Generation X parents are raising an entire generation of shitty brats

They all want to be the "cool" parents.

Q: "Are we controlling, or are they rude?"

A: Both.

Something that they CAN'T blame on Baby Boomers.

Gen X was shitty. So their kids are shittier.

They had their opinions on Boomer parenting. Just wait. We will all behold their parenting skills very soon.

Don't blame their kids for anything. If you're a teacher, it's all your fault.

[Quote] Are We Controlling or Are They Rude?

You're controlling. Gen Z has absolute shit celebrities like Logan Paul and those rainbow haired rappers but are good kids overall. Liberal and ambitious

Baby Boomer parents set boundaries and let kids know who the boss was.

Gen X parents think they're real slick and cool. Now they're starting to feel the results.

Being friends with your kids never works.

I don't feel that being a mean, authoritarian parent works either, R9.

Funny. All the things that Gen X complains about millennials is magnified x 10 with their own kids.

I'm a millennial public school teacher who gets regularly told off by Gen X parents when I try to have a discussion about their kids.

It's not an either/or situation, R10.

Nobody is worse than Baby Boomer parents, R8.

That's not what 12 out of 13 posters here say, R13.

R11, that is my experience as well.

Don't you dare argue with a Gen X parent or their spawn. They will be more than happy to give you 100 reasons why you're wrong.

Please. Boomers gave us Millennials.

Total assholes. For a group who complains about millennials thinking they're special, they really think their kids are something special!

Generation Z are a lot more sensible than Millennials, so Generation X have done something right.

Yeah, R18.

Like swallowing tide pods and dropping bricks from freeway overpasses!

Get Z is alright considering Gen X were their parents. I mean they were never going to turn out amazing

R19, don't be mean to kids these days.

What do you expect when their parents were Generation Jerry Springer?

Generation X has won. We did it lol. No cellphones, no FB, just hanging out where we could.

R22 explains it all. LOL.

Millennials: Cinnamon challenge, safe spaces, comfort peacocks on planes, blame everyone for all their issues. Bricks off of overpasses is nothing new.

Generation X does manage the impossible, however.

They manage to somehow get Baby Boomers and Millennials to both hate them!

Trust me, my dear, R24.

There is not a single person on this Earth who has a 'safer space' than the American children of a Gen Xer.

R25 they are literally the only generation to leave America worse off than they got it.

Really, r25? Have you never heard a Millennial complain about a Boomer? Really? Millennials hate Boomers for EVERYTHING. Everything that is wrong in the world they blame on Boomers not Millennials.

One fucked-up generation of entitled cunts begats an even more fucked-up generation of entitled cunts.

No parenting generation sucked more than the Boomers: latchkey kids, skyrocketing “War Of The Roses” style divorce, the self-absorption and materialism that was the 80’s.

They voted in the debt we’re in now before most of us could even write a sentence. And then bailed themselves out of it on the backs of us and their grandkids as soon as we started having them.

Now we have “reverse mortgages” so that the one investment they might have decent equity in will also be liquidated by the time their years of vice and retirement at 50 catch up to them.

But, sure: everyone else is the assholes.

Baby Boomers, aka Baby on Board! parents invented helicoptering, padded playgrounds, terrifying milk carton kids, Capri Sun and so on.

I’m a Gen Xer, yes I hate the Boomers but I don’t have kids.

Maybe the young stupid ones, R28.

The ones who don't know what a bunch of fucking idiots Generation X is, R28.

Transformers, Aldi, Punky. We worked hard back then lol. Omg, I'm glad im not born into a generation that finds validation in photoshopped cunts.

LOL at Generation X still feeling triggered by Baby Boomers.

Somehow Generation X managed to be such motherfucking assholes that Millennials prefer Boomers over them.

Right, r32...

Generation Jerry Springer is right.

At least Baby Boomers had good music.

Generation X is fuckin cool but because what we heard how our grandparents knew how shit got done... R36. Jerry Springer is ww2 or Vietnam lol. He's old school stupid

R36, Boomers brought the world Jerry Springer.

None of the X’rs were even 18 when the show began.

Mark my words:

Generation X will never be president.

Millennials will get the last laugh over them.

Gen X parent here.

Actually, most of the kids I come across are pretty polite and respectful.

Folks with a conservative slant to their views like to trot out the old canard that younger, more liberal-minded parents want to be "cool" and just be friends with their kids as opposed to actually parenting them. This is complete and utter horse$hit.

It's a lot like the other canard that liberal minded people lack a moral compass.

Dropping cultural baggage like superstition, racism, xenophobia, rampant materialism, homophobia and the notion that a woman's worth is determined by her virginity is not exactly a bad thing.

What is left behind includes honesty, generosity, respectfulness, tolerance, industriousness, kindness, intellectual curiosity, fairness, a respect for the role of education, respect for the environment, and an emphasis on the ability to think critically.

And parenting is not a zero sum game. You can actually have some fun as a parent and be approachable and relatable while still setting boundaries that are not to be crossed. I for one don't understand how people can be so obtuse as to think otherwise.

R34 Of course they do: they were coddled out of guilt.

Sure, r39. Millennials are already getting their assess kicked by GenZ. Millennials are vapid. GenZ will effect meaningful social change while Millennials take cover in their safe spaces.

