Millennials like me turned 40 this year. Everything you think you know about us is wrong CNN (2023)

CNN—

Over the years, I've believed a lot of what I've heard about millennials - theyeating avocado toast, latte-sipping, selfie-taking narcissists who still live in their parents' basements and can't get along.

Then I realized something that surprised me: I am a millennial, as are many people I know and love.

For a long time I believed that my friends and classmates were older and wiser than this much maligned group. But when I started reporting on demographics for CNN, I learned that 1981 is the birth year that many researchers cite asthe beginning of the millennial generation.

I was born in 1982. I turned 40 this year. Just like millions of other millennials in the United States.

That's right: a generation that has long been portrayed as young and naive is entering middle age.

This is an important turning point and a good opportunity to point out something important: the Millennial myth is very different from the reality in which many of us live.

Myth #1: We think only of ourselves

In May, my husband was out of town on a trip and I was raising our young daughter alone for the first time. I can do it, I thought, trying to calm myself down. - It won't be that difficult. One night my daughter's first two teeth started coming out of her gums. After watching her roll over in the crib with the baby screen for what was probably only a few minutes but felt like forever, I ended up holding her for the rest of the night to comfort her.

In the scheme of difficult things new parents can go through, it was nothing serious. But I was exhausted. And she too.

When the sun came up, we sat together on the floor of her room, bleary-eyed. Her pajamas were covered in cherry-flavored baby Tylenol, which she spat out when I tried to give her the night before. But we played for a few minutes that morning and he smiled and it felt like we had run a marathon and could finally relax.

Then my phone rang with devastating, unexpected news.

My mother died this morning.

I was shaken, my head was spinning and I cried. I looked at my daughter who was playing next to me. There were so many questions I wish I could ask my mother about how to take care of her. Instead of calling my mom that day for advice, I went to Michigan to help plan her funeral.

Suddenly, the same year I became a mother became the year I lost my mother.

My fortieth birthday is in less than two months.

The millennials have arrivedon the cover of TIME magazinealmost ten years ago under the title "ME, ME, ME, ME GENERATION", perpetuating the image of self-obsession.

This time, the 2013 cover reinforced stereotypes of millennials as powerful and self-absorbed.

But for me and many others, what it really means to be a millennial these days is something else entirely. We are the youngestthe sandwich generationwe feel an increasing pressure between raising small children and taking care of older family members - or at least we want to take care of them, considering that they have done to take care of us, but they don't know what to do.

Millennials like me are too busy juggling projects and taking care of others at home to be as self-obsessed as we've been shown all these years.

Like every generation before us, we grow up. But the Millennium myth was long lost.

Newspaper headlines have been writing about this, for example, for yearsMillennials don't have kids. But the reality is more complicated, says Kim Parker, director of social trends research at the Pew Research Center.

"Womenlater they have children. But when we look at full fertility, we didn't see that they necessarily had fewer children, they just started later," says Parker. "That means a delay, not necessarilya completely different way of approaching family life".

Jason Dorsey, who has written several books about millennials and made a career out of helping corporate America better understand them, says memes about selfish millennials simply don't match reality.

"Older millennials tell us they're pulling in three different directions," says Dorsey, president of the Center for Generational Dynamics. "They often look after a child or children. They often take care of a parent or parents. And they try to manage their tasks. So it's an attraction, there's a lot going on and it's a very stressful time.

My husband captured this moment on my 40th birthday this year when I was feeding my daughter while we watched the 4th of July fireworks. Her care has changed the way I see my life.

Dorsey says previous generations have also entered this stage of life. But this time one thing is different.

"It's a new thing to work in your 40s," she says, "when so many people have very young children."

Many middle-aged millennials like myself feel this pressure even in our happiest moments. And Dorsey says a lot of research is still needed on how this shift is changing our society.

How will it affect the kind of parents we become, the way we approach work or the choices we make in other areas of life?

