These major differences between us, Gen X, and our kids, young Millennials, lead to frequent clashes. Consequently, the young mind starts rebelling. If we push it, we can make the irreversible damage and completely ruin our child’s life.
Yes, have no doubt about that. If your child is acting deviant in any way, it’s your fault.
To fix it or to prevent that extreme form of rebellion, you must understand the fundamental differences between you and your child – the Millennial.
All of those differences start with who raised whom.
From Silent came the Boomer.
You were raised by the man whose father fought the bloodiest war ever, and when the shit ended, he laid down his weapons and got the job like nothing happened. None of them demanded some special recognitions or rights.
So, without any doubt in our minds:
Silent generation can be considered as the very last wuss-free generation.
These guys survived:
- Two major (largest and bloodiest) war conflicts,
- One to two dreadful economic crises, and
- Were forced to raise their children under the constant threat of the nuclear holocaust.
- On top of everything, they knew how to survive on just a few bucks a day.
During the WWII and shortly after, they all got married and had children. It’s the generation known as Babyboomers – your father and mine.
Now these men, Babyboomers, were raised by hardy fathers who still had fresh scars from the WWII. Fathers who learned very well what it means to be:
- hungry,
- cold,
- frightened and
- under the constant real physical threat.
Consequently, Your Father was growing up under the simple principle known as “work-hard-save-harder.”
He, then, was forced to raise You during the Cold War era and very real threat of sudden nuclear attack. You can only imagine how that fact reflected on his state of mind.
But unlike the Silent generation…
The Babyboomers are a generation of increasing and pretty much overwhelming expectations.
Women got the voting rights and became increasingly independent which redefined the set of rules upon which women are choosing their men. The change occurred and the women were looking for financial security before anything else. At least on general level.
That shit peaked when our generation, Gen X, became the ruling crowd.
Naturally, we were raising our children, Millennials, in a totally opposite way than Silents were raising Babyboomers.
As it turned out, we pretty much raised the generation of pussies and pacifistspacifists, which may, at the end, be the best choice because it will decrease the chance of some new, major, bloody war (take this as one big maybe).
Unlike our fathers and their fathers, who were always like: “School is important, yes, but not that much. What’s important is for you to get the job, as soon as possible, to stick to it and become responsible,” we were indoctrinating our kids to attend higher education.
It wasn’t about getting the job as soon as possible. It was about graduating from university. College, something less important for our generation, became obligatory for our kids.
We changed the world by changing the dogma upon which we were raising our children. By doing that, we changed the world!
So now, when you see the young man, wandering on the streets of the city, you can’t really draw the similarity line between him and 3 generations before. He is different.
Although, there are things and traits that never changes, such as:
- urge of having things under control
- being a responsible adult (mistake by definition!)
But, the differences are simply overwhelming nevertheless.
These are the most distinct traits of Western Millennials and probably the reasons of constant clashes between you and your kids:
Family and family values are not that important anymore.
For you, family is a sacred institute. No matter what happens, you stick to it (in most of the cases). That’s because your parents have indoctrinated you to get married ASAP, have children ASAP and then give up all of your freedoms to “provide and protect.”
Your boy, on the other hand, got sick and tired of listening to constant fights between his father and his mother. She was always on his father’s case. Naturally, the boy wasn’t in a rush to get married and have 3-4 children.
But there are a few additional things that make them all (Millennial males and females equally) to stay away from marriage and children. To name just a few:
- overwhelming financial burden of the modern times,
- pressure to finish the highest education possible,
- imposed expectation of building a promising career before marriage and children,
- completely altered way of communication that inhibits the adequate levels of oxytocin activation.
It’s easy to understand why Millennials are not getting hitched before their 30s.
You don’t have to be a social engineer either to understand why there are only 1.4 children per married couple on average at the west lately.
Che Guevara and revolutions in general, mean squat to him
In other words, zero fucks given for any kind of revolutionary thinking. The Millennials are just not that into that crap because they heard too many stories about how one man, with one loud rhetoric, can cause death of millions.
Unlike us, they wanna live. Can you blame them?
And if you have a daughter, she’s most likely all in for some hardcore pro-feminist agendas
Which is a problem on its own because your wife, same as mine and most of the Gen X women, are now idealizing the society that cannot and must not be idealized.
As a result, we have a constant increase in the number of rapes, which is inconsistent with the increase in population. Trends don’t follow each other.
Without any intention to sound conservative or narrow-minded, the fact remains that young women are mindlessly encouraged to behave in more or less deviant ways when surrounded by young men, who are bursting with hormones while under the influence of alcohol.
It has disaster written all over it.
But that’s just one part of the problem.
The second part is communication-based.
