Millennial attitudes in commercials

[Jabberwockey]

Just saw two commercials in a row that disturbingly show how much the millennial attitude is starting to color society. The first was a Best Buy commercial where the parents were taking their son off of their phone plan in the hope that he would start to show some independence. The son was obviously mid to late 20's and it ends with him sitting on the couch while his mother brings him his washed and folded laundry. The second is a Tide commercial which shows two parents folding a mountain of laundry complaining about their adult children moving back in with them. Its made obvious that a significant portion of the laundry belongs to said adult children. It even showed one of the parents of the couple walking in to find out where his cloths were at. I find this disturbing to say the least.

 

[BusynMember]

I think this is just a stereotype. Because of the struggling economy many responsible working kids move back home now, but that doesnt mean they are not paying their own way. My two millenials did their laundry from age 12. They both moved out too, with household skills.

I also work at a restaurant with a ton of millenials. Most are out of the house, surviving on a Servers salary, working long hard hours. Some are married. Some are in long term relationships. Some are not always well behaved, but none seem to depend on Mom or even live at home.

The high schoolers live at home. There are a few of them.

The commercials you brought up actually in my opinion are more about the parents than the kids. A kid will do his own laundry and pay his own cell bill (phones are huge with millenials) if we dont. Our own two millenials are still on our cell plan for the discount, but every month Jumper and Sonic pay us their part, $85 and $100.

The adult kids I work with are from 19-36. We talk a lot. Im the Mom there. They confide in me, often more than Id like to know! Again, not all are angels and tere is excess drinking and pot with some, but they seem to pay for their own mistakes and most dont even want their parents to know when they screw up.

Im sure there are plenty of difficult kids who live at home, do nothing, and their parents still wash and fold their laundry at age 25 or 35. But to me that is on the parents. Most people work. Why should they come home and do laundry for grown kids? Or pay expensive cell phone bills for adults that wont work?

The philosophical question is, if this is truly rampant what is the cause? Is it them or us? But is it really as bad as 50s and up think it is? I remember my own mother moaning about the horrors of my generation, the babyboomers. Every older genetation thinks the younger one is somehow flawed.

Didnt Socrates say so lo those many years ago?

Out of maybe 25 servers I work with, one is an honor student already signed up for the Navy and I am sure she will shine and she is also sure. In two weeks a yoing man is joining the Marines.He is awesome. Many are in college, full or part time.

I have much hope for 90% of this generation, even our difficult adult kids who started out slower. I am sure many will find their ways and thrive. Most are very young.

Maybe I just tend to see the good. That may be it too. But most of the hippie babyboomer generation joined society and did well. And we were deemed hopeless, at least in my neck of the woods .

 

[Jabberwockey]

I think this is just a stereotype.

I won't deny that its a stereotype. The problem is that if a stereotype goes on long enough, and builds up enough momentum then it can become a reality...sometimes.

The commercials you brought up actually in my opinion are more about the parents than the kids.

The philosophical question is, if this is truly rampant what is the cause? Is it them or us?

Yes, its more about the parents than anything. The simple fact of the matter is that an adult child, more often than not, expects too much assistance from the parental units simply because its always been given in the past. Not saying that some small measure of blame doesn't fall on them because at any point they could have made that decision to become their own person, separate from the parents, but they didn't.

I have much hope for 90% of this generation, even our difficult adult kids who started out slower. I am sure many will find their ways and thrive. Most are very young.

Maybe I just tend to see the good. That may be it too. But most of the hippie babyboomer generation joined society and did well. And we were deemed hopeless, at least in my neck of the woods .

Sorry SWOT, its an occupational hazard for me to be skeptical of human behavior. On top of having my own Difficult Child, I spend 40 hours a week dealing with other people's Difficult Child's. People accuse me of having no faith in human nature. I politely but firmly inform them that I have COMPLETE faith in human nature. Its just that the sum of your experiences with other people gives you an entirely different answer than what mine does. In my experience, human beings are petty, self absorbed, self centered A-holes. Animals are all about the survival of the species. Humans, even the best of us, have a tendency towards being me centric. Don't get me wrong, most of us do ok at rising above our baser instincts. But when the fecal matter strikes the oscillating air distribution device is when most fail to maintain that minimum requirement to be considered Civilized.