There has already been a generation X president. Dummies.

1961 is not Generation X my dear.

That is still part of the Baby Boomer generation.

Uh, so who are the parents of Gen Z?

I think it's going to be a very sad event to watch Generation X get passed over for presidency in favor of millennials!

Lol to the Boomer bitches mocking Gen Xers.

You made us, you narcissistic Crosby Stills and Nash listening cunts.

R25 And the GenXers hate the generations on both sides of them. So, there's that too.

It's too soon for Generation X politicians!

Maybe in 20 years?

Gen X parents begin with the generation before the Boomers, r47.

I think we need 20 more years of Boomer politicians.

Then, maybe Gen X might assert themselves?

R48 Yes, they are the only generation to hate the generation on both sides. They can't stand to be around anyone who is more than ten yrs either way of their age. Ten at the most.

That's because we are stuck between narcissistic assholes and their whinny spawn, r52.

The Baby Boomers children are mostly Gen X, some Millennials, but mostly Gen X.

Gen X has a very sad, 'whinny' existence, R52.

They want to be president. But they can't understand why millennials aren't behind them. :(

The force against Trump's hateful speech will start bringing us together.

Not to me, R56. I think Trump's hateful speech might almost be preferable to Gen X.

R54, Boomers span the 1940s to the mid-1960s, while Millennials are early 80s to mid-90s. So, no, Boomers are mainly responsible for Millennials.

I have never, not once, in my life EVER been told off the way I have been by Generation X parents.

They really want to make you know that you are complete shit.

Fuck them. I really hate them, too,R59.

Why Millennial’s might want to get the GenX chip off their shoulder.....

How so, R59?

Even the Boomers know they suck. Clip here, but highly recommend watching “The Big Chill” if you’ve never seen it before. Came out in the 80’s.

......

Most Boomers (not all, but most) married young and had kids young; early 20's for their first kid. By the time they were 30 they had at least 2, if not 3, kids. That's just how it was in their day.

So most of the Boomers I know, including my siblings and cousins, etc., have Gen-X children. Their kids are not Millennials. All of the Gen-Xer adults I know (but never met their parents) have told me that their parents are Boomers. Most Boomers are now grandparents of grandkids who are young children to preteens.

The youngest of the Boomers who waited until they were 30 to have kids, or had more kids in their 30s, have Millennial children. So *most Gen-Xers* and *some Millennials* have Boomer parents.

R50, my parents were born in 1948 and I was born in 1970.

Boomer parents, Gen X kid.

My partner was born in 1950 and his daughter was born (when he was married, before he came out) in 1975. Boomer parent, Gen X daughter.

My sister was born in early 1958 and her daughter was born in late 1980. Boomer parent Gen X daughter.

I know of hundreds of more examples. But we get the idea.

Most boomers had kids in the late 60s to early 80s, with the majority being born in the 70s as most Boomers started their families in their 20s, not in their 30s. That is when they started a family/had their 1st and maybe 2nd child, who are all Gen X.

My youngest sister born in 1961 (youngest of boomers) had her second child, a son, in 1991 and he is a Millennial. She has one Gen X child and one Millennial child but that is because she is the youngest of Boomers. If she were born a year later she'd be a Gen X.

The *majority* of Boomers are currently in their 60s. They have grandchildren ranging from preschool to junior high school age.

.... Not to mention that the internet and social media has spoiled these brats... and turned them into indifferent zombies.

Boomers born in in the mid 50s to mid 60s would have been parents to Millennials. I don't know one Boomer who isn't a parent to a Millennial. So my anecdotal info is just as good as everyone else's. Example: Barack Obama parent to two Millennials.

Most Boomers would be parents to Gen X... though some, holding off having kids until later in life, could be parents of Millennials.

My sister who was born in 1953 is mother to a Millennial. She was 30 when my niece was born in 1983. Someone born in 1955 would have been 25 in 1980, r72, and 10 years old in 1965.

People never tire of this "generation" stereotyping horseshit.

There's literally a POS baby boomer in the Whitehouse fucking up the whole country for generations to come, put their by other POS baby boomers.

So yeah, let's point out how shitty the younger generations are. Sounds legit.

My brother, who was born in 1955, is parent to 4 Millennials, first kid was born in 1984 when he was 29 and his Boomer wife was 25.

[quote]There's literally a POS baby boomer in the Whitehouse fucking up the whole country for generations to come, put their by other POS baby boomers.

Yes, Boomers put a Boomer in the White House, even though they haven't been the largest voting bloc in years. /s

Millennials are so cute, aren't they? They've been the largest demographic for everything for a few years now and still insist that everyone is to blame for everything except them.

[quote]Millennials and Generation Xers cast 69.6 million votes in the 2016 general election, a slight majority of the 137.5 million total votes cast, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. Meanwhile, Boomers and older voters represented fewer than half of all votes for the first time in decades.

[quote]Somehow Generation X managed to be such motherfucking assholes that Millennials prefer Boomers over them.

Millennials love Boomers because Boomers are their mommies and daddies who spoil them.

I can't say much about Gen Z because not a single GenX friend of mine had kids. I think we all knew that our own childhoods meant we'd be iffy parents.

A few GenXers I know online had kids but they're all under 10 right now, even though their parents are in their 40s and 50s. They all sound scared shitless.

