an Anywhere, but I think I’m a Somewhere at heart. So our family is optimizing our kids’ educations and futures, but life feels really out of whack. I like lots of people, but I don’t feel connected to them—because we truly aren’t on the same page. Then again, our calculated optimization of our kids’ education and futures probably puts us in the Anywhere camp, even if I don’t like it.
Related to others’ comments about the freedom of being a kid in the 70s/80s/90s and the topic of safetyism, I can relate to an extent. I grew up in the Los Angeles area and as a kid in the 70s and 80s had all kinds of fun adventures similar to those described by other commenters riding bikes with my friends. Our parents had NO idea what we were up to nor where we were. My kids’ lives are drastically different to this; it’s as though I grew up in a different country.
While I wish my kids could have more of the sort of adventures I had, I’m not sure that what I experienced as a kid was all better than what my kids now have. My friends and I were studious and stayed out of trouble, but I had quite a few classmates (and cousins) in middle school who were smoking pot, drinking, and some were sexually active at 11, 12 years old. In high school a number of classmates had cocaine addictions.
In college peers who grew up in different parts of LA described similar early exposure to drinking and drugs (not just pot), so it seemed to be a somewhat widespread issue regardless of area. Maybe LA had more of this in the 70s and 80s compared to much of the US? Maybe LA was sort of the headwinds for what was to come in later decades with respect to drug use?
We all knew some people who did drugs but ended up fine. We also knew people whose lives were really screwed up because their freedom to have all kinds of adventures as a kid led to all kinds of trouble.
This drug use and early sexual activity I mention links to the article in that many of these kids I knew had divorced parents or else moms who had never married. By this time in the 70s and 80s in LA, there no longer was that community dynamic in which the kids were out until dinner, but various neighbors were keeping an eye on things. LA was (and is) a land of transplants after all.
Maybe in other parts of the country and in more rural California in the 70s there were still people in the neighborhoods kind of keeping an eye on kids, as sort of a check on things not getting too out of control? Not sure.
Humans are tribal creatures and we feel unnatural in an environment devoid of community. In the suburbs it's hard to create community. Planning anything, especially with friends who have kids, takes a week of advance notice, then a 30 minute drive. It severely limits the quantity and quality of friendships.
I think you're spot on, Sarah. Considering all of these generational changes together is eye-opening and, honestly, tragic. The normalization of broken homes, of meaningless and abusive sex, the exorbitant costs of living and home-ownership, and most importantly, the loss of belief in transcendent meaning, learned cynicism about love and commitment and marriage... what a terrible inheritance we boomers have given to the young. Despair, depression, suicide are all growing. But there is hope and purpose and healing in Jesus, and I pray the church will embrace this lost generation.
In the 1970s, a young couple with a high school education (say a school custodian and a receptionist) could have secure jobs in the same organization for decades, buy a house and a cottage, and retire young (~late 50s, since they started working at 18) with ownership of both properties.
Today, a Millenial couple with multiple degrees and huge debt from university are going to be renting a costly apartment and working in precarious temporary contracts. Yes, their CVs are impressive and they can discuss complex issues over a glass of Prosecco at a dinner party. But as you pointed out, they are under a lot of pressure and they don't have that same comfort of previous generations, who had the "carrot" dangling ahead of them of early retirement with a full pension to a fully-paid off house and cottage.
Millennials are the generation who were told to go to university if they didn't want to spend their life flipping burgers, and then get shouted at by Boomer business owners "what, are you too good to flip burgers?" when they can't find workers for their starvation wage jobs.
There’s no retiring early unless you have health insurance (provided to you as you can’t afford cost) and a huge savings as Social Security doesn’t start until 62 and reduced by 25%. Boomers lost pensions as Congress decided companies could offer 401k etc. Problem with that is if you can’t afford to put money in, the company doesn’t. So companies benefitted, big surprise. We married in 1970, two kids (Gen X) and they work hard, don’t complain and are self sufficient, husband and Dad had life altering work place injury, 1981, so we lived on one pay and his SS disability. Nothing from his work. Let’s not assume Boomers had it great, we did in many ways but that was the times, rotary phones with party lines, cars with chokes to start them, transistor radios, B&W small box TV. Three pair of shoes a year, school, Sunday, sneakers, if you grew out too bad, had to wait till shoe time. No fast food, no eating out and we never thought to complain or we’d be given something to complain about
Boomers have gone through the most changes. My parents divorced in 60’s, husband’s parents should have as they were miserable to each other and kids affected
Gen Z raised Millennials so blame them.
Or better yet, don’t blame anybody and suck it up, life’s a bitch and then you die. That’s the motto we lived by.
"Imagine no possessions, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to live or die for and no religion, too."
Well we don't trust you, Boomer, and you appear to live mostly for cruises and Buicks and infinite healthcare because you cling to life that badly. Your generation locked down society so you wouldn't get the sniffles. Choke yourself on your fucking bootstraps if you think there's no God judging you for what your g-g-g-generation did.
I think you bring up some interesting points, well worth considering. While I agree that Millennials are searching for hope, it’s because St Augustine is a major influence on me. However, I think the cultural milieu we live in is fundamentally nihilistic - there is a deep rooted suspicion that we cannot really know what is True or Good, and the culture does not think questions like that can be rationally resolved.