 

[BusynMember]

Jabs, I understand where you are coming from. You daily see the worst of the worst in people or they would not be in prison.

I dont see just felons and most of my adult kids are very kind, giving, hard working people who have like friends (law of attraction). I see people mostly at my job, the clubhouse for people with mental illness ( almost all working, only one at home with parents, some in group homes though) and in volunteer life. I dont see a bunch of excess entitlement in the young.

When I do, I feel its becsuse the parents dont let go. Nobody makes Mom do laundry for son, age 20. To me, thats on Mom
Nobody makes Junior, age 25 or 45, force Mom to pay for his cell phone. No gun to head. They get entitled beyond the normal ages only if the parents keep treating them as if they feel responsible for the laundry and the phone. If your 22 year old asks you to do laundry or support his phone....no is a complete sentence.

Many boomers remember Spock and never let their kids do without anything or fend for themselves. Philosophically, I put the blame on the shoulders of those who keep doing for adult kids who are questionable on th adult part. They send two messages "I will" and "you cant do it."

I also think most people are good, but one bad apple often sticks out like a sore thumb. And he makes the headlines. The good ones dont make noise.

I respect you and your opinion very much. I would probably share your view if I worked in a prison!

 

[Jabberwockey]

It's not helping that all week I've felt like crap. That just adds to the cynical attitude.

 

[Pink Elephant]

Just saw two commercials in a row that disturbingly show how much the millennial attitude is starting to color society. The first was a Best Buy commercial where the parents were taking their son off of their phone plan in the hope that he would start to show some independence. The son was obviously mid to late 20's and it ends with him sitting on the couch while his mother brings him his washed and folded laundry. The second is a Tide commercial which shows two parents folding a mountain of laundry complaining about their adult children moving back in with them. Its made obvious that a significant portion of the laundry belongs to said adult children. It even showed one of the parents of the couple walking in to find out where his cloths were at. I find this disturbing to say the least.

Very little of what I see today related to the Millennial Generation impresses me. I'll leave it at that, because I didn't bring my soap-box with me here today.

 

[AppleCori]

I think the problem with these types of commercials is that the behavior gets normalized.

The other day my hubby was telling his younger son, who now lives with us while going to college and working part-time, that he needed to get more hours at work in the summer, find a second job, or take classes.

He is resistant. Non-committal, except that he said that most people in college just keep their part-time jobs, or don't work at all in the summer. He thinks it is unusual for a 21-year-old to not have summers off to sleep late and do fun stuff. He seems to think that he should be able to slack off during the summer and then have dad pay for whatever money shortfall comes along in the fall.

There has been no job hunting that I can see, and the term is almost over.

I'm not saying he got this attitude from commercials, but i am saying that many of the things role-modeled on TV are not healthy behaviors for impressionable youth.

 

[DoneDad]

Parents on this forum probably have a different perspective on the mliienial generation from being used and abused by difficult adult CHILDREN. The fact is, there are young adults in college, the military, working, responsibly living their clean and sober lives (probably the majority of millennials). It's the Peter Pans (I'll never grow up) that get all the attention though.

 

[Pink Elephant]

I think the problem with these types of commercials is that the behavior gets normalized.

The other day my hubby was telling his younger son, who now lives with us while going to college and working part-time, that he needed to get more hours at work in the summer, find a second job, or take classes.

He is resistant. Non-committal, except that he said that most people in college just keep their part-time jobs, or don't work at all in the summer. He thinks it is unusual for a 21-year-old to not have summers off to sleep late and do fun stuff. He seems to think that he should be able to slack off during the summer and then have dad pay for whatever money shortfall comes along in the fall.

There has been no job hunting that I can see, and the term is almost over.

I'm not saying he got this attitude from commercials, but i am saying that many of the things role-modeled on TV are not healthy behaviors for impressionable youth.

