What we've lost since the Golden Era

[Paisley]

It also seems these days that a lot of people lack responsibility. I am 19 and been out of high school a year. I have a group of about 10 close friends, 3 or us have gone out and gotten real jobs. The rest of my friends are the same age, or older and are unemployed, working at grocery stores, flipping burgers, etc. And their only reason is they don't feel like going and busting their butts in a factory or some other such occupation.

I have nieces and nephews who are nearly 40 years old and still living off their parents.

"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife..." Gen. 2:24

"Life is difficult and there are those who cannot adjust themselves to it." From a tablet excavated from ancient Babylon and published in The Richest Man in Babylon.

It would seem the failure-to-launch syndrome has been around awhile and isn't limited to any age group.

 

[Fletch]

You're speaking to one - self-aware and unapologetic.

 

[Feraud]

People don't realize that former generations weren't just working hard for themselves. They, too, had to help make someone else rich without much to show for it. They just didn't have the ( luxury / handicap )* of awareness.

I speak from some personal experience here; my attitude about the 9-5 was unusually cynical even for Gen X. My Silent Generation parents have always argued the opposite. To them, being taken advantage of by the system was simply the initiation fee for being allowed to do your thing - the basic training required for society to trust you enough to leave you mostly alone.

Some feel it would benefit us spiritually if that attitude were more universal today.

*Maybe both.

What do you mean by awareness? Not aware of the society they were living in?
Doesn't the literature, art, music, newspapers, of the time reflect the result of being aware? Not to mention discussions of commercialism in advertising and cinema from the past also reflect a society with enough down time to look at itself? From what I've gleaned from the past there was good and bad and people knew it.

Or have I totally missed the point?

 

[Mid-fogey]

If what we...

You're speaking to one - self-aware and unapologetic.

…are speaking about here is continuing to live with parents as a mature adult, then that what we lost since the golden era is accepting that as a perfectly valid way to live one’s life. What was once considered noble and acceptable has become stigmatized.

My great aunt continued to live with her mother out of a sense of duty. It cost her the love of her life and only chance at marriage, as the depression was in full force and her fiancé could only find work in Australia. She wouldn’t leave her mother alone.

 

[Feraud]

If the news reports are somewhat accurate then children are living with their families longer than the recent past.
Has our society really stigmatized the issue? I don't see it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I was the first member of my family in four generations to leave a particular street in a particular town, and I couldn't get away from there fast enough. It's bad enough I left some junk behind in my mother's attic and I'm still hearing about it thirty years later -- if I actually tried to move in with her, I'm pretty sure she'd hit me over the head with a skillet. As for my father, well, he never supported me as a kid, so why expect him to do it now?

No, if there's one fact that was drummed into me hard from earliest childhood it was "the day you turn twenty-one, you're on your own. So you better be ready for it." Starting when I was fifteen, I had to pay rent and buy all my own food, to remove any possible doubt.

 

[Fletch]

What do you mean by awareness? Not aware of the society they were living in?
Doesn't the literature, art, music, newspapers, of the time reflect the result of being aware? Not to mention discussions of commercialism in advertising and cinema from the past also reflect a society with enough down time to look at itself? From what I've gleaned from the past there was good and bad and people knew it.

Or have I totally missed the point?

No, not at all. But there was a sense, more than today, of what Lizzie just referred to: that you owe the world much more than just the unpayable spiritual debt for being born into it. That your continued everyday existence - whether you're born into poverty or the comfortable middleclass - at some point or another has to be justified to people who really do not care about "you," but simply want performance for money. And that as dehumanizing as that is, realizing it and accepting it is the key to humility and character.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That your continued everyday existence - whether you're born into poverty or the comfortable middleclass - at some point or another has to be justified to people who really do not care about "you," but simply want performance for money. And that as dehumanizing as that is, realizing it and accepting it is the key to humility and character.

That really is it, actually. The Secret Of Life, in all its glory, is that there *is* no secret to life. We're born, we scratch out whatever existence we can, and then we die, and until we learn and accept that there's going to be a lot more of the rough than there is of the smooth, we're going to be terribly, terribly frustrated.