So I think, culturally, the notion of hope itself needs defending, since hope which is not connected to the transcendentals cannot bear the load we need it to. If hope is just a taboo (in MacIntyre’s sense of the term) it can only ever be hollow.
But then, I am trying to fashion myself into a Neo-Scholastic (Neo-neo-Scholastic?) so it’s not really a surprise that I’ve pushed straight for the Good and the True.
Yes I agree. I’ve been enjoying the ‘Re-enchanting’ podcast which touches on this slightly, but I think we do need to take this further as a concept.
Christians over the last couple of decades have focused on defending the existence of God (which I once heard someone refer to as “God’s most boring attribute”). I wonder whether now, in a world of “I’m spiritual but not religious” there needs to be a focus on defending hope…?
I don’t think I know that podcast. I’ll have to take a look - thanks for the direction!
I always talk about God’s existence haha. It’s just the way I am. When speaking to people who don’t believe in God, I I feel compelled to try and challenge the automatic dismissal which follows from “We’re talking about nothing.”
That being said, I take your point - existence is a bit of a dead end (unless you’ve got a taste for Thomistic metaphysics, which I think everyone should cultivate). I once gave an Ash Wednesday talk to a group of students which was basically my attempt to grapple with the fact that St Paul tried my approach in Athens and it didn’t work.
I guess the middle point might be Chesterton’s sense of wonder - that quote about the poet merely trying to get his head into the heavens, while the scientist tries to get the heavens into his head - and then his head cracks - might be the…aesthetic?…approach to engage people.
And sorry for the long comment, but I can’t resist - I tend to think that the “spiritual but not religious” claim is an attempt to remove my own beliefs from the realm of criticism - because they’re spiritual, they must be tolerated and unquestioned. I confess that’s not a very charitable view.
Sarah, thank you for this cogent analysis. I am the parent of two millenials, and one right on the cusp of being millennial or Gen Z. I also have a millennial daughter-in-law and four Gen Z nieces. I just barely make it into the Baby Boomer generation myself and my two sisters are Gen X, which has at least a few similar issues (anecdotally) to what you describe for millennials.
Your descriptions of the issues are right on target
And I couldn't agree more: this is a spiritual problem.
In fact, I'd say even the chaotic political world in which we currently find ourselves is a spiritual problem. Lack of empathy is the greatest issue. Empathy leads also to compassion. We have clearly been told to love God, and love our neighbors as ourselves. Without empathy, we can't do any of that.
To be honest, I am struggling with hope right now. It is a daily prayer and discipline. To help myself, I wrote about it. Now, having read your article, I might tweak a few things in mine, but I think the premise is valid. I'll post the link below. Perhaps it may be a spark for others who have similar questions and concerns.
Thank you again for explaining so well. Even that is helpful because then we know where to look and pay attention. God bless.
On the coffee thing - the same generation of men would think nothing of having 5-6 pints of (weak) beer in a session and to go to the pub several nights a week, plenty of men and women smoked 20 a day - they had their small pleasures when they were younger.
Gen X (mine) had a similar despair and despondency to millennials in the early 90s - stereotyped via Slackers and grunge, but I think you really get it if you read Douglas Cooper’s ‘Generation X’ - the sense of enervation and having been born after the party (50s to 70s).
We got rescued by the Internet boom - I think without that, the ‘doing worse than your parents’ thing would have started earlier, but it created an opening for enough people to get through.
To me, it’s clear that millennials and younger haven’t had the breaks we had - although obviously more people have family money now
"We got rescued by the Internet boom - I think without that, the ‘doing worse than your parents’ thing would have started earlier, but it created an opening for enough people to get through."
Sarah, you have written a deep and very thoughtful and needed conversation, of which I have to save and return to read more deeply. I am a Boomer who did NOT participate heavily in the corporate work culture. I just never fit in. Not every Boomer has those scolds in your direction, I certainly do not. I grieve for the wounds of the young, as indeed, the near-collapse of the nuclear family is a disaster. My parents were breaking apart way back in 1966, Dad filing for divorce and Mom suddenly dying overnight from a massive stroke ( I was nearly 14). Boomers also had the very nasty Vietnam War, a disaster for my generation ( I lost a brother in that war in 1968). I am writing my weekly piece on my own generation, this Friday. Again, thank you for this deep dive into generational differences and please know, I have no complaints about Milllennials. Life is hard on all of us. I am reading your writing piece in more depth, later today. Bless you, Wendy
Thank you Wendy! Yes I fully recognise that Boomers went through unimaginable hardships that Millennials are not sensitive to. Would love to learn more. x
Sarah, as I said, you have delved into deep territory here. Each and every generation of humans goes through plenty of stuff. My parents, the "Greatest Generation", who endured the Great Depression and WW2 both, they went through far more than Boomers did. They were also of a different mindset and even though my generation sprung from theirs, we did not have the same core. Boomers had their sorrows, mainly the Vietnam War and the social and political chaos. Your dear generation has endured the continuing collapse of foundational societal norms, that have flowed out to add to chaos and dismay. I write deeply about my own journey of youth in the sexual revolution, which was chaos from the start. The devil is a marketer and that is all he does, lie and lie and lie some more. I fell for it and paid a steep price. Each generation has their crucible. Yours grew up with all the technology and I admire how you all cope with it. I have been online since 1998...but the level of tech keeps expanding and the human being in the midst of it needs to keep a foundation amidst the flow. I will continue to deeply read your essay! Keep digging, keep going! Your heart and soul shine through as authentic! We need authentic and from one authentic to another, bless you! Wendy
I'm a Boomer, and I do so agree. When I think about my parents being children during the Great Depression and then young teens during WWII, I feel so much for what they endured. Every generation has it's struggles, but what has made life for us all so very different is the 24/7 takeover of our lives of technology. People building careers, families and lives do have such different challenges than any previous generation.