Society is definitely tainted with unfathomable wealth, materialism, and a sense that money comes by way of doing nothing, and I truly believe it's soured vast numbers of people, not only the Millennial Generation.

I see a level of laziness today (not specifically tied to the Millennial Generation), but the general populas as well that I never would have imagined even just 10 years ago. In many ways, with goods and services at an all-time high, it's (somewhat) easy to see why so many have given up and are struggling, but the laziness I am witnessing today is more progressive and segregated from the exorbitant cost of living we are all inflicted with these days. Possibly due to a sort of tunnel-vision effect, where looking at ones future doesn't hold much in the way of dreams or accomplishments.

 

[BusynMember]

I agree 100% with Done Dad. I thonk parents who come here are struggling and rightfully believe a whole generation is tainted. Its not true. I have three very good adult kids, all who believe summers are for working. I work with adult kids who kick up the hours in the summers. If your kid says he wont work and you support him, in my opinion YOU are the problem. Not all or most millenials even have wealthy parents to sponge off of. They either weork or have no money.

I think those who post here tend to be financially good with extra money. My kids worked because if they didnt I had nothing to give them. I feel it helped their character and work ethic.


I know all three of my millenials got rid of cable and now watch Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu etc. They dont even see these commercials.

Getting rid of pay TV is also a trend for independent millenials. Many co workers also dont have cable. We see these commercials, not those who dont want to pay cable.

There has been bad in each generation. What did your grandpa think of the babyboomers? Many thought Elvis was porn and the Beatles were untalented Commies...lol. Every older generation feels the younger one is not as hard working as they were. This is not new. I just think it is too soon to tell.

 

[BusynMember]

Old Hand, as one of the truly struggling, I feel jobs are scarce, employers have all the power and thwy dont want to pay. This started for me with GWB (not necessarily because of him..itis a timeline) and to me never let up. Healthcare is sbout to becone scarce for lower income people too. Its scary to me and to snyone without much extra.

I think your words are very valid. This generation is the first to be less fruitful than their parents. Young kids (and older) struggle at an unprecedented rate of single mothers, divorce, infancy in daycare...cut off family time. I fear for my nine year old grandson who has both been in daycare since six weeks and now has to go back and forth like a ping pong ball because his folks are divorced. New societal norms do not place value on long term relationships or family like it oncr did. People divorce not just because of physical abuse but because "im bored." It sends a weak message about relationships in my opinion.

In this sense I feel our millenials had it much worse than us. I am guilty of divorce too and it did hurt my three olest kids. Divorce is never good for kids. A result of all this? I think i read that millenials have the lowest marriage rate ever recorded at about 36%.;They rightfully dont see marriage as important as we did. Or giving kids a stable home.

I think if anything, the unstable lives of many of our millrnials, mine too, contributes to their issues. We dont want to blame ourselves or our generation so wr blame TV and videogames. Its not so personal. But I think it is a lot us, including me.

Work, kids bouncing from parent to parent, afterschpol care, maybe too many activities, not enough dinner together or family time...this is where I see the huge difference between them and us. And we feel guilty so we give them stuff.

I dont see how this isnt partly on us. And again, this includes myself.

 

[susiestar]

This makes me feel bad. I have done two loads of laundry in three years. I am not exaggerating. When I need laundry done, I tell one child or the other that I need laundry done. I stopped doing the kids laundry almost a decade ago and my own laundry five years ago. I will fold and hang up laundry, but I can't get it out of the machines or carry wet laundry anywhere. Even before that, Hubby and the kids were afraid I would fall if I was carrying a load of laundry, so they would have hissy fits if I did laundry. I hate doing laundry, so who was I to argue.

People really do their adult children's laundry other than my strange mother and her occasional weird Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) moments? I fight those. It drives me nuts when she will decide she wants to come get all of our clothes and wash them. Even the clean ones. I never know why, or what motivated it, and it drives me up the wall. It is usually at the absolute least convenient time for me. But if I say anything, I feel really ungrateful. And if I try to pay? You would think I had just stabbed her in the eye with a rusty fork! I am SOOOOOOOOOO not kidding. Even my kids think it is really odd. It happens every 2 years or so. Usually she has done something for my brother, I think. Not sure though.