 

[Fletch]

If the news reports are somewhat accurate then children are living with their families longer than the recent past.
Has our society really stigmatized the issue? I don't see it.

The Internet Tough Guys out there beeotching about "snowflakes" are legion. They're the ones - usually male, mostly conservative, formed by organizations (teams, large companies, the military)- who feel that what they and people like them had to go thru in life is essential to being a decent, responsible, reliable human being. They can be genuinely bitter towards anyone who somehow avoids any of those life rites for whatever reason, be it luck, comfortable circumstances, or conviction.

The history of generations living together is regional, anyway, and always had a lot more to do with stigmatized, urbanized ethnic groups than with the mostly lily-white Middle Americans who created and imposed our work ethic. Out by eighteen, or twenty-two, was an article of faith with them, and so it is for most of us.

 

[Mid-fogey]

Look again...

If the news reports are somewhat accurate then children are living with their families longer than the recent past.
Has our society really stigmatized the issue? I don't see it.

…at the mere fact that there so many articles about it that point out it’s unusual. Most of the articles either say our imply it is undesirable. Just the title “Failure to Launch” tells the story. Failure.

The implication is that there is a pattern you should follow – out at 18 or 21 and no return.

In most of the history of humanity, and even today in much of the world, it is considered perfectly normal for to live with one’s parents as a lifelong arrangement.

I’m not sure why I’m defending this post like Rorke’s Drift. I left home at 17.

 

[Paisley]

I've known a few middle-aged people who lived with relatives and helped out with elderly parents or disabled family members. But most people I've known who were middle-aged and living at home didn't want to leave an entry-level job or couldn't keep an entry-level job.

I guess I've never seen what's so awful and degrading about having to support yourself. If you don't do it, somebody else has to--unless you don't mind being a vagrant. To my mind, it's a short step from being taken care of to being controlled.

Possibly, this wasn't as much an issue in the Golden Era for a few reasons. In my parents' families, at least, kids did chores from an early age. Stay or leave, you had to be useful. And if you were sleeping two or three to a bed, stood in line to use the bathroom, and lived with parents who were more Joan Crawford than Alan Alda, that factory job and dingy apartment might not have looked that bad.

 

[Paisley]

No, if there's one fact that was drummed into me hard from earliest childhood it was "the day you turn twenty-one, you're on your own. So you better be ready for it." Starting when I was fifteen, I had to pay rent and buy all my own food, to remove any possible doubt.

My ex-boyfriend's mother started charging him rent when he was 16. He moved out--and why not?

 

[Feraud]

The Internet Tough Guys out there beeotching about "snowflakes" are legion. They're the ones - usually male, mostly conservative, formed by organizations (teams, large companies, the military)- who feel that what they and people like them had to go thru in life is essential to being a decent, responsible, reliable human being. They can be genuinely bitter towards anyone who somehow avoids any of those life rites for whatever reason, be it luck, comfortable circumstances, or conviction.

The history of generations living together is regional, anyway, and always had a lot more to do with stigmatized, urbanized ethnic groups than with the mostly lily-white Middle Americans who created and imposed our work ethic. Out by eighteen, or twenty-two, was an article of faith with them, and so it is for most of us.

Do you really care what the blathering idiots on the internet say? Humbug to that!
Can someone who doesn't know you have any kind of an accurate picture as to who you are and why you do what you do?
Life your life the way you want and apologize to no one (especially family) for it. That is the key to happiness.

 

[Paisley]

…at the mere fact that there so many articles about it that point out it’s unusual. Most of the articles either say our imply it is undesirable. Just the title “Failure to Launch” tells the story. Failure.

The implication is that there is a pattern you should follow – out at 18 or 21 and no return.

In most of the history of humanity, and even today in much of the world, it is considered perfectly normal for to live with one’s parents as a lifelong arrangement.

I’m not sure why I’m defending this post like Rorke’s Drift. I left home at 17.

If we're talking about fully-functioning adults sharing a house and helping each other out, in a situation that's beneficial for everyone involved, I don't see this as a failure. My best friend lives in such a situation. But she's the only one I know.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In most of the history of humanity, and even today in much of the world, it is considered perfectly normal for to live with one’s parents as a lifelong arrangement.