And did you and your (now boomer) classmates participate in the monthly drill of hiding under your school desks, hands clasped over your head, in order to practice “saving yourself” from the atomic bomb that could be leveled against your town at any time? The classroom tvs showed black and white movies of the bombs dropped on Japan. Boomers also experienced parental divorce, which often made the child a pariah, being from a “broken home”. Child abuse was also common at home and at school and at church for boomers - there was no mandated reporting - child abuse happened everywhere. The processed food was often pop tarts, white bread grilled cheese sandwiches, and tv dinners. And jobs for women were normally confined to being a teacher or a nurse or some misogynist asshole’s secretary - all low paying on the wage scale. Early on, girls were programmed that they needed to find a “good man” to marry, and then have children. Most men were racist and sexist. Every generation has its mountains to climb.
Women generally have to climb out of the past to create a future for themselves. Find your carrot.
THERE IS NO CARROT. It's not hidden under one of the street magician's cups, genius. It simply isn't there. The ruling bloodlines stole it and only consumed it after using it to sodomize each other at an Eyes Wide Shut party.
Boomers ingested so much lead that ducking under desks was just a game of hide and seek where everybody hides. Especially compared to what the scamdemic did. Old people who want to feel special like to pretend that they lived through the hardest times of all, that the fake virus world-economic-nuke either didn't happen, wasn't so bad, or didn't cause the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle to the top in our recorded history.
None of the wars compare to this one, and this IS perpetual, undeclared war. It's not like how war used to be, where it was on battlefield and everyone knew it was happening. Good lord, the Boomers and the Silent generations stake their entire identities on having been there when people were joyriding in the streets after "we won WWII"... and then our shadow govt shipped over a bunch of Nazis (the real winners) to work in the United States. Many a crusty old chicken hawk attempts to regale the millennial.
Their sentimentality is nothing short of adorably deluded.
Now the war is being waged on us. It's WORSE than any before, and large part because it is so easy to deny due to being unrecognizable and its modus operandi.
Alemany, thank you for your comment. While I respectfully disagree with you, we have free speech in this nation. Boomers are flawed human beings, as are every single generation. No, I did not go through the "atomic" drills. I already explained in my original comment that my own parents were splitting up, near to the time my Mom died suddenly. I did not experience being a "pariah" from a broken home. My own Mom was a Public Health nurse and she saw from the front-lines, abuse in some families, NOT all familes! I can see from your comment that you have strong opinions and that is OK. I never felt "programmed" to find a good man, hence the rebellion of my Boomer generation and I was a feminist in my youth. ( I am not a feminist any more). My contemporaries were certainly blunt and rowdy, just as women are today. I was extremely promiscuous in my youth. The gnarly was there...but so was the independence. I am not living in the past, Alemany, I live very much in the present. I am pursuing no "carrot". Since you did not live in my generation, you cannot speak for what I myself experienced, just as I cannot speak for your generation either. I am an individual, not a statistic. I write about the chaos I went through in my own direct experience in the sexual revolution. It was not fun, it was not pretty and I would like to spare young people some of the sorrow my generation went through. The Vietnam War cut a very wide swath of horror through the middle of the Boomers. I lost a very dear brother in Vietnam in 1968 and I have no great love for the Military Industrial Complex. I have an Uncle on my Mom's side who fell in the D-Day invasion in WW2 and is buried in Normandy. War is the ancient plague of humanity and no one generation is spared from it. I hope you find your way and I wish you well. Wendy
My wife and I discuss this and have settled on a formula. The Baby Boomers got a deal. Gen X got a deal, but worse than the Boomers. The Millennials thought they were getting a deal, but didn’t get a deal. The Zoomers know they’re not getting a deal.
I’m Gen X and I completely understand why Millennials and Gen X don’t want to work. There is little to no jog security and the pay has to be topped up by the government. And even if they did work, they still wouldn’t be able to afford a home of their own.
Don't agree with everything here but the broad strokes I do.
Looking for meaning in work is really not a good idea but many millennials do this, and no wonder when so much that gave meaning to life is out of reach now that civic society has broken down (and workplaces increasingly prohibit or have a veto right over their employees civic society engagements (particularly if they take you away from work). There was one job I didn't get despite everyone from the partners of the law firm down wanting to hire me for because I wouldn't give up my hobby (writing - hence why I am on Substack) which they feared would conflict with my work and so the "risk" team vetoed my employment.
I would also add that not only do you take your toxic boss in your pocket, you take your colleagues and people you manage - so work bleeds into the whole of life. Again, making it difficult to just have work as a "means to an end" of a pay packet.
I feel like a key part of the article is missing since it discusses only a very euro/western-centric perspective (and one that sounds rather white at that) alongside the very real issues described.
There's little acknowledgment of other spiritual beliefs or ideals that exist beyond the Christian god, which makes me sad personally.