I don't know who the GenX parents of teen to 20yo kids are but I'd bet anything they skew rural and fundie, which would explain a lot.

When I was a teacher, the Boomer parents were absolutely rotten to the core. The few GenX parents I had were maybe not that great about responsibility but they were never mean.

If you're a teacher then you know better than to claim your own personal experience reflects everyone else's. If you don't know that then maybe you shouldn't be teaching.

Some of them are. Parents super involved with their kids today which is great, but the sensible ones set boundaries and explain that to be rewarded there must be consideration. Brother has top job, wife too, great 12 and 9 yo. Both parents from farm backgrounds, so have instilled work ethic in kids. Kids very respectful, thoughtful, helpful, great fucking fun for an uncle. Charmed life with great parents, but aware of the boundaries too.

When I was a kid, I was jealous of the other kids who had younger, Gen X parents. They seemed cooler to me. Meanwhile, I had two older disciplinarian grumps for parents. Looking back though, I am glad my parents were my parents and not my friends.

Leave Gen X alone. They’re in a shitty, unenviable situation right now. They’re neither young and beautiful nor older and distinguished or accomplished. They’re midde age. Ewww. And you will get there too!

The majority of the Boomer population are currently in their 60s.

In the 1970s most Boomers were in their 20s.

The majority of Boomers became parents in their 20s; they had their first (and most likely second) child in their 20s.

The majority of Gen X were born in the 70s.

The Boomers parents were not the ones having children in the 70s because they were 40+ by that time.

The majority of Gen X have Boomers for parents.

Some Boomers held off having children until their 30s, which by then was the1980s. But that was the exception, not the norm.

The two exceptions are Boomers who either postponed parenthood or had additional children in their 30s, which would have been the 1980s. And also, as well, the youngest/last wave of Boomers who are in now their late 50's, and had their first child in the 80s when they were in their mid-20s to mid-30s and therefore have Millennial children.

For what its worth, a teacher described the three main parenting styles of each generation of parents. Take it for whatever it is worth.

[quote] Baby Boomers: For the good, she said that Boomers “Invested in their children and their futures, meet with me when requested, will listen to what I have to say, will (usually) use my suggestions with their children.” But, she also noted that they have a capacity for being demanding, rude, and impatient. In terms of the ugly, she sarcastically said that “They know best…about everything,” “get angry the easiest,” and are prone to going “BALLISTIC.”

[quote] Gen X: Gen Xers, while she described them as fantastic providers who manage to have a “good sense of humor about things,” the bad and ugly were just awful enough that she had to break the entire generation into two separate categories to cover them. The teacher said that most parents fit neatly into the first category of people who “don’t have much to do with their kids.” That doesn’t mean that they’re mean to them or don’t love them, but rather that they don’t put a lot of emotional investment into them and put more into “themselves and their partner.” The ugly is that those parents are the ones who “believe their kid is a perfect angel that can do no wrong, and any problem they are having is my or the school’s fault.”

[quote] millennials: She admitted that she has the least experience with millennials, but called them extremely “polite, good listeners, really take my advice to heart, care about their kids.” The bad was that they were “Timid, naive, and tend to overreact/blow things out of proportion,” which led right to the ugly, which is that some of them go on “Gordon Ramsay-esque tirades” against their children.

I'm seeing this with my idiot sister and her son.

I think this entire thread is based on Millennials trying to move the focus off of how terrible they are and put it on Gen Z. Unfortunately for them, Gen Z seems to be a pretty good generation. They need to put down their phones before their eyeballs fuse to them (just like Millennials) but the Gen Zers I know are less self-centered and more tolerant and open across the board. They have some socializing issues due to technology and that's going to have a lasting effect on their lives but as they get a little older, I'm hoping some self-actualization and maturity (two things sadly lacking in Millennials) will help with those issues.

And, am I the only one who finds that Millennials are just as self-centered and greedy as the Boomers ever were? They care about no one but themselves. I mean, look who literally invented 'selfie sticks'.

[quote] And, am I the only one who finds that Millennials are just as self-centered and greedy as the Boomers ever were? They care about no one but themselves.

Like fucking Gen X ever cared about anybody other than themselves, unless it is to whine about how much they hate them? Bitter, nasty Betties.

I'm a GenXer with no kids, I don't want the brats. Even those who try to raise them well get fucked because everyone else's kids are brats and it rubs off on them. My niece and nephew have a zillion allergies, a zillion after-school activities they need to be constantly driven everywhere for, and my nephew hangs out on The_Donald subreddit at 14, no thanks!

R10, at least it keeps the brats from screaming on the bus.

Well, they are the first generation to pamper their brats with nearly $1,000 iPhones apiece. Of course they're going to be snotty brats when you luxuriate a child with such an unnecessarily expensive, technological commodity. I see their brats all over the place walking around with expensive iPhones and huge Starbucks drinks. Who the hell is paying for it? Also, that article is such a terribly written, touchy feely piece. Is it from a Christian mommy's blog?

R87, ignorance is another Millennial trait but you don't have to exemplify it so well. Gen X is currently taking care of their parents and their children and their stupid Millennial younger siblings who won't leave the parents' basement but won't help take care of them either and can't help pay any of their parents' expenses because they never bothered to get a job.

