We Each Have Our Own Generation Gap

My mother never worked.

Now, before I get beat up by every woman alive, let me clarify this. She worked very hard. She just didn’t have a traditional job like most men did. Her job was raising a family. Back then, if a woman “worked,” it was assumed she worked outside the home.

Even my own mother didn’t think she worked. If I asked if I could stay overnight at a friend’s house, she might say, “Oh, I don’t know. His mother works.”

Most mothers of my friends were homemakers like my mom. In fact, I was surprised whenever a friend said their mother worked outside the home. Each kid had chores to do since mom wasn’t home to do them.

I tried to imagine what that might be like and quickly decided I already had enough chores and liked having a clean house, clean clothes and hot, fresh meals. Dad did, too, once Mom explained to him that those benefits would disappear if she got a job.

Follow the Rules

My folks were conservative because they had to be. We lived in a very old house, drove no-frills cars and ate off plastic plates. But my siblings and I learned to live with it. We learned that it was safer to play by their rules than to make our own.

It was their way of life. They developed it and learned to accept it.

My generation has lived through good and bad times but nothing like our parents did. We didn’t deserve all that we received from them. But we still wanted more and a better life for our kids. This required both husband and wife to work outside the home. Family size diminished.

It was our way of life. We developed it and learned to accept it.

Our children have taken what we gave them and are trying to run with it. It’s been eye-opening to observe how my two children (son and daughter) deal with work-life. They are in their 30s, still single and have no kids.

It’s more common now to marry later, if at all. Everyone seems to be working and they have fewer kids, if any. My kids perceived the need to make money first and enjoy life while they’re young. Something many of us forgot to do.

But they need that money to afford a home so they can quit paying rent. They wonder if Social Security will still be there when they retire. I’m concerned about my kids but they’ll be all right, in their own way.

It is their way of life. They are developing it and are learning to accept it.

Hey, Boomer!

Generational names like Baby Boomer and Millennial don’t mean very much to me because they tend to put everyone in a certain age bracket with traits they might not have. What should matter are the generational developments within your family, the generation gap, as it used to be called. The gap was the differences in outlook, beliefs, and values between different generations. I bet you could have made a long list for your folks. Well, so could your kids for you.

It’s interesting following the current generation of teens. Apparently they are not working summers or after school as much. There may be many reasons for that. I couldn’t wait to get a job after school so I’d have some money.

But those work experiences provided me with much more than money. Things like arriving at work on time, focusing on work even when dull, and directly dealing with real co-workers and customers. It helped me decide what career I might want to pursue – and which ones to avoid.

In fairness, the young people today have faced a lot during their development years that we didn’t, such as COVID, mass shootings at schools and deepening political unrest. These kids are serving as test subjects on the effects of social media and AI.

I was in elementary school just after nuclear bomb drills were stopped. Now schools have active shooter drills because shootings are real. There has never been a nuclear bomb dropped on an American school.

Test scores are down for school-age kids. When both parents work, there’s less time for them to monitor their children’s school work, let alone what the kids do with their time. But again there are many possible reasons for this.

Each generation has its own way of life, its own gap from the previous one. They develop it and learn to accept it. Then they hand it off to the next generation.

Is each generation better off than the previous one? That’s always the hope. No one wants to fail on their watch. But since we can’t predict the future, we do what we think is best.

May we all live long and prosper.