As I was reading this, I was struck by how well you put everything, and wondering when you were going to get to the part about health insurance and how expensive it is, and then I noticed you were in the UK. Oof. You guys have it really rough and it is only going to get way worse for you. I am so sorry. America is a runaway minecar towards the depths of hell in many ways but the UK and Canada seem to be trying to frontrun us in the race towards destruction. I am so sorry Sarah. I recently had a Canadian woman from Quebec apply for a job at the company I work at trying to get an H1b visa to come work in the US, and she was excited to get my company’s expensive bronze plan (generally the worst kind of insurance, which doesnt pay for much until you rack up a lot of charges) because she could actually maybe go to the doctor if she needed to. I can see ways for canada to get out of the trap it’s in, but I don’t know how the UK is going to pull it off in less than a generation even if you wanted to try. It’d probably take two once the ship finally turns around. It’s really shocking. I don’t know why the aristocracy or monarchy put up with it, seeing as how at this point I cant imagine continuing as things are can’t be in their interests. Perhaps they will rally and try to fix things. Even if they don’t have the hard power to do anything about it all, I should think they still probably have enough soft power. Good luck to you, and may God be with you!
Indeed, I thought about covering the NHS, but in all honesty the post was already getting too long! But I suppose one could argue that crippling healthcare comes under the ‘economic regression’ bracket. I also didn’t mention how renting for longer can have health impacts, which also damages morale. It’s hard to be motivated to work when two-thirds of one’s income goes into renting a house with a mould problem that’s making you sick, and having councils/law institutions that are so broken by 15 years of austerity cuts means they don’t have capacity to enforce housing codes. The list goes on…
Thank you for sharing this. It hit very deeply. I've felt a sadness in my being for a long time. God is my only saving grace. He's the only reason I have any hope at all. But this article demonstrates why this world is so hard to care at all. Not to mention the full on worship of money. It's tough.
I pray everyday that I may be of use to our Creator, but fallen world really doesn't do it justice. It's brutal out here.
I think your experience is increasingly common. The verse that comes to mind is John 16:33b, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Thanks everyone for your comments! This post seems to be getting more traction than usual, so I might not be able to respond to everyone.
A lot of people are commenting that I have omitted any discussion on Gen X... the short answer is that Gen Xers are usually very understanding, and I have never had one pick a fight with me on the subject of work ethic! This post was written in response to a number of Boomers who were all saying that Millennials don't know how to work hard, and after much mulling over, I decided to collate my thoughts off the back of those conversations and write this essay. I never expected it to reach so many readers, so thank you very much for your helpful comments!
I will be making a follow-up post that focusses on cultivating hope, and will certainly take into account some of the helpful feedback you have given. Feel free to subscribe if you'd like to receive it when it drops. Peace!
I'm 45 so born right on the cusp of Gen X and Millennial. I experienced the workplace cultures of both and I have to say I agree with you. Workplace culture was worse in the 90s but the general vibe of life was more positive and there was more hope for the future. I still had to find a partner to buy a house in my late 30s, and I had to move to a tiny rural area. I have nothing but compassion for Millennials and particularly Gen Z. I have so much hope in the young people I meet because they seem to be aware of themselves, the world and others in a way we were not during our apathetic to be cool, grunge days in the 90s. And you're 100% correct about smart phones, the fact that Steve Jobs refused to let his own kids use them says everything we need to know. I'm an atheist myself but I think you're right about the need for meaning and transcendance. I find it in nature, but I live in a farm, I can find it any time. What are people supposed to do without access to experiences that will allow themselves perspective on their smallness in a grander universe?
Superb post Sarah! I fully agree that cultivating hope is the direction to focus on. My husband and I have been endeavoring to offer practical guidance and hope for this age of technological upheaval, and can affirm that people are eager to return to a life that is relational, engaged in reality, and spiritually centered. I'll look forward to your follow-up piece!
Thanks again for all the engagement! As promised, here is my follow-up essay: https://open.substack.com/pub/sarahcoppin/p/on-re-enchantment?r=2le96v&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Great article and thorough. When I was in 7th grade, our English teacher explained that we were the first generation expected to decline relative to our parents regarding test scores, finances, morality, etc. He meant it as a condemnation of our lazy attitudes, not as a way to help us see anything new about how we approach the future. I had no idea how to respond because I was in 7th grade! What was I going to do with at least another 5 years before I could meaningfully enter the economy, vote, or start a family? I was trying to pass the next spelling test and learn algebra too!
I think many boomers did not understand, as you point out, what was going on. They thought many of the tools, formation, and education were in the cultural ether waiting for us to be diligent enough to employ them. They had destroyed many of the traditional institutions of family and religion that they themselves had been formed by before their rebellion. They thought we knew what to do without those institutions and we were only choosing not to be better people. CS Lewis points this kind of thing out in The Abolition of Man “We remove the organ, and demand the function. We castrate and bid the gelding ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’”
“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” It’s a great quote, and apropos here.
I never understand that perspective since Boomers are the parents of Millennials so if there's some terrible defect in Millennial morals or attitudes, shouldn't we blame the parents who raised them?
Boomers are the grand-parents of Millennials, not the parents.
I’ve always wondered that too!
