Woe is Generation Me! or Not

In her book Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled---And More Miserable Than Ever Before (Free Press, 2007), Jean M. Twenge defines "Generation Me" as anyone born from 1970 to 2000, which includes what is otherwise known as Generation X, Generation Y, and Generation Z. I do appreciate that she expands the definition of "generation" to encompass many years, because I was getting tired of hearing a new generation named every other month. (My brother once said to me, "In my generation..." Dude, we have the same parents. Doesn't that sort of make us the same generation by definition?)

While I definitely think a generation should last more than a high school term, I do think perhaps the author extends her GenMe back too far into the past. Most of the children born in the 70's didn't really experience the "self-esteem curriculum" until junior high or high school, after they had already received plenty of humiliating experience standing with their noses in the corners of their elementary school classrooms. (Ah, fond memories! It was like a time out, only effective.) Many children of the 70's enjoyed their childhood years before, as Twenge says, "focusing on yourself was not just tolerated but actively encouraged."

A good part of this book is devoted to distinguishing the Baby Boomers from GenMe, because otherwise it might be hard to decide which generation comprises more self-entitled losers. (It's GenMe, in case you were wondering.) Baby Boomers are merely "self-absorbed," while GenMe'rs are "self-important." Baby Boomers merely "question authority," while GenMe'rs "disrespect it altogether." Baby Boomers were out to change the world, while GenMe'ers are cynical and politically uninvolved. Baby Boomer women lost their virginity at the average age of 18, while GenMe'ers lose theirs at the average age of 15. And so on. (By the way, averages rarely provide one with a good overall picture. Median is more telling. Later, Twenge let's slip that only 41% of 16 year olds report having engaged in any kind of sexual activity, which means that well over 59% of 16 year olds are virgins.)

Twenge thinks a book on generational trends is important because "when you were born has more influence on your personality than the family who raised you." This line stood out at me because I recently finished reading an extensively researched sociological tome, The Nurture Assumption, which concludes pretty much the same thing: how kids "turn out" has very little to do with how their parents raise them and is owing about half to genetics and half to peers. I like to read these kinds of books because sometimes it's good to know I'm not really responsible if my children turn out to be immoral, shallow shells of human beings who rack up obscene credit card debt.

Twenge laments that most books on generations, unlike hers, simply offer generalizations without evidence. Well, she does one-up such books by researching opinion polls and personality tests throughout the generations to draw generalizations with some statistical backing. However, over half the time, she uses only anecdotes to support her assertions, and these anecdotes occasionally come from the fringes and are perhaps not evidence of widespread behavior.

While Twenge more or less satisfactorily defends her character generalizations, she does a poorer job of backing up her economic generalizations. I think we're supposed to feel bad for GenMe because of their presumably non-self-imposed economic trials and tribulations. I'm not saying her claims of economic hardship are completely insupportable; I'm just saying she doesn't support them well, and she certainly exaggerates them. Take this, for example: "While families could once achieve middle-class status on the earnings of one high school educated person, it now takes two college educated earners to achieve the same standard of living." Some definitions would be helpful. Like what she means by "middle-class status," "standard of living," "same," and "once."

The author doesn't cite any real income statistics to support the above claim, and I can see why. In 2006, the median income of two (one male, one female) full-time employed college graduates, age 25-34 (so, GenMe'rs), was $91,000. The real median income (in constant 2006 dollars) of one male high school graduate aged 25-34 in 1980 (so, a Baby Boomer) was $41,400. Not quite equal, are they? Not even close. Real income has unquestionably declined for workers in this age group who have only a high school diploma (for men, it was $37,000 in 2006 vs. $43,700 in 1980, so that's a 15% decline). But let's not exaggerate. And let's keep in mind that the foreign-born population has also increased over 57% in the last generation and that recent immigrants generally begin at the bottom of the economic ladder and work their way up over a generation or two, which means we can naturally expect median income for high school graduates to be lower now than it was in a time when recent immigrants were a smaller proportion of the population.

Consequently, I'm not quite ready to join in the "Woe is Generation Me!" cry, so sad that, at the age of 25, they can't afford "even a small house." Yeah, well, it's not like our parents bought their very first houses straight off the bat either. They waited, worked, and saved for years, and never would have considered taking out a 0% down mortgage equal to five times their income. Try living below your means, working and saving for years, not indulging your entertainment and dining and traveling whims, canceling the DirectTV, and then, if you still can't afford "even a small house," feel free to whine.

Here's the problem with these generational economic comparisons. When Twenge sings the economic woes of GenMe, she neglects to emphasize three things:

(1) GenMe has, on average, made more fiscally irresponsible choices than previous generations.

(2) GenMe can't expect to enjoy the same standard of living, at the age of 28, that their parents enjoyed at the age of 38 (which is what many of them seem to be expecting).

(3) GenMe takes for granted, as part of a "middle-class status," certain technologies that did not even exist in their parent's generation.

While I can't agree with Twenge that the present generation is economically much worse off than the previous one, I could nod along when she began critiquing the obsession modern educators have with self-esteem. Twenge exposes the ill effects of the popular self-esteem movement. The push to increase self-esteem as an end in itself, which was widespread by the early 1990's, began a seismic cultural shift. It has led to decreased academic performance and greater narcissism. I entirely agree with Twenge that we should focus on building "self-control" rather than "self-esteem." We should encourage children to develop a realistic and healthy self-image of themselves based on their character, behavior, and effort, not a boundless self-love that grows out of the mere fact of existence. Modern education's extreme emphasis on protecting and inflating self-esteem has certainly made the problem of childhood self-absorption greater than it has to be. Worse than that, it has treated childhood self-absorption not as something to be corrected and matured out of, but as something to be embraced and carried into adulthood.

Twenge begins this book by bemoaning the self-centered nature of GenMe, but she ends it by implying that GenMe'ers should receive new entitlements in the realm of childcare, healthcare, public preschool, and college. Well, I suppose she is a product of her generation after all. In the end, it's not about the national indebtedness of future generations '" it's all about me. Why learn to live within my means now when I can keep consuming what I want and pass on the debt to my children and grandchildren?