{"id":719,"date":"2008-04-01T13:39:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-01T17:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=719"},"modified":"2008-04-01T13:39:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-01T17:39:00","slug":"say-wha-young-people-cant-choose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2008\/04\/01\/say-wha-young-people-cant-choose\/","title":{"rendered":"Say Wha? Young People Can’t Choose?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>An often savvy reporter, Sharon Jayson, had an interesting piece in USA Today last week (March 25), which comes to my attention today courtesy of CCF<\/a>. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Boomers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Hope: That the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dckids\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 are all right”<\/a>, Jayson documents that a growing number of baby boomer parents are worried that their young adult children are lacking direction and motivation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and they may just stay that way. From the CCF summary:
<\/p>\n

These young adults aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t slackers; they often have jobs to pay the rent and are seemingly on their own. But these parents worry that the close relationships they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve cultivated with their children may have stifled their self-sufficiency. Others think young people may be caught in a vicious cycle, created by economics and fueled by parents. Having options is something young people expect, according to Richard Sweeney of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, who conducts young adult focus groups for colleges and corporations. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The bigger the choice, the more likely they are to postpone,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to make a bad choice.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Having too many options \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153anything is possible\u00e2\u20ac\u009d mantra boomers inculcated in their children \u00e2\u20ac\u201c may have backfired for some young adults, agreed Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College and author of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Paradox of Choice.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think this is a major problem \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this inability of people to pull the trigger because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re worried there might be something better around the corner.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span>I totally hear this from the late-twenties and thirty-something folks I’m interviewing for my next book. But I have to question these assumptions a bit. I’m the kid of Boomers and was massively indecisive in college, but grew out of it in my early twenties, only to hit a bout of indecision mid-grad school (to the tune of “should I stay or should I go”) in my late twenties. My thirties have been filled with growing certainty. I think decisiveness comes with age.<\/p>\n

But regardless, what’s the alternative? I think about this as I begin to shift from thinking of myself as the daughter to myself as the parent. How do next-generation parents instill the dream of anything-is-possible with the reality that one must choose?<\/p>\n

It all reminds me of this image I once read in a Sylvia Plath novel–that of a young girl sitting under a tree full of ripe fruit, starving. Which all, of course, comes back to a certain book we all know now called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.<\/a> (Just had to throw that in…)<\/p>\n

Image cred<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An often savvy reporter, Sharon Jayson, had an interesting piece in USA Today last week (March 25), which comes to my attention today courtesy of CCF. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Boomers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Hope: That the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dckids\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 are all right”, Jayson documents that a growing number of baby boomer parents are worried that their young adult children are lacking direction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}