This is a superb essay. As a boomer, I appreciate Sarah’s thoughtful and thought-provoking take on this issue. But C.S. Lewis wrote The Abolition of Man in 1943 before the first baby boomer was born. The forces that led to where we are today were in play even before boomers came on the scene and affected their upbringing, too. And just one tiny defense of boomers — the apocalyptic fear of boomers was mass destruction by atomic bombs, which was pretty scary during a cold war that came close to turning hot in 1962. At least as scary as climate change.
I feel this very deeply and it’s something I’ve had a hard time articulating. I have a well paid job, work from home and have reasonable hours yet I’ve gotten to the point where I feel overwhelmed. It’s not the work, it’s the lack of community, the emptiness of our society and the destruction of our nations shared values. Thankfully I have a family and am extremely blessed by that; if I don’t have that, I don’t think I’d have sufficient motivation to stay on the hamster wheel.
Thank you for sharing. Overwhelm seems to be the norm now, which I think is a great tragedy.
It really is a shame. I'm not a nihilist, but working in isolation at my computer, year after year, does make you wonder what's the point of it all. As a Christian I'm grounded in a higher truth, but day-to-day it can be quite soul-sucking. Slaving away all day would be worth if it I had a community and town that felt like home and supported my family, but that's not the reality in suburbia. You end up living in isolation, at home almost all the time. It's not healthy.
It's sad, because things used to be different. My father grew up in Indiana in the early 70s; the way he discusses his childhood is just mind-blowing. As a young boy my father and his friends would disappear on their bikes, exploring and playing, with zero oversight by parents - they were free. Unfortunately my kids can't experience that kind of childhood because we no longer live in a high trust society. Truth is wokeism, smartphones, and mass migration have destroyed social cohesion and our sense of shared values.
I grew up much like your father, but in the 90s in rural California. We used to wander around all day in summer on federal property hunting squirrels and birds with .22 rifles. Nowadays that’s at least 3 scandals at once, but back then it was childhood.
The wokist people I know are fine letting their kids out to roam all day, and some of the more conservative are too afraid to. Its anecdotal, but I think it's lazy to blame everything like that on wokeness.
I’m Gen X, mid-50s, with kids in middle school (ages 12 & 14). Nate’s comments, as well as this excellent article, resonate deeply with me.
My family is fortunate to have a household income that allows us to put our kids in excellent schools and live in a safe upper middle class community in a Midwest metro of the US. We have a harmonious home life, spend lots of time together as a family, and the spouse and I are generally “on the same page” when it comes to making decisions about our kids schooling, financial decisions, etc.—which minimizes conflict. We’re doing well within the system, but I’m ambivalent about this hamster wheel.
Our town is filled with other families who prioritize their kids’ education, etc. People are friendly. But, I don’t feel like I have a community. Maybe this is because my sense is that most people in my area perhaps like the hamster wheel they’re on? Not sure.
I often reflect on David Goodhart’s Somewheres and Anywheres. I was raised by Anywheres on the west coast and have lived my adult life as an Anywhere, but I think I’m a Somewhere at heart. So our family is optimizing our kids’ educations and futures, but life feels really out of whack. I like lots of people, but I don’t feel connected to them—because we truly aren’t on the same page. Then again, our calculated optimization of our kids’ education and futures probably puts us in the Anywhere camp, even if I don’t like it.
Related to others’ comments about the freedom of being a kid in the 70s/80s/90s and the topic of safetyism, I can relate to an extent. I grew up in the Los Angeles area and as a kid in the 70s and 80s had all kinds of fun adventures similar to those described by other commenters riding bikes with my friends. Our parents had NO idea what we were up to nor where we were. My kids’ lives are drastically different to this; it’s as though I grew up in a different country.
While I wish my kids could have more of the sort of adventures I had, I’m not sure that what I experienced as a kid was all better than what my kids now have. My friends and I were studious and stayed out of trouble, but I had quite a few classmates (and cousins) in middle school who were smoking pot, drinking, and some were sexually active at 11, 12 years old. In high school a number of classmates had cocaine addictions.
In college peers who grew up in different parts of LA described similar early exposure to drinking and drugs (not just pot), so it seemed to be a somewhat widespread issue regardless of area. Maybe LA had more of this in the 70s and 80s compared to much of the US? Maybe LA was sort of the headwinds for what was to come in later decades with respect to drug use?
We all knew some people who did drugs but ended up fine. We also knew people whose lives were really screwed up because their freedom to have all kinds of adventures as a kid led to all kinds of trouble.
This drug use and early sexual activity I mention links to the article in that many of these kids I knew had divorced parents or else moms who had never married. By this time in the 70s and 80s in LA, there no longer was that community dynamic in which the kids were out until dinner, but various neighbors were keeping an eye on things. LA was (and is) a land of transplants after all.
Maybe in other parts of the country and in more rural California in the 70s there were still people in the neighborhoods kind of keeping an eye on kids, as sort of a check on things not getting too out of control? Not sure.
Humans are tribal creatures and we feel unnatural in an environment devoid of community. In the suburbs it's hard to create community. Planning anything, especially with friends who have kids, takes a week of advance notice, then a 30 minute drive. It severely limits the quantity and quality of friendships.
