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Narcissists in Neverland
At the same time, employment experts are concerned about Gen Y's ability to make the transition into the standard workforce, because of their adolescent attitudes. Mitchell Marks, an organizational psychologist at San Francisco State University, says he thinks that young people's reliance on their parents has resulted in a generation that isn't capable of making adult decisions. Last year, for example, Marks was consulting on the takeover of a major American corporation; the new owners gave the employees a choice of six different health care plans. While Marks watched the older members of the workforce worry about whether they'd keep their jobs, the twentysomethings were obsessing about which health-care plan to choose. "These kids have always had everything laid out for them by their parents," he says. "The anxiety of having to make a decision made them go crazy."
But not everyone is worried. Prominent American sociologist William Galston, of the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, who this month released a major nationwide study examining "the changing 20s," predicts that when the Gen-Yers do eventually settle down, they might actually "turn out to be more capable" adults than their predecessors were. "In generations past, some young adults resented parenthood and marriage because they felt it cut off a period of self-exploration that hadn't run its course," argues Galston. "But today's young people are going to be able to look back and say, 'I've screwed around for 10 years. I've gotten that out of my system.' So there's not going to be an undertone of resentment or regret."
Still, when everything's said and done, today's twentysomethings aren't all that different from their parents. They're just doing things a little bit later. Instead of getting married at 23 (the 1970 average), American men are getting married at 27; and instead of 80 percent of American women leaving home by 24, now they're getting out by 29. "Thirty is the new 20," says Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, editor of last year's "Emerging Adults in America." "The transition to adulthood is longer than it used to be, but it's still a temporary stage." So will Gen Y be able to deal with the realities of kids-and-a-mortgage adulthood? The answer is that they probably won't do any better--or worse--than their parents did.
With Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo and Lorna Shaddick in London
© 2007
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Member Comments
Posted By: gggp @ 04/17/2008 4:15:26 PM
Comment: I don't think I've ever read an article that I disagreed with so much. It even seems to suggest that trying to find a career that you love is somehow "childish". On the contrary, it is the ONLY way to go, the way to leave your competition in the dust. If you "settle in", "make sacrifices" and worry about your job every waking day, you're making yourself a more stressed and less productive. I just can't believe the cluelessness of quotes like: "They've been raised on bad advice, like "believe in yourself and you can do anything," leaving many with deeply unrealistic expectations about their lives". The people who actually acomplish things in life were not only raised on this "bad advice", they also live by it. This faith is every bit as necessary as hard work.
Posted By: gggp @ 04/17/2008 4:15:18 PM
Comment: I don't think I've ever read an article that I disagreed with so much. It even seems to suggest that trying to find a career that you love is somehow "childish". On the contrary, it is the ONLY way to go, the way to leave your competition in the dust. If you "settle in", "make sacrifices" and worry about your job every waking day, you're making yourself a more stressed and less productive. I just can't believe the cluelessness of quotes like: "They've been raised on bad advice, like "believe in yourself and you can do anything," leaving many with deeply unrealistic expectations about their lives". The people who actually acomplish things in life were not only raised on this "bad advice", they also live by it. This faith is every bit as necessary as hard work.
Posted By: gggp @ 04/17/2008 4:15:02 PM
Comment: I don't think I've ever read an article that I disagreed with so much. It even seems to suggest that trying to find a career that you love is somehow "childish". On the contrary, it is the ONLY way to go, the way to leave your competition in the dust. If you "settle in", "make sacrifices" and worry about your job every waking day, you're making yourself a more stressed and less productive. I just can't believe the cluelessness of quotes like: "They've been raised on bad advice, like "believe in yourself and you can do anything," leaving many with deeply unrealistic expectations about their lives". The people who actually acomplish things in life were not only raised on this "bad advice", they also live by it. This faith is every bit as necessary as hard work.