Good for the kids. Despite all the garbage they are exposed to every single day in the popular culture:
Young Americans have a reverence for national institutions, traditions and family values, a U.S. survey indicates.
A survey of so-called "millennials" -- those between 21 and 29 -- revealed the group overwhelmingly said they support monogamy, marriage, the U.S. Constitution and the military, The Washington Times reported Sunday.
"We were completely surprised. There has been a faulty portrayal of millennials by the media -- television, films, news, blogs, everything. These people are not the self-entitled, coddled slackers they're made out to be. Misnomers and myths about them are all over the place," said Ann Mack, who directed the survey and is the official "director of trend-spotting" at J. Walter Thompson, the nation's largest advertising agency.
Shame on the "trend spotters" who have so misjudged the generation, and shame on all of us who paint the millenials with too broad a brush. We didn't like it when it was done to us as punk kids, and we wouldn't like it any better today. There are generalizations that can be made about this generation -- as there are about any generation -- and it is fair to talk about them and what their cause might be. But we need to be more careful in noting that they are generalizations, to which there are usually many exceptions.
Comments
Every generation is reviled as a bunch of degenerate, ungrateful slackers that aren't worthy of worshiping the ground their parents walked on. Every generation then turns out to be more or less o.k. . . even if they do spawn another generation of degenerate, ungrateful slackers.
Even my own Generation X was subjected to this kind of treatment until we made the Internet AWESOME. You're welcome.
The survey (it's actually by J. Walter Thompson, not Washington Times) says 94% revere marriage and parenthood.
Well, at least, that's what they SAY. Of the 1250 interviewed in January, only 25% lived with a spouse and child or children. Another 27% live with a partner or "roommate" and 15% live alone.
Any survey that declines to announce their methodology is to be mistrusted, and even many who do. If I think it's a "push poll", it's also because J Walter Thompson obviously DOES have something to sell.
Actually, I think the kids ARE all right, but I thought that before.
When I did genealogical research, I found that in the 18th and 19th centuries, many women married at 14, 13, 12, even 11.
We tend to think that premarital sex started in the 1960s with the pill, but there were rubbers for sale before that, in the restrooms of most truck stops, diners, and bars.
Or maybe we think it started with the widespread availability of the car in the 1920s, but before that, there were haystacks and bundling boards.
If our grandkids don't worship the ground their parents walk on, it's probably justified. We, as boomers, did a crappy job of raising them. {grinning, ducking, and running....}
...And we won't even get into how we boomers are raising our CATS (will we, Leo?)
;)
B.G.