The Vancouver Sun (Canada) reports this morning on new work from University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby about The Emerging Millenials. The Sun suggests, “The kids are all right. Better than all right — in fact, they just keep getting more and more virtuous in their behavior and optimistic in their expectations. Maybe too optimistic. When teens see their futures, they see large, happy families, stable marriages and the jobs they want — not just merely ‘good jobs’ — according to a major survey of 4,500 teens.”
In a forthcoming book based on the survey, called The Emerging Millennials, University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby notes that today’s teens expect a very bright future — 95 per cent say they will get to where they want to be in life. They expect things will just keep on getting better, said Bibby, who has tracked adolescent trends since 1984.
“In large part, it’s because they are showing signs of having learned much from us about the good things they want to pursue and the not-so-good things they don’t want to repeat.”
Overall, teens reported to being very close to their parents, with almost eight in 10 teens saying they received a high level of enjoyment from their mothers and more than seven in 10 saying the same about their fathers (although a quarter are concerned their parents are too busy.) Teens are rewarding their vigilant parents with good behavior, said Bibby. They are less likely to smoke, drink or take drugs than they were eight years ago. And 56 per cent of teens have never had sex, up from 51 per cent in 2000.
“Given the resources we’ve been directing toward teens, I think we should be shocked if things have not been improving over time,” he notes. “I’d like to think after all these decades and the money we’ve been spending that some of the message finally is taking.”
But it’s not all good news…
Sometimes their expectations don’t match up with reality, and Bibby says their expectations “seem to be nothing short of naive in thinking that little is needed by way of job adjustments in order to make optimum family life possible.”
For example, though about 70 per cent thought good benefits were “very important” in a job, only half thought flexible hours were important.
And Bibby was disappointed to find that only about half of the girls and slightly less of the boys identified a “good job” as one that would let them take family responsibilities into account, well below the work being interesting or the job itself paying well.
Bibby suggests ‘millennials’ need to have a chat with their Baby Boomer parents about having it all.
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