Career of Doom.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: Generation now, career prospects

WHEN I WAS A KID, SAY, 18-19-20, MY PARENTS AND their friends were fond of pointing out to us youngsters how good we had it, how coddled we were, how soft we were, how spoiled we were.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

These same people, our parents, look at their grandchildren with what amounts to horror, I suppose, as we, the coddled generation, tell our children, as often as we can, how good they have it, how coddled they are, how soft they are, how spoiled they are.

But I have this theory that my generation and my children's generation are pretty much the same, and that my parents were right: Both generations, mine and my children's, had it good, we were both coddled, we were both soft, and we were both spoiled. We Baby Boomers make accusatory remarks to our own children not because they are different--they aren't--but because we are judging them by the last 30 years, not the first 20. We have, essentially, forgotten what it was like to be young.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The truth is that our children have it, in fact, harder than us. The world now is more crowded, more competitive. When we were 20 we didn't have PIN numbers; our children have 50 of them and they have to remember them all. Thirty years ago, identity theft was when I lost my wallet, and usually some Good Samaritan would return it. Today they steal your soul, and it really does go on your permanent record.

Yet as much as we are alike, there are important differences.

Like, this new generation coming of age is certainly more pretentious. Or maybe they are just inundated with so much information they are just, well, bored. That must be it.

For instance, I don't think the rides at amusement parks are any more scary today than they were when we were kids; they just sound that way. We had "Cinderella's Slipper;" today they call it "Cinderella's Slipper of Doom."

In that same vein, I hear that this generation coming up now is calling the transition from childhood/college to adult-hood a "quarter-life crisis." Now that's pretentious. In my day we just called it "growing up."

People, and especially companies looking for workers, are saying that this new generation coming of age has unbelievably high expectations of not only the money they will make, but the duties they will have. They don't, it is said, want to do the grunt work.

Well, we didn't either, but we...