I think you're spot on, Sarah. Considering all of these generational changes together is eye-opening and, honestly, tragic. The normalization of broken homes, of meaningless and abusive sex, the exorbitant costs of living and home-ownership, and most importantly, the loss of belief in transcendent meaning, learned cynicism about love and commitment and marriage... what a terrible inheritance we boomers have given to the young. Despair, depression, suicide are all growing. But there is hope and purpose and healing in Jesus, and I pray the church will embrace this lost generation.
Thanks Charlie!
In the 1970s, a young couple with a high school education (say a school custodian and a receptionist) could have secure jobs in the same organization for decades, buy a house and a cottage, and retire young (~late 50s, since they started working at 18) with ownership of both properties.
Today, a Millenial couple with multiple degrees and huge debt from university are going to be renting a costly apartment and working in precarious temporary contracts. Yes, their CVs are impressive and they can discuss complex issues over a glass of Prosecco at a dinner party. But as you pointed out, they are under a lot of pressure and they don't have that same comfort of previous generations, who had the "carrot" dangling ahead of them of early retirement with a full pension to a fully-paid off house and cottage.
Millennials are the generation who were told to go to university if they didn't want to spend their life flipping burgers, and then get shouted at by Boomer business owners "what, are you too good to flip burgers?" when they can't find workers for their starvation wage jobs.
Boomers on down were told the same thing.
Indeed!
There’s no retiring early unless you have health insurance (provided to you as you can’t afford cost) and a huge savings as Social Security doesn’t start until 62 and reduced by 25%. Boomers lost pensions as Congress decided companies could offer 401k etc. Problem with that is if you can’t afford to put money in, the company doesn’t. So companies benefitted, big surprise. We married in 1970, two kids (Gen X) and they work hard, don’t complain and are self sufficient, husband and Dad had life altering work place injury, 1981, so we lived on one pay and his SS disability. Nothing from his work. Let’s not assume Boomers had it great, we did in many ways but that was the times, rotary phones with party lines, cars with chokes to start them, transistor radios, B&W small box TV. Three pair of shoes a year, school, Sunday, sneakers, if you grew out too bad, had to wait till shoe time. No fast food, no eating out and we never thought to complain or we’d be given something to complain about
Boomers have gone through the most changes. My parents divorced in 60’s, husband’s parents should have as they were miserable to each other and kids affected
Gen Z raised Millennials so blame them.
Or better yet, don’t blame anybody and suck it up, life’s a bitch and then you die. That’s the motto we lived by.
You had some more choice mottos.
"Never trust anybody over 30."
"Imagine no possessions, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to live or die for and no religion, too."
Well we don't trust you, Boomer, and you appear to live mostly for cruises and Buicks and infinite healthcare because you cling to life that badly. Your generation locked down society so you wouldn't get the sniffles. Choke yourself on your fucking bootstraps if you think there's no God judging you for what your g-g-g-generation did.
I think you bring up some interesting points, well worth considering. While I agree that Millennials are searching for hope, it’s because St Augustine is a major influence on me. However, I think the cultural milieu we live in is fundamentally nihilistic - there is a deep rooted suspicion that we cannot really know what is True or Good, and the culture does not think questions like that can be rationally resolved.
So I think, culturally, the notion of hope itself needs defending, since hope which is not connected to the transcendentals cannot bear the load we need it to. If hope is just a taboo (in MacIntyre’s sense of the term) it can only ever be hollow.
But then, I am trying to fashion myself into a Neo-Scholastic (Neo-neo-Scholastic?) so it’s not really a surprise that I’ve pushed straight for the Good and the True.
Yes I agree. I’ve been enjoying the ‘Re-enchanting’ podcast which touches on this slightly, but I think we do need to take this further as a concept.
Christians over the last couple of decades have focused on defending the existence of God (which I once heard someone refer to as “God’s most boring attribute”). I wonder whether now, in a world of “I’m spiritual but not religious” there needs to be a focus on defending hope…?
I don’t think I know that podcast. I’ll have to take a look - thanks for the direction!
I always talk about God’s existence haha. It’s just the way I am. When speaking to people who don’t believe in God, I I feel compelled to try and challenge the automatic dismissal which follows from “We’re talking about nothing.”
That being said, I take your point - existence is a bit of a dead end (unless you’ve got a taste for Thomistic metaphysics, which I think everyone should cultivate). I once gave an Ash Wednesday talk to a group of students which was basically my attempt to grapple with the fact that St Paul tried my approach in Athens and it didn’t work.
I guess the middle point might be Chesterton’s sense of wonder - that quote about the poet merely trying to get his head into the heavens, while the scientist tries to get the heavens into his head - and then his head cracks - might be the…aesthetic?…approach to engage people.
And sorry for the long comment, but I can’t resist - I tend to think that the “spiritual but not religious” claim is an attempt to remove my own beliefs from the realm of criticism - because they’re spiritual, they must be tolerated and unquestioned. I confess that’s not a very charitable view.
Sarah, thank you for this cogent analysis. I am the parent of two millenials, and one right on the cusp of being millennial or Gen Z. I also have a millennial daughter-in-law and four Gen Z nieces. I just barely make it into the Baby Boomer generation myself and my two sisters are Gen X, which has at least a few similar issues (anecdotally) to what you describe for millennials.
Your descriptions of the issues are right on target
And I couldn't agree more: this is a spiritual problem.
