How Millennials Feel About Being Called Spoiled & Entitled
I’m moving to a big city. I’m quitting my job to start a blog. Or a business. Or to go to a code bootcamp. I want a job that lets me be at home with my kids. I’m quitting my job because I hate it and it sucks.
Does this sound like entitlement to you? Because to me, it’s all things myself and a few other successful millennials I know have recently said and then done. So, if my generation gets labeled as the ‘Me Me Me Generation’, isn’t it fitting that I share with you how I feel now? Aw, c’mon…pleaseeeee? Being a millennial doesn’t give me any additional cred to write about why I think millennials are not spoiled and entitled. But I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to do it because I believe it to be true. And I know a lot of educated, successful and well-adjusted (not to mention hard-working) millennial who feel the same way about being called spoiled and entitled:
We know it has happened before
Looking into each generation’s public persona turns up that this isn’t the first generation to be called these things. Journalist Tom Wolfe was published in New York Magazine in 1976 calling the ’70s the ‘Me Decade’ based off the youth’s of time and their personas. Our older siblings and Gen X parents were proud to be dubbed slackers. Our Baby Boomer and Gen X parents were perceived in the same way at the time as millennials are perceived now. Our generation isn’t alone in being portrayed as spoiled and entitled.
It’s all perspective
What we’re doing may be considered entitled or lazy, but for us it’s about ‘chasing our dreams’ like our parent generations have built us up to do their entire lives, bouncing back from their childhood of being told dignity is only found in working til your hands bleed.
We are a force to be reckoned with
OK, I could see how offensive you may think that is if you truly do find that millennials are spoiled and entitled. But the reality of it is, even if other people think we are lazy, millennials have got companies’ attention. A few months before I left my desk job in the summer of 2015, I watched as managers streamed in and out of a Managing Millennials training. Whatever nasty word you want to stick to millennials, you’ll have to label us all that way because a large portion of our generations is in-sync mentally and emotionally, in a way that the modern workplace finds incredibly threatening. We are a huge generation population wise, and we have power in numbers with out agreement that we’re owed more for our lives than our struggling, sometimes single parents were given, and we want that lifestyle by means of a healthy and flexible career.
A lot of baby boomers and gen x’ers love us
If you’re really pissed about millennials being spoiled and lazy, you’ll have to speak to our parents first. (sorry, we’re too busy skateboarding and writing our novels from their basements). But seriously, most of the millennials I know who flew the white surrendering-to-corporate-life flag to go chase their dreams have parents that are not only proud of them, they encourage us to do so. When people who are not millennials call millennials spoiled and entitled around other people who are not millennials, its a passive aggressive poke at the others for ‘spoiling’ their kids. Not to get too Seinfield-y on you, but what’s the deal with our parents’ generation making one another feel guilty about who’s kids are or aren’t spoiled?
We don’t let it bother us
I haven’t met anyone in my generation that consciously thinks about how millennials feel about being labeled spoiled and entitled unless I bring it up in conversational sense. They aren’t out there fighting to clear our generation’s name. Millennials have a non-chalant attitude toward the negative stigmas of our work-ethic, which can be perceived as lazy. However, to millennials, ignoring labels they believe to be untrue and working on their ‘passions’ instead feels to them as a much more efficient use of their time.
We know we’re actually incredibly kind
I believe that myself and some of the wonderful millennials I know pride themselves on being serving and charitable, because our parents taught us to do so. And I am not blaming Gen X and the Baby Boomers, I’m thanking them. My mother told me to volunteer when I was in college, and I did. I found I love volunteering. And….a study found that millennials are currently the most charitable generation. And although I feel like this was a bit of an unfair study maybe all generations are the most charitable in their 20s… I remembered that balances back out a bit when I read that millennials live with their parents way longer than their parents did because we make less money than they did because of the recession that began in 2007. So the argument that millennials have more to give than other generation and that’s what makes them more charitable, isn’t valid. There are other variables perhaps too, like it’s easy for us to donate since work implements volunteer programs or new technology makes donation easier. But, it doesn’t change the fact that we are a kind group.
We’re proud of you
When Gen X was asked how they’d feel if their mother’s cake recipe ended up on a public forum, and most of them said embarrassed.
When Millennials were asked how they’d feel, most of them said proud.
Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Aunt, Older Siblings and all the rest of Gen X and the Baby Boomers:
We are so proud of you. We are so grateful for you and all the abundance you have provided us. We know your childhood was in an era of an attitude and necessity for strict financial ration. But we also want you to feel proud of us, and that’s why we really really do want to be successful, even if the path there may look like laziness or entitlement. Because we know that for you, our happiness is the most important thing…remember how you taught us that? This twistedly awesome psychology of my generation’s relationships with our parents is the reason so many of us want to be successful in a career that also makes us happy.
That’s how millennials feel about being called spoiled and entitled.
How Millennials Feel About Being Called Spoiled & Entitled
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Hey Lisa, I appreciate your points on this topic. Who wants to be typecasted into a box? Thanks for sharing your views.
Dorene recently posted…Video: What To See on a Day Trip to the Remarkable Tayrona National Park
Thanks Dorene! 🙂