Free love and education v free
downloads and a fee-paying education
Fire up the turntable, roll your joint and squeeze
back into your skinny jeans. The start of 21st century Australia is set
for a clash of generations.
The federal treasury’s 2002 Intergenerational Report
famously forecasted massive financial inequities between boomers and
their offspring, sparking talk of a “looming conflict” between the
generations over who would foot the bill of an ageing population.
At the same time, commentators and researchers are
noting with increasing frequency what a social and political oddity (and
disappointment) generation Y is turning out to be.
Last month in the Australian Financial Review, Deirdre
Macken observed that there was a widening “generation gap” between Y-ers
and their elders: “a fundamental quandary that has anyone over the age
of 35 throwing their hands in the air and declaring ‘what the hell do
they want/mean/think they are?’”
X-er Monica Dux wrote recently in The Age: “I have
come to believe that the greatest generational threat is not the
boomers. It's generation Y.”
Unfavourable comparisons between generation Y and
their parents certainly abound. Boomers protested against Vietnam for
ten years, Y-ers protested against Iraq for about ten minutes. Boomers
believed in free love and education; Y-ers believe in free downloads and
a full fee-payers education.
Boomers picked a job, a spouse and a political party
and stuck with it, while Y-ers are afflicted with a mass case of ADHD,
unable to commit to anything for longer than it takes to download a
track to their iPod.
Boomers wanted to have it all and Y-ers want to have
it all right now.
Not surprisingly, the young ones aren’t winning many
fans. In the Sun Herald, ANU politics professor John Warhurst recently
noted, “they are a selfish, a very selfish generation.”
The online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, defines “youth
culture” as: “the ways young people … differentiate themselves from the
general culture of their community.” Add to that a healthy dose of shock
value, á la Elvis and his pelvis, Mick Jagger and his swagger or Boy
George and his eye makeup.
Traditionally, parents love the moral high ground of
tut-tutting that things were soooo much better in the olden days, while
children enjoy the high of piercing, partying and parading about in
something outrageous.
And yet if you look at the interactions between Y-ers
and their parents, and their respective attitudes towards politics and
culture, the generational war we are bracing for would seem more akin to
the Parent Trap - where the separated-at-birth twins squabble stupidly
before realising how similar they are - than Children of the Corn, the
horror flick when small town teens go on a rampage and kill all the
adults.
Generation Y’s pigeon-like attraction to the family
home is widely known. ABS figures indicate that 21 per cent of
20-somethings lived with their parents in 1976, compared to over 30 per
cent today. While economic factors undoubtedly add to the allure of
rent-free accommodation and complimentary hot dinners, a generation
happy to stay at home indefinitely can hardly be equated with a
generation at war with their parental figures.
Indeed, according to findings from the Australian
Institute of Family Studies' Australian Temperament Project, which has
followed 2,500 children since 1983, Y-gen kids are likely to see their
parents as friends, not evil oppressors.
As University of Queensland geography professor Martin
Bell noted recently in the Sunday Mail: "When I was in my 20s everyone
couldn't wait to leave home. But now young people can do at home what I
was never allowed to."
The study also found that the subjects were most
likely to be working or studying, with a strong tendency to act
responsibly (i.e. no funny mushrooms or unsightly piercings) and planned
to get married or settle down (i.e. much like their parents).
Figures also show that generation Y is turning
conservative in the political stakes. Almost 40 per cent of those
between 18 and 34 support the Coalition’s IR changes, according to a
report last month in the Sun Herald. While left-of-centre commentators
are wondering where the radical youths have gone, it’s hardly evidence
of a generation gap if young people are supporting a government that
their parents have already voted into office four times.
And while politics may be heading back to the fifties,
current fashion is awash with sixties and seventies revivals - as we all
get about looking like Mum and Dad in the twin sets, the minis, the
hippy beads, the platforms, the pumps; even dare we say it, the tweed.
If it’s not vintage, then it better look like it is. The current edition
of Vogue features Australia’s top model Gemma Ward in mod makeup and
Jackie O-style trench dress.
At 47 years of age, Madonna is still at the top of the
music charts with her latest album, Confessions On A Dance Floor
complete with her 1970s leotard and ABBA sample, while everyone’s
favourite, Jessica Simpson has been in the top ten for weeks with her
(albeit sacrilegious) cover of Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Were Made For
Walkin.
And at the movies, the most shocking thing out is
Inside Deep Throat, a documentary about the 1970s porn-classic our
parents snuck off to see when they were our age.
Yep, everything old is new again. And again, and
again.
Alternately, boomers are hardly staying away from the
trivial pursuits of youth. Nothing is sacred, not even technology -
stereotypically the domain of the young and the brainless. Internet use
is booming among Australian adults, according to the ABS, increasing
from 31 per cent in 1998 to 52 per cent in 2002.
Every second middle-aged commuter you see on the train
owns an iPod. George Dubya Bush owns an iPod. Hell, even Queen Elizabeth
owns one. And my mum text messages me using abbreviations previously
known only to rappers.
But it doesn’t stop there. Boomers are stuck on high
rotation when it comes to pervading pop culture. Bob Dylan is flogging
his latest CD in Starbucks stores, Germaine Greer made a guest
appearance on Big Brother - not to mention Madonna getting about in
those leotards looking more buff than most girls a quarter of her age.
And while Y is renowned as the “me, me, me”
generation, boomers are certainly giving them a run for their money.
Literally. Recent research by the Australian Housing and Urban Research
Institute found that 25 per cent of boomers expected to spend all their
assets before they die. One wonders what Peter Costello would have to
say about that?
The battle lines in this clash of generations are far
from clear. Not only are we all living with the enemy but we are
dressing and sounding like each other as well. While this could be some
sort of elaborate guerrilla tactic, it is more likely that predictions
of out-and-out conflict between boomers and their children belie an even
scarier generation trap.
Gen Y is more like their parents than either party
would care to admit.
Judith Ireland
7 December 2005
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3930