Seems to me, R91, that Gen X are the biggest, most defensive snowflakes of them all, and you exemplify that quite well.

They can't even handle one single thread with legitimate criticism about them without the need to point fingers and whine about Boomers or Millennials. 😂 I will say that Gen X is absolutely great at leveling criticism at others, unless it involves any sort of self-introspection, in which case they become abrasively defensive. I see this in the workplace all of the time!

Except my entire post was simply refuting R87's ignorant post, R92. And, it helps that what I wrote is also true. So selfish is Gen X that they are literally taking care of two of the other three generations now living while working at jobs that don't pay anything because the Boomers that they are now taking care of sucked the entire system dry and decimated unions and social systems that they first took advantage of to their fullest potential.

If you can't counter the facts of my posts and just want to attack, go ahead, but it's just proving my point.

I don't see Gen X doing anything better or more selflessly --- taking care of kids and elderly parents --- that other generations at middle age haven't already done before them, R93. As for your second point, I more or less agree, but that has little to do with the thread topic.

There are way more old parents alive now than in previous generations and, while a lot of them stay healthier for a longer time than previous generations, they also linger for a good decade longer than their parents. Also, Gen X is the first generation to not benefit from having one person home full-time to take care of things like this more easily. Plus, Gen X is the first generation to have almost zero community involvement or help like previous generations had with little old church ladies and neighborhood groups, etc. We also are the first generation to be financially worse off than their parents' generation, so we are doing it all with fewer resources across the board. And, on top of all that, our 70 year old parents sometimes have their 90 year old parents still kicking around, too.

I know one family that has five generations all living right now and guess which generation is right in the middle. I think that's what defines Gen X. We're always in the fucking middle and, as with airplane seats and birth order, the middle usually fucking sucks.

My cousin is a Gen X woman. She has two sons in elementary; they're both brats who throw senseless public tantrums when not glued to their iPads. They're also antisocial and lack manners, yet have precious attitudes when confronted on their nonsense. I've seen the older one (about 7 or 8 now) get sniffy with grown adults. The demands of both boys when it comes to food, entertainment, comforts etc. is off-the-scale picky and these whims are catered to by both parents. When I was a kid in the '00s I was told to eat what I was given for dinner, wear the clothes my mother picked out, and either make my own fun or find it myself via remote or putting my sneakers on and leaving the damn house (and I always had to take my kid siblings with me).

That said, I remember when I was a kid my other cousins (younger than me, but still Millennials) would act out in public too, minus the iPad sedative (they had PsP/Gameboy/Xbox/cable to worry about instead). As a 10-year-old in the '00s I once had to stand in the middle of a Walmart, mortified looking on as my youngest male cousin had a quasi-autistic screaming meltdown in the produce aisle; fast-forward to now and that boy has somehow grown into a sensible sociable adult with a concern for protocol, albeit still with a selfish streak...

As for the caring for parents thing? My parents (young Boomers) have been left to care for my last remaining grandparent (Silent Gen) and I am expected to help with that as the poor gay Gen Y child in the family. Meanwhile my Gen X/Xennial cousins with kids of their own and high-roller jobs they got from their private-school friends and the parents (my Boomer aunts/uncles) with money do nothing about their last elder relative, and still they all find time to bitch about how HARD it is raising kids that THEY wanted and paying for expensive lifestyles THEY willingly set up--seemingly just to impress their own parents and peers. Soulless.

My lifeplan is to scrape together all the dimes I can through various means then buy a tiny plot somewhere far from my family, so I can put a Winnebago on it to live in and forget any of them exist. It's lucky I don't want kids or a flashy plush lifestyle or a long lifespan (over 70) because I doubt I could ever afford it if I did.

tl;dr I don't think there really is a chasmic evolutionary difference between Gen Y & Gen Z beyond trends and tech. From what I can tell Gen X are masochists who only love money and couldn't get happy if they tried.

It's difficult to feel sympathy for anyone complaining about raising kids these days, because nobody ever forced them to have kids in the first place! This wasn't the 1950s anymore when Gen-X started having kids, and way after women's lib. There's an incredible amount of Gen X breeders who seemed to have kids just cuz.

As for taking care of elderly parents, if you're in this position, you have my sympathy because it is not easy!

That was directed at R91.

Gen x parents transing their kids. Little Tyler wants to become a girl so I will let him start wearing dresses, taking hormones and change his name to tasha.

r99 I think that is more Millennials, all the Gen Xers I know with kids became more conservative. GenX was not raised with that mindset like the Millennials.

Of the Generation X people I know, only a handful have children and didn't have them until well into their thirties, so they're still either toddlers or school age. I don't know any Generation X people with either adult children or late teens. A disturbing number of them were putting off having children until they could afford it, and then hit 40 and were too old, despite several rounds of failed IVF.

None of the few Millennials I know have children. I presume it'll be the same story of mid-30s panic and then some will conceive through IVF while most won't.

So Baby Boomers are the parents of all of Generation X and most of the Millennials. They were the last generation to have children in their late teens and early 20s - starting with Generation X, parenthood moved much later and then later again with the Millennials, so it's all slightly out of sync compared to previous generations.

R99. Are you sure it is more common among millennia parents. The once I have noticed are gen x parents with adolescent children.