This is such an interesting thread in many ways. My mother didn't do our laundry once we were maybe 11 or so. My kids don't have cell phones, mostly because they don't want to pay the bills and don't want to spend all day talking to people. So I didn't know people do those things.

 

[BusynMember]

Susie, you and I think an awful lot alike.

 

[GoingNorth]

There is currently NO state in the union in which a person working 40 hours at a minimum wage job can afford to live on their own.

In many states, it requires an income of over 30K per year to be able to afford an apartment. Not a fancy apartment in a fancy area. That doesn't include fancy amenities or extras...just rent and utilities.

The laundry thing? I was doing wash at ten. I didn't start doing the drying until we moved to the suburbs and had a new dryer. The old one in Chicago was gas-fired and had to be handled with extreme care and watched through the entire cycle. My mother was not comfortable with us kids using it.

I think the laundry thing might be an "act of love", too. When I had surgery 11 years ago, and my mother spent 6 weeks taking care of me, she did my laundry. It drove me crazy, especially as I was capable of doing my wash after about 3 weeks so long as I did small loads at a time.

She insisted. She also filled up my freezer and fridge with ready to cook meals. Again. Act of love.

I don't think its always a case of the kids expecting/insisting on "mom" doing the wash. I think in some cases its a way for moms who have trouble detaching to continue to feel needed.

 

[susiestar]

I also think there is a bit of control involved. I had a friend who had both her mom and grandma as stay at home moms as she grew up. She could not do a single chore even as a senior in high school to their satisfaction. Not even making her bed could be done 'properly'. She did it every single day, but they still had a hissy fit about how she did it and they did it over again. It was a way to control her. She went to college and was helpless in major way. I can remember her calling me long distance to figure out how to do laundry and cook because she felt stupid and she knew I wouldn't make her feel bad. She knew I understood why she didn't know anything.

My father has taken over some household chores since he retired. Mostly because he has always wanted to over-direct small tasks for some reason. He used to drive us nuts when I was growing up. He now does the laundry because he started to watch my mother as she loaded the machines and folded/hung up loads, and even told her how to do it better. Better based on what? His opinion. He even got mad when she didn't immediately jump on his ideas. So she DID jump on them, and she turned the ENTIRE operation over to him, and he has to do ALLLLLL the laundry.

 

[Jabberwockey]

Excellent point Susie, there can definitely be an element of control involved with this. And SWOT, I wasn't trying to imply that the entire millennial generation is worthless, just pointing out that the shift that started occurring before they were ever born is becoming more obvious and socially accepted.

I'll never forget one of my first experiences in the military. It wasn't long after I'd got to my first permanent duty station and I was in the common area doing laundry. Each floor had a television area, microwaves, and a couple of washers and dryers. A couple of guys were watching tv when I came in to do my laundry and after a few minutes of watching them eyeball me oddly, they finally came over. They were shocked that anyone actually knew how to use the washing machine! That kind of floored me since, coming from a large family, chores such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry were a daily part of all of our lives from as soon as we were old enough to help. I've personally been able to cook my own meals and do my own laundry since about the age of 10. It wasn't that I was expected to cook for myself or do my own laundry so much as help with the general household duties but I quickly realized that my help was not just desired but needed. That many people generated a TON of laundry, enough that we did at least one, probably two loads a day. Sorry, 9 total in the family. Mom, Dad, a brother, and five sisters.

What I don't understand about a lot of people is their inability to realize that their help is NEEDED. Yes, my wife and I had time to do all of the cooking and cleaning, but it left little to no time for us to do other things. Our son could have cared less about that as long as he got what he wanted. He could care less that his mom just spent several hours in the kitchen preparing a meal. If he wanted mac and cheese instead, he expected her to make it for him. And yes SWOT, a portion of the reason for that is because she always did. But then we get into the Difficult Child, differently wired area. I seriously doubt that it would have made much difference at all if she had done with him what my parents did with me. He's always had the "Its ALL about ME" attitude.