In fact, I'd say even the chaotic political world in which we currently find ourselves is a spiritual problem. Lack of empathy is the greatest issue. Empathy leads also to compassion. We have clearly been told to love God, and love our neighbors as ourselves. Without empathy, we can't do any of that.
To be honest, I am struggling with hope right now. It is a daily prayer and discipline. To help myself, I wrote about it. Now, having read your article, I might tweak a few things in mine, but I think the premise is valid. I'll post the link below. Perhaps it may be a spark for others who have similar questions and concerns.
Thank you again for explaining so well. Even that is helpful because then we know where to look and pay attention. God bless.
Thanks Debbie! I’ll give your post a read ☺️
On the coffee thing - the same generation of men would think nothing of having 5-6 pints of (weak) beer in a session and to go to the pub several nights a week, plenty of men and women smoked 20 a day - they had their small pleasures when they were younger.
Gen X (mine) had a similar despair and despondency to millennials in the early 90s - stereotyped via Slackers and grunge, but I think you really get it if you read Douglas Cooper’s ‘Generation X’ - the sense of enervation and having been born after the party (50s to 70s).
We got rescued by the Internet boom - I think without that, the ‘doing worse than your parents’ thing would have started earlier, but it created an opening for enough people to get through.
To me, it’s clear that millennials and younger haven’t had the breaks we had - although obviously more people have family money now
"We got rescued by the Internet boom - I think without that, the ‘doing worse than your parents’ thing would have started earlier, but it created an opening for enough people to get through."
👆 I 100% agree with this assessment.
Sarah, you have written a deep and very thoughtful and needed conversation, of which I have to save and return to read more deeply. I am a Boomer who did NOT participate heavily in the corporate work culture. I just never fit in. Not every Boomer has those scolds in your direction, I certainly do not. I grieve for the wounds of the young, as indeed, the near-collapse of the nuclear family is a disaster. My parents were breaking apart way back in 1966, Dad filing for divorce and Mom suddenly dying overnight from a massive stroke ( I was nearly 14). Boomers also had the very nasty Vietnam War, a disaster for my generation ( I lost a brother in that war in 1968). I am writing my weekly piece on my own generation, this Friday. Again, thank you for this deep dive into generational differences and please know, I have no complaints about Milllennials. Life is hard on all of us. I am reading your writing piece in more depth, later today. Bless you, Wendy
Thank you Wendy! Yes I fully recognise that Boomers went through unimaginable hardships that Millennials are not sensitive to. Would love to learn more. x
Sarah, as I said, you have delved into deep territory here. Each and every generation of humans goes through plenty of stuff. My parents, the "Greatest Generation", who endured the Great Depression and WW2 both, they went through far more than Boomers did. They were also of a different mindset and even though my generation sprung from theirs, we did not have the same core. Boomers had their sorrows, mainly the Vietnam War and the social and political chaos. Your dear generation has endured the continuing collapse of foundational societal norms, that have flowed out to add to chaos and dismay. I write deeply about my own journey of youth in the sexual revolution, which was chaos from the start. The devil is a marketer and that is all he does, lie and lie and lie some more. I fell for it and paid a steep price. Each generation has their crucible. Yours grew up with all the technology and I admire how you all cope with it. I have been online since 1998...but the level of tech keeps expanding and the human being in the midst of it needs to keep a foundation amidst the flow. I will continue to deeply read your essay! Keep digging, keep going! Your heart and soul shine through as authentic! We need authentic and from one authentic to another, bless you! Wendy
I'm a Boomer, and I do so agree. When I think about my parents being children during the Great Depression and then young teens during WWII, I feel so much for what they endured. Every generation has it's struggles, but what has made life for us all so very different is the 24/7 takeover of our lives of technology. People building careers, families and lives do have such different challenges than any previous generation.
And did you and your (now boomer) classmates participate in the monthly drill of hiding under your school desks, hands clasped over your head, in order to practice “saving yourself” from the atomic bomb that could be leveled against your town at any time? The classroom tvs showed black and white movies of the bombs dropped on Japan. Boomers also experienced parental divorce, which often made the child a pariah, being from a “broken home”. Child abuse was also common at home and at school and at church for boomers - there was no mandated reporting - child abuse happened everywhere. The processed food was often pop tarts, white bread grilled cheese sandwiches, and tv dinners. And jobs for women were normally confined to being a teacher or a nurse or some misogynist asshole’s secretary - all low paying on the wage scale. Early on, girls were programmed that they needed to find a “good man” to marry, and then have children. Most men were racist and sexist. Every generation has its mountains to climb.
Women generally have to climb out of the past to create a future for themselves. Find your carrot.
THERE IS NO CARROT. It's not hidden under one of the street magician's cups, genius. It simply isn't there. The ruling bloodlines stole it and only consumed it after using it to sodomize each other at an Eyes Wide Shut party.
Boomers ingested so much lead that ducking under desks was just a game of hide and seek where everybody hides. Especially compared to what the scamdemic did. Old people who want to feel special like to pretend that they lived through the hardest times of all, that the fake virus world-economic-nuke either didn't happen, wasn't so bad, or didn't cause the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle to the top in our recorded history.
None of the wars compare to this one, and this IS perpetual, undeclared war. It's not like how war used to be, where it was on battlefield and everyone knew it was happening. Good lord, the Boomers and the Silent generations stake their entire identities on having been there when people were joyriding in the streets after "we won WWII"... and then our shadow govt shipped over a bunch of Nazis (the real winners) to work in the United States. Many a crusty old chicken hawk attempts to regale the millennial.
