Why Millennials Have Way More In Common With Their Grandparents’ Generation

By Brandon Turbeville, Natural Blaze

Millennials are Behaving More and More Like Their Grandparents…

Millennials, once considered the most rebellious of all generations, are confounding their parents’ generation and onlookers yet again with the newfound realization that the current generation has more in common with their grandparents than their parents.

As Katherine Martinko writes in her article, “Millennials Are Behaving More Like Their Grandparents,”

Young people’s interest in ‘healthy, clean living’ has them cooking, crafting, and counting their pennies in ways that baffle their Boomer parents.

Young people are not the wild whippersnappers they used to be, according to an amusing article in the Wall Street Journal. While their parents would have been chugging beers, microwaving pizzas, and watching soap operas, this next generation of adults is more inclined to sip non-alcoholic beverages on a Saturday night, eat fennel instead of fries, and participate in hot yoga and terrarium-building classes for entertainment.

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It’s a curious change in habits for an age group that has long been associated with rebellion and pushing limits, but one that Alison Angus, an analyst for Euromonitor, says reflects young people’s desire “to assert control and find comfort in an unstable world.” Angus said:

“They feel they can make a difference, and this influences their spending choices. This means more saying no: no to alcohol; no to unhealthy habits; no to animal-based products and, increasingly, no to unmeasured or uninformed spending.”

But that’s not all. More research has suggested that Millennials, once considered the avant-garde of culture (and cultural Marxism) have come to value traditional gender roles and are abandoning the Democratic party, itself a consistent marketer to the Millennial generation. Interestingly, however, Millennials also support equality in between genders in the workplace. And they’re not flocking to the Republican party either. It appears Millennials have had it with both stodgy conservatism and the parallel universe leftists seem to live in. They apparently appreciate and understand the necessity and legitimate place of gender roles while also understanding that everyone should be given a fair shake in the world. That’s a bit more nuance than previous generations.

Though Millennials have been the subject of derision by their parents’ generation for years (ironically in much the same way as the Boomers were derided by their parents), it seems a large portion of the Boomer generation just doesn’t get it. The Baby Boomer generation had a unique upbringing – they lived in an America that their parents worked hard to build and fought hard for the labor protections they enjoyed and were then able to have a generally comfortable childhood and work good-paying jobs while cultural disruption through television, schools and universities was amped up and their good paying jobs were shipped overseas. Many of these Boomers worked their lives away only to see their jobs ripped out from under them. Others managed to keep their living standards and, unfortunately, weren’t able to keep their discernment and empathy for their fellow Boomers or their children’s generation.

Millennials are picking up where their grandparents left off – they are pursuing non-modern interests like canning, minimalism/decluttering, frugality, gardening, cooking and even non-digital photography. Photo by Jametlene Reskp

Many Millennials, however, (except for the oldest of the generation) simply do not remember a time when America was full of jobs, especially good-paying ones. As a result, where Boomers would have been working for a living wage, Millennials are working at Starbucks and waiting tables. It’s really not rocket science as to why Millennials would be “buying less stuff” and focusing on frugality. Much like their grandparents, they are living through an economic depression. In other words, they can’t afford to buy the “stuff” their parents generation bought and discarded.

Yes, Millennial purchasing habits are generally more socially conscious than previous generations. However, the majority of those habits have come out of necessity.

Martinko also writes,

Finally, many of my friends grew up in households where little food was cooked from scratch. As the WSJ wrote, “Because many of their parents didn’t cook meals from scratch, they might not have learned recipes or how to follow recipes.” They’ve grown up feeling the physical effects of a poor diet and noticing the lack of flavor, and now want to regain lost food prep skills; hence, the growing interest in cooking meals, baking bread, preserving seasonal foods, and even gardening.

. . . . .

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Take health, for example. Millennials are often mocked for their addiction to fitness and fine food, but the alternative we’ve seen is ending up like many of our parents — overweight with chronic health problems, low energy, and achy joints. So, we’ve responded by eating our vegetables with gusto:

“Consumers aged 18 to 34 increased their annual per capita consumption of vegetables by 7% last year over the year before, according to market research firm NPD Group. Meanwhile consumers aged 55 to 64 decreased their vegetable consumption by 13% over the same period.”

Millennials are often mocked for their food and fitness pursuits, but they have witnessed the debilitating health problems of the Baby Boomer generation. Photo by Matthew Kane on Unsplash

This isn’t to bash Baby Boomers. The generation that pioneered protesting war, use of psychedelics and marijuana and who were born into a world already at war and pressed into military service in the national shame known as the Vietnam War only to have their decent wages and dependable jobs ripped out from under them. No generation has had it easy in America. But it would at least be nice if the generational gap wasn’t widened with insults that are completely ignorant of the fact that Millennials were also born into a world at war, a police state, and an economy that is a shell of its former self. Yes, our grandparents’ generation didn’t create the best world for Baby Boomers and the Boomer generation left a rather awful one for us.

These new statistics are showing that Millennials at least care somewhat about the world they are living in and the one that will be there in the future. Let’s hope that’s true.

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Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies,Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria,and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 1,000 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.