Showing of one’s muscles and loud talk in a bar doesn’t seem to trigger the desired response at females anymore. Nowadays, when a young man approaches a woman in an attempt to buy her a drink and start the essential communication that will eventually lead to marriage and propagation of the species, he’s being marked as a bully and a male chauvinist pig.
Why?
When we were younger, the only way to communicate with the opposite gender was to engage in a direct conversation. That means face-to-face chat and instant activation of different — optimal — body chemicals (neurotransmitters).
If all goes well, during that first encounter, enough of oxytocin will be secreted, which will, consequently, create a bond between the man and the woman.
Now, move the communication online.
Faceless individuals, stripped from any kind of moral boundaries, are now talking to each other. In many cases, one cannot really be sure with whom he’s talking. It can be some old male fart, for all you know.
In other words, entirely different set of body chemicals comes to play where the essential oxytocin — the only chemical that is capable of creating the bond — is nowhere to be seen (felt).
The language is different. Insults are frequent. Chivalry is almost dead. Some guys even believe that sending a picture of their boners to some strange lady will get them somewhere. The world went crazy and there’s nothing we can do to change it. The entire concept simply must evolve on its own and that will certainly take some time.
Think that all those demographic policies and new social studies can help with it?
Your kid is pretty much apolitical.
As far as Millennials are concerned, democrats, republicans, and all others are worthless and pretty much the reason why the working class is struggling to meet the ends.
Not a single political party or individual managed to approach Millennials in a right way and that may as well be the cause for such a low interest in political issues by Millennials.
Millennials are responsible, no matter what you think about it.
In difference from us and our fathers, who couldn’t care less about environmental issues and climate changes, Millennials have a quite opposite perspective. They are enticing and welcoming every positive change that would enable them to breathe clean air for as long as possible.
Oil rights, border issues, diamonds, gold…none wage any importance to them. They would never fight the war or kill someone to claim the rights over some oil rig. Instead, they would gladly invest part of their income in renewable energy.
A Millennial is more likely to engage in the right social cause.
Don’t confuse this with any kind of revolutionary (Che Guevara) thinking.
We are talking about “helping the old lady cross the street” and not about overthrowing the corrupted government.
We are talking about spending millions in guarding those few remaining rhinos rather than spending that money to feed the hungry children in Asia and Africa.
For some strange reason, they (Millennials) are more concerned about the bloodthirsty lions that we successfully removed from the equation than about some global economic agenda with the real potential to save human lives.
It’s a paradox when you think about it. Generations have spent time and resources to eliminate the competition and real threat (predators such as wolves, tigers, crocs, alligators, lions, etc.). Now, these kids that we raised in such a way, they want to re-breed them all.
Maybe it’s because we built the concrete fortifications for them to isolate and deter the predators of the night? They feel like a hungry tiger can’t hurt them now? Have those cell phones screwed their heads?
Millennial thinks mobile, thinks internet, thinks social networks – unlike you!
In Finland, there is a rising concern about the general well-being of the population because they don’t talk to each other anymore. When you take a morning ride with public transportation in any of the major cities at that far north country, all you can see is a bunch of heads, looking down at their smartphones and tablets.
Yet, this is how they live their lives. Being the information seekers, they are living between physical and virtual world.
And as we move forward, the boundaries between these two worlds are fading away.
That’s probably how they came up with that whole idea of spending precious resources on some wild animal that should be extinct by now. Some idiot shared the image of a small cub and said how that gentle being is now endangered. Nobody even bothered to think about the nature of the fully grown animal and its urge to attack and eat anything that moves.
But, they are still searching for heroes within their closest social circle.
It’s not that uncommon to hear a young Millennial how he’s bragging with his war hero grandpa or some successful, yet socially sensible, relative. That didn’t change.
Unlike you and me, they know exactly what they want!
We are frequently finding ourselves jumping from one determination to another. Who am I? What I wanna do with myself? Have I chosen the right career? In other words, our lives can be described as the bunch of shoulda-woulda-coulda!
Unlike us, the Gen X, our young Millennials seems not to be wasting that much time on self-definitions. They know exactly what they want and they are willing to make every effort to achieve their goal, starting with formal education.
Although, many of those wishes fall into one category: getting rich quick using one of the social networks. That said, it’s not that hard to understand why our kids are willing to go that far on Instagram and YouTube to make a dime. Making the fool out of one’s self became the moneymaking method of choice for many of them.
Which leads us to something that has its roots back in the days when we were growing up – media influence.
Millennials are defined by media native digital environment.
With the onset of the very first commercials, we could feel the change in the world. Marketing zombies came to life already in our generation, paving the way for the total exposure and media influence on our kids.
The best way to describe the difference is the miracle of giving the birth.
How many books had your wife read during her pregnancy, birth and shortly after?
1-3, maybe. Mine couldn’t care less about that crap. Birth and pregnancy were something natural.