 

[BusynMember]

My oldest did too, Jab. But he learned to cook and do laundry because at a certain age it was expected and I wouldnt. So he learned because around age 12-14 he either did it or he waited until I did it on my timeline. If he didnt like dinner, he had no choice but to cook his own. Two dinners? Sure, but you do it.

My kids were all that way and they didnt complain. The girls liked doing their own clothes...they did them a certain way. Sonic just threw his clothes in when he needed clean clothes. Maybe if I would have been that mom who loved cooking and cleaning it would have been different, but I wasnt. I was very emotionally close to and loving to my kids and loved going to all their events and planning parties etc. And driving all the neighborhood kids and them all over....but two dinners? I didnt care if they didnt eat what i prepared, but then they had to make something else. I did the laundry as fast as I could...not in a special way...and if the kids didnt like my timing, they did it.

They were all pretty self sufficient by the time they had to be. Independence was encouraged. All except Sonic worked part time while still in high school and paid for car insurance, gas and anything name brand.

I dont think this was that unusual. A lot of kids are independent and if they HAVE to be they do learn how to be as in my oldest. He would have let me wash his toes if Id been willing...lol.

 

[Lil]

Yes, my wife and I had time to do all of the cooking and cleaning, but it left little to no time for us to do other things. Our son could have cared less about that as long as he got what he wanted. He could care less that his mom just spent several hours in the kitchen preparing a meal. If he wanted mac and cheese instead, he expected her to make it for him. And yes SWOT, a portion of the reason for that is because she always did. But then we get into the Difficult Child, differently wired area. I seriously doubt that it would have made much difference at all if she had done with him what my parents did with me. He's always had the "Its ALL about ME" attitude.

I was waiting for this to come around to me. I figured it would be the laundry thing, not cooking.

Did I make Mac and Cheese sometimes, yes. But really that's not fair because after he was 15 or so I often said "do it yourself." And really, if I did make something different for him, it was because I was cooking things I already knew he wouldn't eat - pepper steak or something. What would always set Jabber off was when he'd just be eating at a time we weren't and ask me to make him mac and cheese. Did I? Sure. Sometimes I did. It's not like it was a chore after all, it takes 5 minutes or so, and I was just sitting around anyway. I didn't stop doing something important.

And yes, I did laundry. But mostly because there was only 3 of us and it was silly not to toss his things in with ours. We almost never run full loads now that he's gone.

But to stop taking things personally...I'll say that I think the commercials are the result of kids moving back in, or delaying moving out, being normalized in our society because of the high cost of living. You know, in many cultures, kids do live at home much longer than they do in the USA. I wonder what that's like...if they manage to treat the kids as adults after a certain age. I've said before, I think it's VERY hard to treat your adult child like a grown-up when they live at home. If our son was not a Difficult Child, but full-functioning and capable and working and living a "typical" life, I think if he were at home I'd still find myself asking if he wanted something to eat or asking if he needed laundry done or worrying if he didn't come in at a decent hour.

 

[BusynMember]

Lil, i think you were probably a wonderful mom. I also thik it is normal for only children to get more focus. I worried far more about my oldest than my youngest and i worried far more about him when he was sn only for six years. I worried sbout everything. Once my oldest was going trick or treating and disappeared and I freaked out and, yes, called the poliice. They found him in less than five minutes. He was maybe five. He got out of the cop car wirh teary eyes and said,"you didnt have to get me arrested!"

My youngest two kids were easy peasy. Sonic, my autistic son, wanted to please, worked hard and had a good temperment. Jumper never threw a single tantrum and was extremely mellow and fun. The fact that the oldest two were easy maybe was why I didnt worry so much, but I think that after raising five kids, one who abandoned us, I learned that as adults they would eat, find a way, come home etc.

It was more relaxing and much more fun to raise my youngest two. I believe it would have been very different for me had I decided to only have one child. Now I am so scattered, I dont even call them by their right names...i call the girls each others names sometimes and called Sonic by one of our dogs names once maybe because the names rhyme!

Lil, I think you are a normal, loving mom of an only child. Its different.