It’s both young gen x and old millennials, R102, or whatever generation moms in their 30s and 40s are.

The major thing I notice about my GenX friends with kids is every single one of these kids has some sort of food sensitivity or allergy. While kids have always been picky eaters, now they have a big medical problem they go to naturopaths and other alternative doctors for, you can't serve them any normal food. That and they are permanently attached to their iPhones/iPads/electronic devices, you can't pry it away from them or have a normal conversation.

Gen x here. Right on r75. For the most part our parents couldn’t really give a shit what we did and were left to fend for ourselves. As long as they did not look bad, we could just fuck right off. That’s why we think it’s strange for grown adults to just keep living at home playing video games. We were told to get the fuck out of the house as soon as we graduated high school. All through our lives we have been told social security will be gone by the time we are eligible but our parents are currently getting THEIR fair share of social security and public healthcare. But those old fucks are still running things so of course they’d like to piss away social security in the stock market. Of course they don’t want healthcare for all, just them. Our kids think grandpa and grandma are fun and great visiting them at their southern (snowbird) condo and northern house big enough for an entire family but just the two old baby boomers. If the grandparents were ever asked if they’d like to try to save the planet or take care of others, their grandparents will laugh in their face and head out to the casino with cheap buffet pizza.

The youngest Gen Xers right now are around 40 while the oldest ones are in their mid to late 50s. While many waited a long time to have kids, most didn't. We are not the ones raising little Jaedens and Madysins and championing their trans-ing themselves. It's the Millennials who can't figure out biology. Most of the children of Gen X are already in their mid-teens or early 20s and are just fine with keeping their genitals intact.

Really, R106? I’m pretty sure Jaedyn and Madyson and their peanut allergies are in their teens now, with quite a few in college too.

R106 Damn you must lead a fulfilling life.

[quote] For the most part our parents couldn’t really give a shit what we did and were left to fend for ourselves.

I don't think this is good parenting either. Sure, for every DLer who grew up this way and claims that it made them a strong, independent woman or whatever, there were loads of feral kids running about, up to no good. It probably explains why juvenile delinquency was off the charts then. I don't think "helicopter parenting" is good parenting either, but it doesn't have to be one extreme or the other.

Speak for yourself. My son is sensitive, compassionate and works with young children. He's won several awards for service and being a role model (his father was in the big house a long time, so he's overcome much).

Of course, I disciplined him when he was young, and he was with me when I helped out other kids in the neighborhood. Children mimic what they see. If they see selflessness and compassion, they will become selfless and compassion. If they see narcissism and entitlement, well, they become...

Well good for you and your son, R110. He must be an exception, as most kids can barely be bothered to take their phones out of their faces these days, much less be going around helping out neighborhood kids.

I wouldn't want to be a kid these days, and I definitely would not want to be a parent either.

I will say in defense of gen x parents, they seem rather overwhelmingly accepting of gay/lesbian kids. You don't hear about gay kids getting kicked out of the house or the other terrible horror stories that teens seemed to experience in the past.

I finally learned how to supervise millennials by delicate honesty and making them work harder. They were spoiled by fearful parents- and it taught them to constantly complain but they can be very smart.

The schools aren't helping. My sister is a single mom with a limited income and the school expects her 9th grader to bring her own laptop to school. The teacher sent out an e-mail recommending a $2,500 computer. WTF? My sister doesn't have that kind of money.

Gee, R93. Boomers may be older, but we are mostly not the ones in nursing homes who are being taken care of by anyone.

The oldest of you are there, R116. I know people in their 60s and 70s who already need their Gen X kids to help them out (in fact, I am one of those Gen Xers) and it's only going to get worse for the next 40 years. The nursing home years come later after the kids can't do what needs to be done. The image of retired seniors windsurfing and playing golf and going on vacation to use their erection meds while taking baths in the woods is a very small part of the demographic. A lot of this depends on economic level and the poorer the Boomer and their family, the more care that tends to be needed and the more responsibility that will fall on the younger generation.

My understanding was that one generation is generally not the parents of the generation that directly follows them, but the one afterwards?

Baby boomers were such a large generation, spanning so many years, R118, that they ended up being parents of both many Generation X and millennials. In turn, the shorter Gen X and Millennial generations are largely sibling generations to each other.

There's a ton of overlap, R118. I'm Gen X. My parents are Boomers. My grandparents were the WWII generation. My nieces and nephews are Gen Z. No Millennials at all in my family. Each generation parented the next except we skipped the Millennials because the Gen X parents waited longer to have kids.

R119, I've never understood why there isn't another generation between the Boomers and Gen X. The Boomers got their name from the post-war baby boom which certainly was not still taking place in the late 50s or early 60s. The true Boomers are the kids who were born in the late 40s and early 50s and lived through having to have shifts at schools because there were so many of them they had to stagger the school day and other things like that.

It's like they took the beginning of the Gen X generation and gave it to the Boomers instead.

Directly after the WWII baby BOOM, there was also the largely forgotten baby BUST, where there was a combination of abortion, the pill, and women becoming educated and career-driven that resulted in fewer births during the 60s and most of the 70s. It wasn't until the very late 70s and especially throughout the 80s where you see a huge, sudden surge in birthrates. This is why you see a lot of Gen X/Millennial siblings borne to Baby Boomers, due to that late 70s/80s baby boom.