How many courses, webinars, blogs, YouTube videos and books the average Millennial mommy reads?
It seems that they don’t even know how to fucking eat if they don’t first see it on YouTube.
In other words, they became totally dependable on the media, which makes them easily influenced.
These days, if it isn’t on YouTube, it doesn’t exist – pregnancy and birth included!
But that content must be short, sweet and concise
How many books are there on your kid’s bookshelf?
Yeah…
If you wanna make them read something, it shouldn’t be longer than 400 words. Reading a 500-pages book, something common for our generation, is now a rare sight.
However, if it’s made in a form of a video, it can last for 3 hours and they will see it through. But only if it’s engaging and shows something they care about.
What kind of the content is passing the Millennial filter?
- Amusing
- Right social causes.
When we say “right social causes,” we mean that they are more likely to respond to a video of a neglected dog than on a video showing war casualties or some disaster.
A big difference, yeah.
“I have the right to…”
Have you ever tried to say this shit to your old man? How it went? Painful, right?
Yet, we raised our kids a bit differently. We raised them to have open minds and full freedom of speech.
So now, he thinks that he’s entitled to anything he can think of. When the door of reality slam-shut in front of his nose, he retreats and cry when nobody sees him.
It’s not the arrogance, as many believe.
We raised them to believe how they have rights. That the world is easy while the truth is totally opposite. It’s our fault.
Consequently, when it comes to jobs and careers, they are picky!
Hard work became the thing of the past. These days, everybody wants to be some hot shit executive. At least most of them.
According to an average Millennial, one must love what he does and how one lives. If that isn’t the case, he’ll just stick with his folks, even if it means celebrating his 30th birthday in a cellar together with the rest of his screwed up, single, geeky social networks zombies.
What he does in that cellar is daydreaming about fiction.
We were growing up exposed to John Rambo, Rocky, Chuck the legendary Norris, and other shoot-‘em-all-with-a-single-always-full-clip heroes.
Truthfully, there were some Sci-Fi pieces back in our days.
But look the movies nowadays. All those comic book characters that we were reading between the age of 6 and 10 are now live thanks to advanced CGI. You have a whole bunch of single, 30-year-olds, dressing like goddamn clowns and attending some weird comic book event.
Not that we haven’t started that shit, but it went to extremes lately. It seems that they would rather attend some Sci-Fi or Marvel Comics symposium than having sex with the ladies.
And they are impatient and want to attend as many events as possible in the shortest period of time.
It doesn’t really matter what it is. Just make it frequent. The Millennials are spending more on tickets than on drinks in bars.
Diversification of events is the name of the game here. Everything beside politics goes.
That’s partially the reason why the path wages more importance to them than the actual destination.
If you analyze the style and the approach of all the content served to Millennials, you’ll see that the focus of every piece is placed on a path and not the destination.
The path is what intrigues them. They simply don’t give a fuck about the destination because the destination is boring. It’s perceived as boring because it marks the end of the journey, which automatically means settling in one place.
Which causes another problem…
When they reach the solution, they are less likely to risk!
And this could show it as a serious problem in the upcoming period, once they take over the world.
We can see this if we compare two breeds of wealthy and successful men.
Millennial millionaires and billionaires belong to another breed of “rich.”
Unlike Gen X millionaires, who, for the most part, had to build something tangible (physical), this new breed of wealthy kids is more focused on virtual tech stuff.
The problem is simple:
Generally speaking, for the Millennial to become rich, he must find the way to animate Gen X investors to give him money. In most of the cases (92% in fact), their startups fail in less than 3 years.
So far, due to reckless investment attempts made by Gen X men, the world has lost billions in real cash just because we (Gen X men) don’t really understand the fundamentals of the new (virtual) reality. It’s therefore easy for the slick Millennial to fuck us up and drain our money for some illusive tech idea that most likely won’t see the light of the day – ever. In simple words – we get hooked too goddamn easy!
Unlike us, who were forced to spend thousands of dollars and months of time just to create a single business plan to pitch the bank for a loan (using the mortgage as the security instrument), Millennials are borrowing money like it’s nothing.
The entire situation looks more like the one when a kid is begging his father for some pocket money.
In our everlasting effort to invest our money, we are easy targets for the quick and juicy squeeze. They are using terms and phrases that we don’t even understand and somehow manage to flip our minds. We start writing checks without even demanding some kind of security instruments.
Again, it’s like we are dealing with our kids when they are begging for some money to buy a new issue of some new comic book that may or may not be good.
And it was us who created that kind of environment because we wanted our kids to have it all in a much easier way than we did.
So next time you get provoked by your kid’s response, slap yourself because it’s you who made him that way!
In other words, it’s better to understand what we have created and simply to adjust. Communication gets easier. Sons and daughters stick with us. Less fights. Less door-slamming.
Try it. You’ll see the difference.
