Christine B. Whelan writing at the Acculturated blog:
Recently my husband and I had dinner with two of my former students–one of whom has a job after graduate school, one who does not. We offered all sorts of traditional advice about perseverance in job searches, commitment in relationships, sacrifice in family life–and in the back of my mind, I wondered whether we were speaking a foreign language these twenty-somethings.
Hannah Seligson, author of Mission: Adulthood: How the 20-Somethings of Today Are Transforming Work, Love, and Life, argues that us old folks (those of us born in 1977 or earlier) don’t understand the strengths of young’uns born between 1978 and 2000, or the unique challenges they face, because we’ve been brainwashed by bad-news media. Studies that fret over the laziness, selfishness, and entitlement of “kids these days” are missing the point, she writes. more
Categories: General
It’s a weakness of the book to focus exclusively on the college-educated, who remain a minority within the US population (a minority which will shrink further as the cost of college continues to rise disproportionately to income). It would be better if the book were retitled, “How Educated Twenty-Somethings of Today are Transforming Work, Love and Life.”
Those without advanced educations aren’t “transforming” anything; they’re trying to survive the fallout of being the thrown-away people. And they’re not happy about it.