Their sentimentality is nothing short of adorably deluded.
Now the war is being waged on us. It's WORSE than any before, and large part because it is so easy to deny due to being unrecognizable and its modus operandi.
Alemany, thank you for your comment. While I respectfully disagree with you, we have free speech in this nation. Boomers are flawed human beings, as are every single generation. No, I did not go through the "atomic" drills. I already explained in my original comment that my own parents were splitting up, near to the time my Mom died suddenly. I did not experience being a "pariah" from a broken home. My own Mom was a Public Health nurse and she saw from the front-lines, abuse in some families, NOT all familes! I can see from your comment that you have strong opinions and that is OK. I never felt "programmed" to find a good man, hence the rebellion of my Boomer generation and I was a feminist in my youth. ( I am not a feminist any more). My contemporaries were certainly blunt and rowdy, just as women are today. I was extremely promiscuous in my youth. The gnarly was there...but so was the independence. I am not living in the past, Alemany, I live very much in the present. I am pursuing no "carrot". Since you did not live in my generation, you cannot speak for what I myself experienced, just as I cannot speak for your generation either. I am an individual, not a statistic. I write about the chaos I went through in my own direct experience in the sexual revolution. It was not fun, it was not pretty and I would like to spare young people some of the sorrow my generation went through. The Vietnam War cut a very wide swath of horror through the middle of the Boomers. I lost a very dear brother in Vietnam in 1968 and I have no great love for the Military Industrial Complex. I have an Uncle on my Mom's side who fell in the D-Day invasion in WW2 and is buried in Normandy. War is the ancient plague of humanity and no one generation is spared from it. I hope you find your way and I wish you well. Wendy
My wife and I discuss this and have settled on a formula. The Baby Boomers got a deal. Gen X got a deal, but worse than the Boomers. The Millennials thought they were getting a deal, but didn’t get a deal. The Zoomers know they’re not getting a deal.
Wow! That’s quotable.
I’m Gen X and I completely understand why Millennials and Gen X don’t want to work. There is little to no jog security and the pay has to be topped up by the government. And even if they did work, they still wouldn’t be able to afford a home of their own.
*job* 🫣
Don't agree with everything here but the broad strokes I do.
Looking for meaning in work is really not a good idea but many millennials do this, and no wonder when so much that gave meaning to life is out of reach now that civic society has broken down (and workplaces increasingly prohibit or have a veto right over their employees civic society engagements (particularly if they take you away from work). There was one job I didn't get despite everyone from the partners of the law firm down wanting to hire me for because I wouldn't give up my hobby (writing - hence why I am on Substack) which they feared would conflict with my work and so the "risk" team vetoed my employment.
I would also add that not only do you take your toxic boss in your pocket, you take your colleagues and people you manage - so work bleeds into the whole of life. Again, making it difficult to just have work as a "means to an end" of a pay packet.
I feel like a key part of the article is missing since it discusses only a very euro/western-centric perspective (and one that sounds rather white at that) alongside the very real issues described.
There's little acknowledgment of other spiritual beliefs or ideals that exist beyond the Christian god, which makes me sad personally.
As I was reading this, I was struck by how well you put everything, and wondering when you were going to get to the part about health insurance and how expensive it is, and then I noticed you were in the UK. Oof. You guys have it really rough and it is only going to get way worse for you. I am so sorry. America is a runaway minecar towards the depths of hell in many ways but the UK and Canada seem to be trying to frontrun us in the race towards destruction. I am so sorry Sarah. I recently had a Canadian woman from Quebec apply for a job at the company I work at trying to get an H1b visa to come work in the US, and she was excited to get my company’s expensive bronze plan (generally the worst kind of insurance, which doesnt pay for much until you rack up a lot of charges) because she could actually maybe go to the doctor if she needed to. I can see ways for canada to get out of the trap it’s in, but I don’t know how the UK is going to pull it off in less than a generation even if you wanted to try. It’d probably take two once the ship finally turns around. It’s really shocking. I don’t know why the aristocracy or monarchy put up with it, seeing as how at this point I cant imagine continuing as things are can’t be in their interests. Perhaps they will rally and try to fix things. Even if they don’t have the hard power to do anything about it all, I should think they still probably have enough soft power. Good luck to you, and may God be with you!
Indeed, I thought about covering the NHS, but in all honesty the post was already getting too long! But I suppose one could argue that crippling healthcare comes under the ‘economic regression’ bracket. I also didn’t mention how renting for longer can have health impacts, which also damages morale. It’s hard to be motivated to work when two-thirds of one’s income goes into renting a house with a mould problem that’s making you sick, and having councils/law institutions that are so broken by 15 years of austerity cuts means they don’t have capacity to enforce housing codes. The list goes on…
Thank you for sharing this. It hit very deeply. I've felt a sadness in my being for a long time. God is my only saving grace. He's the only reason I have any hope at all. But this article demonstrates why this world is so hard to care at all. Not to mention the full on worship of money. It's tough.
I pray everyday that I may be of use to our Creator, but fallen world really doesn't do it justice. It's brutal out here.
I think your experience is increasingly common. The verse that comes to mind is John 16:33b, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
I feel this so hard…