The Wanted Generation: Thank Feminism For Millennials’ Cooperative, Liberal Spirit

[OneGrassRoot]

I'm conflicted; I see some truth in this piece but question other aspects based on my personal experience and observations. I have a 20-year-old daughter, and I interact on reddit, so I do engage with this age group. I'm concerned about this streak of Ayn Rand libertarianism in young men, especially, but I don't see the young women counteracting that enough to make me feel better. I know it's not good to label and make generalizations and I am not labeling all Millennials as libertarians. There are so many wonderful, inspiring things about the Millennials.

Your thoughts?


The Wanted Generation

Will millennials be the generation that breaks the cycle of intergenerational warfare? This generation, whose oldest members are reaching the first years of their thirties and whose youngest members are still teens, has been examined and dissected thoroughly, and a picture of their “character” has come out. Conclusion: The kids are alright. As a group, millennials are more optimistic, kinder, team-oriented, more confident, and more responsible than their forebears. Even Joel Stein’s cover story for Time last week, which was supposed to paint a negative picture of millennials, ended up making them look pretty good, concluding that they’re “earnest and optimistic” and even “financially responsible.”

So why are millennials doing so well as people, even if the crappy economy is making it hard for them to get a good start in life? There are a lot of theories floating out there: That they benefit from the relative wealth of the technocratic society they grew up in, or that they grew up in a “trophy for every kid” environment that made them all feel special. But what these theories overlook is one of the biggest changes between millennials and the generations before. Their mothers are the first women to fully embrace the implications of the feminist revolution. When the millennials were born, the battles over reproductive rights, women in the workplace, and no-fault divorce had been won by feminists, and the kids that grew up in this feminist-friendly environment have reaped the rewards.

Everyone agrees that feminism radically altered women’s relationship to motherhood in the U.S. Access to contraception and abortion made it easier for women to delay marriage and motherhood until they were older, had more education, and were more ensconced in their careers. In 1970, the average age a woman had her first child was 21. It had crept up to nearly 23 by 1982, which is commonly understood as the first year that millennials were being born, and by the year 2000, the last birth year for this generation, it had gone all the way up to 25. As the average age of first mothers crept up, the fertility rate went down, as well. The result: women have fewer children at older ages.

Feminism, by encouraging women to delay marriage and motherhood until a little later in life, also ushered in the decline in the divorce rate. While Generation X was basically known as the “divorced kids” generation, millennials grew up in the 90s and 2000s, when the divorce rate was plummeting. Despite all the hand-wringing from the right about feminism’s supposedly negative impact on the family, the evidence suggests instead that liberalism and feminism actually inspire more, not less, family stability.


FULL ARTICLE: http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/2013/05/22/thank-feminism-for-millennials-cooperative-liberal-spirit.html

[BlueToTheBone]

1. Herman Hesse ruined the generation I grew up in

By stating that women were either mothers or whores...no other color to their character. Ayn Rand states men can be selfish and that is good.

[marmar]

2. k/r