Dr. Ann-Marie Creaven from the Deptartment of Psychology at UL, and Dr. Harry Barry, GP and Mental Health specialist, discuss the benefits and the harms of generational labels like boomer and Gen Z. Listen back above.
Is it time to dump labels like 'boomer' and 'Gen Z', or do they serve a useful purpose? GP and mental health specialist Dr Harry Barry (Boomer: confident, ambitious, strong work ethic) and associate professor of psychology at the University of Limerick Dr Anne-Marie Creaven, (Millennial: inclusive, optimistic, socially aware) joined Claire Byrne (Gen X: resourceful, independent, pragmatic) to thrash out the benefits and potential harms of generational labels.
The first time Dr Ann-Marie Creaven was referred to as a ‘millennial’ was on a previous appearance on Today with Claire Byrne and she says she didn’t like it.
Millennials are so-called because the oldest of them came of age in the year 2000. The parameters can vary slightly, but basically a millennial is anyone born between 1981 and 1996. Anne-Marie says she had to ask herself why the label made her feel so uncomfortable if it was just a statement of fact:
"Why don’t I like this? It’s just a factual description of a window of time which captures a time where I was born, so what’s so wrong about it?"
Dr Creaven says the generational tags are shortcuts to describe the social status, work ethic or tech literacy of a given age cohort. In the case of millennials, she says the characteristics always seemed to lean on the negative side:
"At the time of this comment about me being in that generation, a lot of the discourse was ‘Well, why can’t they afford a house? If they just spent their money a little more wisely, they’d be fine.’ Even though the cost of housing was entirely disproportionate to the average income for my generation."
While it’s true that millennials grew up in smaller families, and often got more attention and more positive reinforcement from their parents and had greater access to technology than previous generations; economic factors have not always worked in their favour.
Other stresses come into play too, Anne-Marie says, like the climate crisis, anxiety about human rights, identity and awareness of personal safety.
Dr Creven thinks we have to look at the social and economic systems people are born into and not place the blame on those trying to navigate them as best they can. She says that whatever world millennials, Gen Z (age 12-27) and Gen Alpha (age 1- 11) have been born into has been created by previous generations like boomers and Gen X-ers.
The circumstances they inherit can make some of their life choices trickier than they were for previous generations:
"What’s harmful, I suppose, when people use these descriptions is, when they don’t look at the wider context someone’s growing up in; right? Because in that time, other things changed."
So are the labels just a lazy way for generations to judge each other? Self-described "proud boomer" Dr Harry Barry says he likes the labels, as long as we understand they are describing a group and don’t apply to every individual member of that generation:
"I think they are useful, because they give us group characteristics of a group of people who grew up in a certain period of time. I think it’s really important that they are not individual characteristics."
We shouldn’t get bogged down by negative stereotypes associated with a given age cohort, Dr Barry says. Being a boomer, he has a positive outlook and he thinks millennials have some great qualities:
"They’re well educated. They’re more concerned about global events. They like a good work-life balance. They’re good technology-wise. I think they are hard-working, I think they are more adaptable, I think they’re well worth working with in a group."
On the negative side, Harry says millenials can be a bit out of touch with reality, he says and they tend to be unduly optimistic, and not very pragmatic at times:
"I think sometimes they are not realistic about where they should be going with the levels of talents or the salaries that they should be getting and I think, paradoxically, they expect too much. One of the biggest labels that is put on millennials is the term ‘entitlement’."
Anne-Marie pushes back with a robust defense of her generation. Being a millennial, she does with great empathy and drawing on the data. She says the unrealistic expectations described by Harry are really a survival mechanism in the face of a scary housing market:
"That cohort, well, we have to expect that actually, because we can’t afford a roof over our heads otherwise, right? So you have to be optimistic about the future and you have to expect more and look for more, because the relative cost of housing - which is what people are after aged 28 to 43 - the relative cost of housing has gone so ridiculous."
How you view the world depends partly on how long you have left to live, Dr Creaven points out. The stakes are higher for people who will still be alive at a time when the current fears about the climate will play out in real time.
She says about her generation: "They are also growing up in a time where they are more aware of the climate crisis, for example. I mean, that has to have a bearing on people’s mental health. It will have a lot less of a bearing when you’re not going to outlive the most significant issues, but for the younger generation, they’re very mindful of this and frustrated about it."
Dr Barry and Dr Creaven break down the characteristics of Gen Z and more in the full interview, listen back above.
More interviews and analysis from Today with Claire Byrne here
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