As a 39-year-old member of Generation X: The Silent Generation, here is my theory as to Generation "Why's" being soft and feeling of entitled…
My grandpa's generation was typically full of hard-working, morally-minded, no-nonsense types who knew how to conserve and appreciate what they had.
This gave way to: Baby Boomers: Mom's generation, out the of the bosom of the security of their parent's care, who tried to break free and revolutionize the stodgy, pious approach of their parents and named this self-made prison "liberation".
This gave way to: Generation X. We were raised mostly by ex-hippies with a wishy-washy approach to morals and responsibility. We were confused a lot as we watched our parents, who were somewhat trapped in adolescence themselves, fumble around and try to raise us in gray areas and with obscure direction. This made us bitter and angry as they set us loose in a very unsure world with little direction from them.
This gave way to: Generation Why. They were raised by us Generation X'rs. We tried to overcompensate for the shitty world we brought them into. We learned it was a shitty world from our parent's lack of real parenting. We mortgaged our future and the future of our children by running up massive credit debt, buying them the things they wanted in order to give them a more "happy" existence than our ex-druggie, morally-corrupt parents gave to us. Instead of making their world more "happy", we produced a bunch of people with a sense of entitlement that doesn't really exist.
We Generation X'rs were bitter, but by misguidedly trying to create a better experience for our children then we had, we have made people who are probably going to end up more bitter and twisted than we were/are. That's my theory. Good times.
Thank you,
Stacie