Myth 2: We all have the same experiences

It should come as no surprise that for years I didn't realize I was one of themover 72 million millennials in the United States.

Some experts claim that analyzing our society using generational markers is almost as reliable and scientific as using horoscopes.

They argue that many more factors can shape a person's life than the year of birth - such as race and socioeconomic status. And when you highlight and analyze an entire group of people without going into those details, important nuances about social change end up being lost.

"Drawing arbitrary lines between birth years and naming names doesn't help," Philip N. Cohen wrote last year inWashington Post opinion. A sociology professor at the University of Maryland is leading a group of scholars urging the Pew Research Center and others to stop promoting generational labels altogether.

Avocado toast has become an increasingly popular restaurant proposition and a symbol of millennial culture.

I see their point.

Some of my younger millennial friends in their 20s would look at me wide-eyed as I talked about the videos I watched growing up or what it was like to hear that beautiful noise that interrupted a home computer or a computer connected to the internet via modem. The most important events that shaped our world happened at very different times in our lives. I was in college on 9/11. he was in elementary school. I was in college and looking for work during the Great Depression. they still lived with their parents.

Some argue that the gap between us is so wide that older millennials like me should create our own category (sometimes paired with younger Gen Xers). Our so-called microgeneration is called the so-calledX-year,Oregon Trail Generationand - recently and controversially -Geriatric Millennials.

"It's important not to label people over 20 as the same," says Erica Dhawan, a researcher, author and consultant who coined the term "Geriatric Millennial" in an article for Medium last year. Like me, she says she never felt the Millennium label suited her.

To make matters even more confusing, there is no concrete definition of when the millennial generation begins and ends. TheA book from 1991 is credited with introducing the termAmerican Millennials Born in 1982 Broad Reportdefinitions on the Pew Research Center websitedescribe millennials as those born between 1981 and 1996. Other researchers have theorized that millennials were born in the late 1970s or even the early 2000s.

The way we talk about groups of people born in a certain time period - and the names we use to describe them -it can change over time. "Generation Y" was a more common way to refer to our generation before "millennials" gained momentum.

No matter what name or definition you use, there is a very large age gap between the older and younger members of our generation and the wide range of life experiences we've all had.

Is there value in seeing things this way?

"It's a useful lens, but it's not the only one," says Parker of the Pew Research Center, "and it's important to consider all the other factors that cause these differences, not just being part of a generation."

Now that I know I'm a millennial, I'm not ready to let go of the label just yet. But I want to help clear things up and dispel some persistent stereotypes about our generation (full disclosure: I love avocado toast).

Myth 3: We don't want our own homes

This question haunts my husband and I - it comes up in conversations with friends, loved ones and even strangers.

"Thinking about buying a house?"

Over the years, this milestone has meant little to any of us. We stayed at home, rented, and focused our energy and finances on doing the things we enjoy together in our free time.

But now that we have a daughter, buying a house seems like something we should do already. It also seems to be something that is increasingly out of reach as housing costs remain high and mortgage rates rise.

A real estate sign outside a home in Morgan Hill, Calif., on Oct. 4, 2022. U.S. home prices have skyrocketed during the pandemic, making it harder for millennials to buy homes.

According to Kevin Mahoney, a Washington, D.C.-based financial advisor who specializes in helping millennials, we're not the only ones who feel like we're putting off taking that big step.

"People are really stressed about not owning a home," he says. “One of the things I try to tell them is that it's okay to rent. You buy flexibility. You're buying time to figure out how you want your next 20 or 10 years to be.

Despite the common platitudes about millennials not buying homes, Mahoney also points out that there are a lot of them. He says that one of the reasons for the housing crisis in America is thismore and more millennials are now entering the real estate market.

Older millennials aged 32 to 41 made up a quarter of home buyers this year;according to a report by the National Association of Realtors, with millennials making up the largest percentage of home buyers since 2014.

But as CNN reports, many millennialsthey are worse than their parents.

