The YOUTH.

 A Moment of Clarity.



Words.

"What we talk about when we talk about tomorrow is the great fear that our kids will never find their way, now that opportunity is just another word for no. By we, I mean parents of a certain age.

... But I was struck by a failing of many fellow parents of recession-whacked Millennials. For all the efforts to raise hyper-achievers, we didn’t teach enough of a basic survival skill — to find joy in simple things not connected to a grade, a trophy or a job.

What was missing in the life message of child-raising was some of the counter-cultural swagger in that 2005 commencement speech by Steve Jobs, the one that made the viral video rounds after his death. If you listen to the whole speech, it is what he says at the end that seems so apt for these years of diminished expectations. “Stay hungry,” Jobs said, borrowing an admonition from the creators of The Whole Earth Catalogue, an early bible for him, and equally important, “Stay foolish.”

Hungry is the easy part. Employment rates and starting salaries have fallen off a cliff for new college graduates in the last two years. One study found that 55 percent of humanities majors newly released from school are either not working or hold jobs that require no college degree. I know a Stanford honors graduate in English literature who works as a nanny, and a University of Michigan political science graduate on the night shift at an Amazon warehouse. Their friends call them lucky.

There is all sorts of topical journalism on this issue. Last week brought a New York magazine piece by Noreen Malone, a self-snarky confessional with these words on the cover: “Sucks to Be Us: Coming of Age in Post-Hope America.”

“We grew up, all the way through college, with everything seeming so ripe and possible,” Malone writes. She defines the Millennials this way: “We are self-centered and convinced of our specialness and unaccustomed to being denied.”

...Malone makes some points that ring true.

She quotes a friend, Lael Goodman, with the kind of complaint that will sound familiar to many people just out of college. “The worst thing is that I’ve always gotten self-worth from performance, especially good grades. But now that I can’t get a job, I feel worthless.”

Goodman nails it — the self-worth from performance. And for that, we parents have to take the blame. Baby Boomers who rejected “Mad Men” conformity groomed their offspring to expect only the best, to climb a ladder that would end in startups cranking out stock-option millionaires.

...Maybe if I knew that our children would be coming of age in an economy that would crush even the best and brightest among them, I would have cared a little less about their score on an advanced placement history test, and a little more about helping them find happiness in moments at the margin. I hope many of them are doing just that — without our help."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Boomer's Parent's Lament