Interestingly, within the last 10 years or so, we've witnessed a second Baby Bust, with few adults of fertile age having children. However, now that millennials are getting more and more settled, there will probably be another huge surge of births within the next 10 years.

I speak for every generation when I say we can't wait for you old fucks to die and take your dinosaurs with you. Trump, Clinton, Sanders. You've contributed nothing and taken everything.

I always met the most insufferable old people. Religious small-minded loudmouths who are so convinced their time was the best ever. We cannot do worse than you. Your generation legacy is Donald Trump.

You speak for nobody but yourself, Troll of One Entire Post at R123.

I hope that you and the rest of your troll army dies in a huge greasefire though, and somebody had to say it!

R114 - good for you. If you did find the secret, please do share with us. I have a few amazing Millennials on my team of direct reports and I also have about 4 who are insufferable. I had to let one go recently who found it impossible to report to work 5 days a week (3 seemed to be a stretch) and when she was there on rare occasion - nothing was ever accomplished. She suffers from depression, feels threatened by co-workers who ask for deliverables (in order to perform their own job) and often retreated to "safe spaces" (aka - went home whenever she felt like it). A male Millenial is very attractive, the life of the office, somehow managed to attain a masters degree but in reality does next to noting all day, every day. At least he shows up (he is also the nephew of a very senior leader, so we all have to give him the benefit of the doubt). I find that Millenials, much like any other age group is either excellent or terrible. The attributes that make them great can also make them impossible (curios, entitled, strategic, fearful, socially awkward, overly reliant on technology and little ability to think on their feet, etc.). My best employee is also a Millenial who is really amazing in almost every way. She is detail- oriented, over-achieving, hard working and while socially awkward - she is a huge asset. So....as with most tings in life - you take the ying with the yang..

noting = nothing

tings = things (the "h" key is sticking LOL)

Gen X child of Boomers here - my siblings, all Gen Xers, married straight after uni and had their Millennial kids in their 20s. Said Millennial kids are all in their 20s now themselves - lovely, caring, functional people, with partners, degrees, jobs, homes (well rental apartments) of their own, which they pay for from their wages and without any family help. Always roll my eyes when people bash Millennials and say they're all a mess. My nieces and nephews, and their friends, are some of the most generous and helpful people I know.

is = are curio = curious

What a mess. That is what I get for posting a message half asleep! LOL.

I'm with R113 in that I see more Gen X parents as being more accepting of their kids being gay or unorthodox, but perhaps less disciplinarian. From what I've observed, I don't see Millennial parents deviating from this too much either.

For what its worth, both became parents largely after the "spanking kids is abusive" debacle, so there is also that to consider..

R125 yes boo at me for daring to go against the geriatric crowd. I now know how it feels to stumble into a nursing home full of the elderly Children of the Corn.

R121 There is. They are called Generation Jones. Born between 1960 and 1970.

Very few of those born between 1959 -1961 actually identify with Baby Boomers. The same applies to most people born in the 1960s. Many do not identify with Baby Boomers. A lot depends upon their siblings ages (and their relationship with those siblings) and the ages of the kids on the street they grew up on.

My youngest sister was born in late December 1959 and my youngest brother in June 1961. There is a 7+ year gap between both of them and me and my older siblings. They both said they identify with Gen Jones, not Baby Boomers, as is typical. One reason of several is because their experiences as teens and also 18-23 yrs old college-aged young adults were very different experiences from those of the Baby Boomers born between 1947-1959.

R1

Could you even read the quote above you?

"Are we controlling or are they brats?" isn't an attempt at being cool.

[quote] both became parents largely after the "spanking kids is abusive"

There is definitely something to this. The media and talk radio made a huge deal about spanking = child abuse, with scare stories about parents getting arrested, and this sparked a major change in the way people view discipline and corporal punishment.

The teacher saying millennial parents have Gordon Ramsey style tirades against their kids is true from my experience. They are super chill and try to play the good cop to a long extent, but when that fails, they revert 180 degrees to scary, screaming parent.

R134, the end of spanking begat the beginning of time-outs and privileges being revoked, but neither of those two punishments resulted in children being better behaved.

Most of the millennials having kids in schools these days are of the uneducated, tattooed variety, so it's not surprising that they have screaming fits against their kids when they misbehave, R135.

Uneducated parents having the disproportionate amount of kids is a multigenerational problem that keeps snowballing though. Gays and environmentally aware couples have been largely refraining from having children for decades, so the less educated have picked up the slack, and that's how we've ended up with what we have.

The moral of the story is that educated and progressive people need to keep having kids too.