And millennials arethey are less likely to own homes at this stage of their livesfrom previous generations. There's a good reason for that, says Gray Kimbrough, an economist and assistant professor at American University who has taken to Twitter several times to debunk myths about millennials.

In 2018, Hasbro released a cheeky Millennial version of its classic board game Monopoly. Game tokens included emoticons and a hashtag.

"It's harder to buy a house if you don't already own one," he says, "which makes it very difficult to buy a house if you're in your 20s or 30s and have been renting for years."

Not to mention what millennials struggle witha much darker economic picturefrom older generations, says Kimbrough.

"It's really hard to think about getting married, having kids, moving in with roommates and any changes in the real estate market the way it is," Kimbrough says.

My husband and I try not to let this overwhelming reality weigh us down.

We attend open houses most weekends and plan to meet with mortgage brokers soon.

We hope to be staying in our own house by this time next year.

Myth #4: We don't take our jobs seriously and don't stay long

Jason Dorsey tells me he often asks a question when he's invited to visit companies and talk to their employees: "How many of you are millennials?"

Mostly, he says, only a few timidly raise their hand.

"They expect it to be negative because unfortunately that's how we've been set up for the last 15 years," Dorsey says.

Around that time, Dorsey says he saw a growing anti-millennial hype. In 2007, he appeared on the ominously titled "60 Minutes" episode.Millennials are coming".

Journalist Morley Safer didn't ask for the article's preface: "A new breed of American worker is about to attack everything you hold sacred: from warrants to the starched white shirt and tie."

He further warned that "the workplace has become a psychological battlefield, and millennials have the advantage," describing a generation that can "multitask, talk, walk, listen, type and type."

"They talked about us like we were aliens," Dorsey recalled.

This "60 Minutes" segment from 2007 described millennials as "a new breed of American worker (who) will attack everything you hold dear."

I missed that segment when it came out. I was a newspaper reporter at the time, probably trying to cover breaking news during the weekend night shift that started my much longer 40 hour work week.

I think even then I would have found the premise problematic, but now, in retrospect, the "60 Minutes" story seems almost cartoonish — another chapter in a story as old as time. "Anxious older generation worries, naïve younger generation destroys everything" might be an equally appropriate title.

Consultant and author Lindsey Pollak, who advises companies on how to navigate multigenerational workplaces, believes the rise of social media is partly to blame for millennials' longstanding bad reputation. Pollak says that our generation grew up under a microscope like no generation before us.

"The whole criticism of millennials — we've said that about every generation, but it's only been amplified by the internet and social media," he told me.

Dorsey says his presentations often include details about millennials that surprise many in the audience.

"It turned out to be the company's largest generation of employees," he says.

He reveals that many employees believed the stereotype and assumed that millennials were lazy or mischievous. But in reality, he says, millennials are often among the company's most successful employees and managers. And at the end of his presentation, everyone raises their hands.

Kimbrough tells me that millennials work just as hard as previous generations.

Young professionals walk the streets of Manhattan, March 31, 2022, New York.

"Of course, people who are earlier in their careers are more likely to change jobs than those who are later in their careers," he says. “Millennials were not particularly likely to change jobs earlier in their careers. Really,they change jobs less often. Since about 2000, there has been a big drop in the number of people changing jobs.

It's been over 12 years since I changed jobs. And I hope to stay at it for many years to come.

Like me, many of my friends have been working for their employers for over a decade. Others would have stayed but became victims of company restructuring.

Repeated reliving of financial crises is also an important part of the millennial story.

"A lot of times millennials tell me they finally feel like they're on the right track," says Dorsey, "and then something happens that's beyond their control."

Myth 5: We are forever young

I remember when my dad turned 40. The very thought seemed ANCIENT to me. Colleagues pasted his picture on black crepe paper and hung it around the office. I was 9 and I gave him an outline poem I wrote about how he shouldn't feel bad about getting older.

