Talk about a bum rap.
Millennials are “lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents,” according to a Time magazine article published in 2013 to much fanfare.
According to Demography guru Neil Howe, this is an overgeneralization.
A recent study by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) finds that Millennial women are worse off than prior generations. The report concludes that measures of well-being for women between the ages 16 and 34 “rose significantly” for Baby Boomers, “but hit a wall for women in subsequent generations,” particularly Millennial women.
The report shows that the Millennial generation have contributed to women’s high poverty rates, a declining share of women in high-wage/high-tech jobs, a dramatic rise in women’s incarceration rates, and increases in maternal mortality and women’s suicide.
“There have been a lot of studies showing that the Millennial generation is under a great deal of stress,” says Howe, who dissects the report in the video above. “This is a generation raised to be special, their parents told them they could ‘Be all they want to be.’ And X’ers blame them for being a tea cup generation, they just shatter under stress. But this is because they have such high expectations and not a lot of experience dealing with set-backs.”
The real issue, Howe says, is that Millennial women have high-powered careers, but are still expected to fulfill traditional expectations of motherhood. “The sign of success will be when Millennial women are free to choose exactly which life goals to pursue without guilt,” Howe says.
Watch Howe’s 3-minute video above. For more, check out Howe’s detailed analysis of the problems facing the Millennial generation in the video below.