I think a lot of this type of arrangement comes out of an agrarian culture, where generations would work side by side on the farm or the ranch or the family sawmill or what have you -- and in that situation it makes sense to keep the generations together, because it's a self-supporting arrangement. It makes less sense, though, in a culture where you have parents spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for a college degree for their offspring, only to have them hanging around at coffeehouses at age twenty-seven, imagining they'll be in a band someday and wondering why Mom always grumbles about doing their laundry. Stereotype, I know, but I think that's the phenomenon that's being criticized in all those articles nowadays. Any kid of mine tried to pull that, he'd be out holding up a sign saying WILL WORK FOR FOOD so fast his head would spin.

 

[AmateisGal]

I think a lot of this type of arrangement comes out of an agrarian culture, where generations would work side by side on the farm or the ranch or the family sawmill or what have you -- and in that situation it makes sense to keep the generations together, because it's a self-supporting arrangement. It makes less sense, though, in a culture where you have parents spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for a college degree for their offspring, only to have them hanging around at coffeehouses at age twenty-seven, imagining they'll be in a band someday and wondering why Mom always grumbles about doing their laundry. Stereotype, I know, but I think that's the phenomenon that's being criticized in all those articles nowadays. Any kid of mine tried to pull that, he'd be out holding up a sign saying WILL WORK FOR FOOD so fast his head would spin.

This says it perfectly.

 

[Fletch]

Do you really care what the blathering idiots on the internet say? Humbug to that!
Can someone who doesn't know you have any kind of an accurate picture as to who you are and why you do what you do?

In a word - maybe. If I ever am compelled, by conscience or circumstance, to go back and work for the Man, this is who the Man is. This is how he thinks and what he expects of the rest of us. I owe it to myself to remember him, and to stay angry at him.

Life your life the way you want and apologize to no one (especially family) for it. That is the key to happiness.

But the nagging feeling I get from the world we live in is that that should come after you've paid your dues, or else any happiness you find is liable to be fleeting, fragile, and to come at someone else's expense. Karmically or economically.

In my case, I suspect I just haven't head my head slapped off my shoulders often enough by life. The first few times it happened, I began finding ways to cheat and avoid it. It has made me less than I might otherwise be.

 

[bil_maxx]

I have the good fortune to live in Canada which may have the single best "social safety blanket/net" in the world. Many of you have mentioned the lack of personal responsibility you see in people now. Welfare, unemployment insurance and free government programs exacerbate the problem of responsibility. They are supposed to be a temporary safety net, but here in Canada and of-course around the developed world, they are seen as a right by many people.

Please don't misunderstand; I am very proud that Canada has these programs and they were created to help people in need in the short-term. My issue is long-term reliance on them as well as the attitude that people are owed these things and don't have to work for them. In the Golden Era, starvation and doing without were a very big reality. Self-reliance and hard work were more the norm. This seems to have created a culture of hard work and a closer knit society where groups and clubs abounded.

Part of what I miss is those social clubs, whether they were the boy scouts, PTA or mens clubs. People seem to have become more anti-social at all levels. And it is learned very early: I can't tell you how many times I have held the door for someone and either gotten no acknowledgment or been told off for doing it, especially in the case of women with baby strollers. What an example to set for a baby!

The issue of people dressing poorly has been beaten to death here as it should and I will just make one last addition to my long ramblings: when you go to a funeral, this seems to be the one place most men wear a suit. However, weddings, formal social events and even Sunday church feature people in shorts and flipflops. Isn't is sad that only the dead can expect decent and appropriate style?

 

[TrenchGuy]

The biggest think we've lost is the nice way to dress for some special occasions. I don't mean like wedding, people generally dress up pretty good for weddings. But think about church days. I've been at the local church a few times lately and I notice that most people just come there wearing sweatpants, hoodies etc.
I personally dress up in a suit to go to church, but that's pretty rare for me.

 

[scottyrocks]

I can say from my own personal experience over the years that people always (or as close as possible to always without actually being always) dress nicely when in synagogue. Men in suits or sportcoats and slacks, all with ties and real shoes, and women in dresses or blouses and to-the-knee skirts.