Generational Difficulties

How Generational Identity Groups learn (or do not learn) from their decisions and their consequences and a little bit of why.

I’m not typically a big fan of thinking about people in groups: Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and so on, although it is a common talking point among people. So much so, that you can easily find a number of surveys about each of those generational groups, and especially about one of those generational groups evaluating another.

For my day job, as the Chief Operations Officer for The CiRCE Institute, I subscribe to several business-related email newsletters; one of those, The Hustle, sent out their daily email today, and it included a reference to a recent survey about Generation Z. In the survey, 800 employers were surveyed about job interviews. The employers were answering a question about recent college graduates (so, Generation Z folks) who had come to the employer for a job interview. In the survey, the employers indicated that 20% of those who arrived for a job interview brought a parent with them!

This, of course, is something that will easily make the Boomers, Gen Xers, and maybe the Millennials immediately uneasy. Why do so many of these children, born between 1980 and 1996-7, feel not only the need to bring a parent to a job interview, but also feel like it is appropriate to bring a parent along?

The more pressing question, however, should be about the parents. Why do so many Gen Xers feel like it is both appropriate and necessary to accompany their children to a job interview? I’ve not heard this term before, but a friend told me that he heard it said recently that we have gone from helicopter moms to lawnmower moms. The helicopter mom hovers over her child and micromanages everything the child does or that happens to the child. The lawnmower mom, however, carves a path for her child, making it as easy as possible for the child to travel that path with ease, comfort, and success.

When it comes to how we learn, one of the things we seem to be afraid of in ways our ancestors weren’t, is letting our children or students fail and experience the consequences of those failures. Think about the Garden of Eden or the parable of the Prodigal Son. In the Garden, God knows what will happen if Adam and Eve are tempted by the serpent; He even knows the consequences (and how far-reaching they are!) of that temptation. Yet, He still allows them (and us) to fail and live with those consequences. He neither micromanages them like a helicopter mom, or overly protects them like the lawnmower mom. He gives them the instructions they need, He gives them the opportunity, then He gives them feedback and the consequences. The Prodigal Father does the same thing for the Prodigal Son.

The longer we or our children or our students get to live life without suffering the consequences of our decisions and actions, the longer we will go without learning that they have them. And when the time comes that we do have to pay them, because mom and dad are no longer around to protect us from them, the price will be a whole lot higher than it is now.