"The gears in your head are still turning," I wrote, "and your brain is still working, as far as I know."

So yeah, the idea of ​​being like 40 now is something I'm still trying to figure out. Most days I still see myself as a young adult finding my way in this crazy, confusing world.

But as I commiserate with my husband about our ever-growing list of strange ailments, how we don't like going to loud restaurants anymore, and how it used to be, I realize that I'm not quite old, but I'm definitely more middle-aged than I'd like to be.admittedly.

(Video) Why Millennials Are Leaving Six-Figure Tech Jobs

Yes, the youngest millennials are around 20 years old. But the older ones are approaching middle age.

However, when I first read last year that the oldest millennials were turning 40, this detail caught my eye. The idea seemed very strange. We've seen the same picture of millennials painted over and over for so long.

"People talk about millennials as if it's a catchy phrase for young people...which it's not," says Pollak.

Sometimes when I look at my daughter, that thought really sharpens as I feel my age rushing towards me like a ton of bricks.

She is much younger than me at this point in my parents' lives. In other words, I am already much older than my parents were when they raised me. I was almost 39 years old when my daughter was born. My husband just turned 41. By the time he finishes high school and goes to college, we'll both be almost 60, 80 years old when we become grandparents.

Thinking about things like this fills me with anxiety and a hint of sadness.

The author Amil Niazi, who turned 40 this year and has two young children, describes it perfectly - saying that she does this kind of math all the time and "gets stuck on the numbers".

"Now that I have these little, sweet, loving children, all I want is more time with them to focus not on their growth and change, but on me and the version of myself as a parent that I am now."she wrote in a recent article for The Cutwhere it is investigatedhow difficult and confusing it is to be middle-aged. "To stave off the back and knee pain that gets a little worse every year, to stave off the gray hair and high cholesterol, to stave off the inevitable medical scares and exhaustion that seem to overwhelm more and more of my days."

As I struggle to come to terms with 40 and the lofty thoughts of being an old millennial, my daughter brings me down to earth by pointing to the woman on the cover of Look Great Over 50 and yelling, "Mommy!"

Niazi, like me and many other middle-aged millennials, understood what it means to not be young anymore.

“All my life... the history of civilization has always been about our youth. And it was always for us as that new, disruptive generation that was very broken, that stopped growth, that emphasized family life, retirement, housing, employment," Niazi told me. "We grew up seeing ourselves as such, as young Skorojevics, as destroyers, as people around whom culture is shaped, especially youth culture. Of course we will get sick from middle age."

Recently, my daughter and I stopped by the bookstore to buy some gifts.

She is almost 18 months old and already walking, and as soon as I put her down she went to the magazine section, where there was so much to discover at eye level.

"Mom!" she exclaimed, gleefully showing the cover of the magazine and pulling it off the shelf.

A beaming brunette looked at me under the Look Great At 50 sign.

“Looks pretty good,” I thought, “but OVER 50?!

Maybe my daughter was just sharing her joy in browsing the bookstore? Surely he couldn't have thought that I was more than a decade older than I already am.

But as she wandered down the magazine for the next 20 minutes, she kept coming back to him, saying "mom" each time.

I almost fixed it. "Oh, that's not mom", I was on the tip of my tongue as I realized that it doesn't matter if she somehow sees me on the cover of this magazine.

There are so many things I'm still trying to figure out, so many of us—millennials and non-millennials—struggle as we go through life.

As Niazi points out, math is really scary. And as I was painfully reminded this year, we never know how much time we will have with the ones we love.

With all this uncertainty, I know one thing: my daughter and I are extremely happy that we can now be together and spend an evening at the bookstore - something I used to do with my parents and something I always dreamed of if I ever had children of my own.

As I watch her walk down the aisles of the store, I feel so proud of how happy and curious she looks.

Her generation doesn't even have a name yet - orat least none that we know will stick. Whatever we call them one day, I can't wait to see what they do.