I’m a Generation X gay, and the question I want to ask is how much fucking money does a parent have to earn to support these Gen Z kids? $750,000 a year? I’m in my 40s and my younger sister has a 12 year old and a 10 year old who would drain the crack from a cracker. The princesses have dance class, voice, class, piano lessons, of course they got a brand new fucking Yamaha baby grand, not a synthesizer. Girls gymnastics, girl scouts. They’re always being picked up, dropped off, chauffeured here, escorted there, games, recitals, awards, sleep overs. The nightmare has no end. Of course, these pirrhanas have their Iphones, their Ipads, 4k TVs in each of their separate rooms. Bunk Beds? That’s for prison. Laptops, desktops, sequined tops. These miniature bitches prance around in their tutus and tights and never once stop to consider how their parents are funding their insatiable needs. I can’t even imagine. I’m in the NY Metro Area. If you happen to live on Long island or Westchester with taxes in the 5 digits and houses well over $500,000, what do you have to earn to afford that and the boat, and the three cars, and the 5 vacations a year that little Kimmy and Pammy get taken on. Disney World is also like $110 per person. The manicures, the pedicures, which Kimmy and Pammy also get, and their hair done, too. And they wear lipstick and makeup. And Michael Kors. My brother-in-law the kids father works in the commodities and my sis only works part-time. She still manages to be this generation’s Kool Aid mom. Now either I’m missing something, or my sis has a methamphetamine lab in her basement, which is what most of these couples need to fund these parasitic offspring and possibly plan for the future? A college education? Masters’s? Oh, it doesn’t stop at 18. Kimmy and Pammy are at the top of their class in middle school. Marcia Brady’s awards look like crap next to theirs. These girls are heading to the Ivies, the Columbias, the Princetons. Not CCNY. I suggested to my sis they take out loans. Loans?? She gasped. What the hell. It’s only another $300,000. I have never in my life thanked God so much that I am gay, and never thanked Him more for never making me a parent. It exhausts me just thinking about it.

....

This is a serious discussion thread, R140. Not a "Post a photo of your crush" image thread.

r121 Generation Jones is 1954-1964

oops that was for r132 about Generation Jones 1954-1964

Everything I've read says Generation Jones is just a subset or niche group within the Boomer generation, not it's own actual generation.

The accepted generations alive today are Silent, Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, Gen Z.

[quote] The accepted generations alive today are Silent, Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, Gen Z.

Gee, thanks bitch!

I have a feeling gen z is going the way of gen x.

Neglected and forgotten.

We couldn't even bother giving them a proper name.

Slackers and iGen never really took off.

I think Gen Z is right now where Millennials were circa 2000. Around then, everyone was still talking obsessively about Gen X, to the point that the then teenage millennials were just seen and treated as an extension of Gen X. People didn't really start talking about millennials and labelling them with that term until after 2010 I feel. Until then, they used that Gen Y term which never really took off either.

Gen Z or whatever they're going to eventually be called will get their time in the sun, in which case everyone will start complaining and criticizing about them.

Douglas Coupland has a lot to answer for. I'm just confused at this point. How old are " Gen Z" at the present time?

[quote] There's a ton of overlap, [R118]. I'm Gen X. My parents are Boomers. My grandparents were the WWII generation. My nieces and nephews are Gen Z. No Millennials at all in my family. Each generation parented the next except we skipped the Millennials because the Gen X parents waited longer to have kids.

I’m a Millennial and my mother is a Baby Boomer. She was born in the early 50s, I was born in the mid 80s. She had me at 30. Baby Boomers gave birth to Millennials by the truckload.

My parents were the Silent Generation (1930's), I am Gen X (1968), and my child is Gen Z (2005).

The biggest differences for me are that the kids these days always have their nose in their phones and you can't let kids play outside on their own like we used to do. There is more of a nanny state now, my friend got the cops called on her because her son was playing down the street and somebody reported that he was by himself (the child is 11 and was coming back from his friend's house down the block).

[quote] There is more of a nanny state now, my friend got the cops called on her because her son was playing down the street and somebody reported that he was by himself (the child is 11 and was coming back from his friend's house down the block).

That's nuts!

Also, are kids not allowed to even go trick or treating anymore? Every year, I notice an increasingly smaller amount doing that in the neighborhood.

r151 I noticed that around here they do activities like "Trunk or Treat" where the people all park and then give out candy from the trunk of the car. I think that's why there is less door to door.

That's why I am always flabbergasted when people think "Western" parenting/schooling produce good results.... No, the are not more "creative" or "self-motivated". They become arrogant and whiny!

Speaking of nanny state. I adopted my child from Russia, she's a great kid but very shy. At school they acted like I was abusing her because she rarely talked, I was afraid they were going to call Child Protective Services on me. They asked my daughter if I was hurting her, I guess they thought I was beating her into submission. She is a really sweet child, just quiet and it took her awhile to make eye contact with people at school. Sometimes I think they are overly sensitive today but then again I had some really mean teachers back in my day so in a way I should be grateful that they seem to care about the kids, but they go overboard.

I think kids having older parents like over 30, regardless of generation, is better in general. All the people who I grew up with who had really young parents, like teens to 20, ended up with some type of behavior problem. Younger parents seem less interested in discipline and often are quite immature themselves.

GenX IS a proper name, and a good one, too. It's a legitimate reference, not just a placeholder.

[quote]These miniature bitches prance around in their tutus and tights

Your whole post is psychotic, to the point that it occasionally reads like it's about to turn into something that should be reported to authorities.

I will generously assume you're a troll, and also suggest you get professional help.

Eat shit, gramps at r124. He speaks for a fuck ton of Gen Xers, and you really only prove his fucking point about nasty Boomers being insufferable, loudmouth, know-it-all fucking BOORS.

