Re: “What Is It About 20-Somethings?”

For a while there, I was considering not saying anything about the recent NY Times piece “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” But then I found out there are people who actually agree with it. So now I have to say something.

The whole premise of the 10-page article is that Millennials aren't growing up as fast as previous generations. The examples they cite include not having steady jobs, moving back in with parents, getting married later than previous generations, and waiting to have kids. 

If you know me, you know I can't let this slide.

1. Not having steady jobs. First of all, nobody has a truly steady job in this economy. And when employers have the choice of a 40-something or a 20-something, both willing to work for the same salary, they're obviously going to choose the person with more experience. Thus plenty of 20-somethings are left without jobs for the time being, but I assure you once the economy picks back up, so will the Gen Y employment rate. We're a highly educated and highly motivated generation. We're not living off our meager unemployment checks for the fun of it.
2. Moving back in with parents.  Consider this scenario, which I've observed firsthand three times now. You graduated from college with $80k in student loan debt (student loan debt recently surpassed credit card debt for the first time in history). You've been applying for jobs, working a minimum-wage part-time job, and working unpaid internships for two years with no health insurance or benefits. You're exhausted and can no longer afford to pay rent, much less your loan payments, and then your parents say "honey, why don't you move back in with us?" At first you refuse because you value your independence, but then you think about it... Living with them, you wouldn't have to pay rent and you could maybe start to make a dent in those student loan payments. Moving in with them is the only responsible thing to do in this scenario (which, by the way, thousands of Millennials are facing).
3. Getting married later. Who can afford a wedding right now? I just got engaged (yay!), but it's looking like it will be a couple years of saving before we'll be able to realistically afford the wedding we want.
4. Waiting to have kids. This one really irks me. We can't afford to pay off our credit cards or student loans, we don't have jobs, we can't afford to get married, but we should be popping out babies? We're not growing up fast enough because we don't have dependents at the age of 24? Give me a break. We'll have babies when we can afford to take care of them. Or not. I'd like to think society has progressed enough that having children is no longer an expectation, but that's a whole different rant. I wonder how we would be described if we were having kids earlier than the previous generation... I somehow doubt the words "more grown up" would be included in the analysis. Huge double-standard here.

The article uses a term, "emerging adulthood," which was coined by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a psychologist who is "leading the movement to view the 20s as a distinct life stage." Apparently this is a new movement, although I do vaguely remember reading about life stages in my high school Intro to Psychology class, and I'm pretty sure transitioning from college to adulthood falls in there somewhere. It's alarming to me that there are actually people out there who expect us to jump straight from our college dorm rooms into the arms of our new spouses, all the while putting down-payments on houses and producing offspring. 

Another term often used to describe Millennials is "entitled." Okay, fine, yes. I feel entitled. Here are the things I feel entitled to:

1. To put some thought into what I want to do with my life
2. To wait until I find I job a love (and freelance in the meantime)
3. To save money until I can afford to make massive life decisions such as marriage, child-bearing, and house-buying

I've read lots of articles that blame our parents for this sense of entitlement, which I didn't buy at first. But then I was completely humiliated at a meeting where two out of the eight people revealed that they had been called - or visited - by their 20-something employee's parents. This distresses me. I've read the horror stories, but I never really believed it. These so-called "helicopter parents" are overprotective and are making their kids (and our generation) look bad. But for every one helicopter parent who smothered their kids, I would say there are 99 others that got it right. I think my parents instilled in me a sense of work ethic, respect for authority, ambition, social-consciousness, and confidence. Also, my parents would never call my employers (thanks Mom and Dad!). 

"Does that mean it’s a good thing to let 20-somethings meander — or even to encourage them to meander — before they settle down?" I think the article misinterprets what's going on at this stage. It imagines Millennials to be wandering around, foggy-eyed, unsure of how to proceed with our lives, when that's simply not the case. Leaving aside all the absurdly successful Gen Y entrepreneurs already changing the landscape of business as we know it, the rest of us simply want to make sure we're making smart decisions before jumping into our lives. If that means we're not growing up, so be it. I'll wait.

Lots of great discussions have come out of this article, such as this piece on Carol Phillip's Millennial Marketing blog, this discussion on Slate, and this fantastic article on The Huffington Post. What do you think? Does the NY Times have us pegged?