Yeah I'll cosign for r123. I'm a 1989 millennial and have zero issues with Gen Z (I don't know anyone my age that does, where are people getting the idea we hate them?) and I like Gen X well enough. I despise boomers though. There will be a great shift in this world for the better when their generation dies off and we all know it.

Lame, R159. I'm a millennial and don't hate Boomers or Gen X or whoever else. It's much too simplistic to just scapegoat one group of people for all of the problems. In fact, a lot of the political problems we have now were already due to foreign and domestic policies in place from the 1950s, especially the 1960s, and onward. Also it doesn't help that we have a very apathetic population who doesn't care when congress and Supreme Court are stripping away liberties from us. People should be outraged by what congress does, but very few people care.

R160 speaks the truth. We care what congress does and we are watching and waiting for those old boomers to take a back seat.

Really, R159? You don't have parents or grandparents who you appreciate at all and you would rather just have millions of people die off?

Also, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but if you are waiting for people in their late 50s to die off en masse, you'll be waiting for quite awhile, especially as lifespans expand.

The only millennial parents I've witnessed are not screamers at all, R135. They seem super permissive and reluctant to discipline their brats.

Parents want to be best friends with their kids these days, not the bad, mean mom or dad.

R84, I would be interested in hearing that same teacher's breakdown of teenagers by generation and decade. Sounds like she knows her stuff.

My younger sister is a millennial mom with lots of mommy friends in her age range, and from what I've seen, millennial parents are both excessively attentive to their kids but also tend to get flustered easily by children not behaving how they expect them to, which results in them screaming at them.

Young parents often lack the experience to know how to handle misbehaving children, R165.

What is most surprising is that Gen X grew up mostly ignored and the opposite of spoiled, but they now coddle their children.

[quote] They are called Generation Jones. Born between 1960 and 1970.

Generation Jones is 1960 to 1964. Obama is part of this micro generation.

Most good parents want a better experience for their kids than what they themselves experienced, R167.

Parents don't need to spank kids anymore, R130. All they need to do is revoke their children's cellphones and that is worse than any spanking these days.

Gen X is doing a helluva lot better of a job of parenting than baby boomers, that's for sure.

R170 when I was a young teen I remember my Gen X mother restricting my use of the dial-up as a punishment. She would spend all night on the phone just to make damn sure I wasn't surfing.

Of course, that wouldn't work these days but c.2003 that was a deeply frustrating restriction for a kid (who was probably addicted to the Internet, looking back on it). Now in hindsight I just find the whole thing amusing.

Gen X was spoiled as hell too, R167.

No offense but your mom sounded cunty, R172.

GenX was the first generation of kids who had almost no adult supervision, and the last generation to experience classrooms where corporal punishment was still acceptable. Economically, they grew up during the recession of the 1970s, and in their teens when the economy improved, they had to deal with the oppression of the Reagan era. They were hardly spoiled.

I'm a millennial and I generally agree with R175 in that I believe that they generally got the shorter end of the stick.

Gen X also had to deal with the fallout of HIV.

I honestly don't think kids are any better or worse than they have been for the last 30 years.

The majority of baby boomers are currently in their 60s.

Some are in their late 50s and early 70s but the bulk of boomers are in their 60s and most are grandparents, not great-grandparents.

[qoute] I have a feeling gen z is going the way of gen x. Neglected and forgotten.

For those of us Xers who have witnessed both generations, there are some eerie similarities between the baby boomers and millennials. Mostly in that they both demand and command a lot of attention and have vain tendencies. I do believe that millennials are more egalitarian though, and seem more concerned about the future, environment, and helping out the kids after them, whereas Boomers could not have cared less about us.

I always think of Schitt's Creek when I think of the Boomer-Millennial parent/child dynamic.

R167 that’s the reason I’m NOT surprised. People usually always want better for their children.

[quote] How old are " Gen Z" at the present time?

Gen Z represent every single high school student in America. The youngest ones are around 6 years old, and the oldest are currently in college, where they are split with the youngest millenials.

The Karate Kid reboot, Cobra Kai, does an excellent job explaining the dynamic and disconnect between Gen X parents and their teenage kids, R181.

I was born at the tail end of X, and don’t have children. I’d say 90% of my friends also do not have children. Adjusting for individual variation (divorce, mental illness, outright abuse), we’ve had enough conversations about our childhoods for me to make correlations between our childless state and the parenting we received. Most of us were completely ignored/neglected. We were treated like cats, a plate of food was left out, and that was the extent of it. It was very much an “I don’t ever want to deal with you,” type of childhood. If attention was paid, it was usually negative, for some kind of infraction. “You embarrassed me!” Or it was because they needed emotional fulfillment they weren’t getting elsewhere. “I need you to be an adult right now so I can glean positive emotional reinforcement from you.” One of the few good friends I have who did have kids tells me her parents still behave like this with their grandchildren. They don’t want to be actively involved with them, save for photo ops, until the kids are more “independent,” i.e. adults. Mostly because they don’t want to have to do any kind of nuturing that might interrupt the enjoyment of their retirement.

The weird thing is that politically, our parents are almost to a fault all liberal Democrats. But somehow they absorbed that Reaganomic yuppie narcissism when it comes to their personal interactions.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence that most of my friends had similar childhoods, but I’m curious if there are any other DLers born between, say, ‘77-82 who have experienced this.