Gen Z: What Are We Going To Do With Them?

Aligning realistic expectations with our wants, wishes, and needs as a society.

I find myself growing heated so I close the browser and head out to clear my mind, frustrated once again at the vitriol being lobbed at our society’s youngest adults.

Now it’s the enlistment rate that the older neighbors on my local Nextdoor are bemoaning. How is our military going to function if it’s this understaffed? Why are none of these lazy Gen Z kids enlisting?

I find myself having a knee-jerk reaction to the word “lazy” being lobbed at Gen Z. To me, “lazy” could be seen as having your parents pay for your entire college, working a mere thirty years, and then expecting a full pension to cover all of your living costs so that you can play golf for the remaining twenty to thirty years of your life, refusing to offer assistance to your children with your grandkids because, gosh darn it, you’ve earned this retirement, this time of leisure.

I digress.

As I’m certainly aware that the above stereotype does not represent all “Boomers,” I’d appreciate the acknowledgment that the stereotype so broadly shared of Gen Z is also far from accurate.

Let’s dig in.

Pandemic and education

Let’s acknowledge the largest elephant in the room first: Covid. When the pandemic hit America’s shores, our entire world shut down. I know a pretty significant portion of my friends, people my age, who suffered mental health issues directly attributed to the pandemic and its closures.

Our entire world and way of living was turned upside down. As disconcerting as this was for us, the adults, I cannot fathom something like this happening when I was in elementary, middle, or high school.

People died. A lot of them. People I knew. Random people. Young people. People who never had a medical problem in their life. It was pretty damn surreal.

And while we, the adults, were absolutely reeling and trying to deal with an entirely new paradigm, our kids were simply along for the ride. Also scared, also confused, also having their daily routines drastically changed.

Along comes the public education system, which insists that we continue trying to shove some kind of “education” into these kids’ heads in the midst of all of that. The absurdity of it still gets me.

If adults couldn’t handle life, the suggestion that kids could handle it and also absorb and retain new information, concepts, and ideas, and further, be tested on it, flew so far beyond absurd it’s laughable.

Huddled over Chromebooks in their bedrooms, desperately trying to understand new concepts with a teacher whose mic gave out or who couldn’t possibly individually address each student via Zoom side chats or who, themselves, was struggling to cope, these kids were given a task larger than life: to cope better and with more positive outcomes than the adults in this nation.

Of course, they couldn’t. Because they were children.

Strictly from an educational standpoint, these kids are behind and woefully so. Are college admissions still looking at grades, though? Yes. Are scholarship applications still asking what your GPA was? Yep. So it literally didn’t matter that the entire nation shut down the public school systems, the kids are the ones expected to make up this deficit or lose valuable opportunities for college, scholarships, and more.

Gen Z is starting their adult life, the vast majority of them, with an educational deficit.

That’s Point 1.

Mental health: an easy excuse or a legit crisis?

This is somehow still a point of contention, as older generations will claim they also went through tough things in their young lives — wars, economic crashes, and societal difficulties — and yet they ‘pulled themselves up by their bootstraps’ and made something of themselves and they’re “just fine.”

I’ll simply start by pointing out that a swath of people who beat and traumatized their own children are not, by any stretch of the imagination, “just fine.” The thousands of videos on social media and hundreds of articles coming out about Gen X and Millennials no longer speaking to their parents attest that you were not, in fact, “just fine,” you just passed your trauma on to your children and deny any culpability and refuse any participation in healing.

Again, I digress.

Recognizing and addressing mental health is hard, especially when a lot of us who are now parents have been raised to look down on someone with mental health issues, to make light of their struggles and blame them and the perceived moral failing that led them to their alleged “depression” or “anxiety.”

Simply admitting that mental health is a real thing is a large hurdle for a lot of us to overcome.

Admitting mental health issues are real means admitting we very well may have them ourselves. It means we have to humble ourselves from the position we were taught of “because I said so,” and “because I’m the parent,” and actually dig into why we said that or did that and all the psychological complexities behind why we do what we do.

And once we do that, then we must restructure the toxic concepts we were taught and learn something different: a new mode of parenting that centers respect and kindness.

And once we do that, we must actually implement these new modes of parenting, which means receiving feedback from our children that we never would have been able to give to our parents and we have no frame of reference for how to handle it.

And if we think that is hard, imagine being a tween watching your parent go through this process, during a pandemic, while you’re hunched over your Chromebook, trying to get your algebra assignment in before 3 and just pissed because you can’t see your friends.

All of this rolls into a recipe for mental health crises, across the board.

Anyone who denies that the Covid pandemic and its ensuing ‘lock-downs’ was just as much a mental health crisis as a physical health crisis is deluding themselves. It’s absurd to conclude that shifting the entire paradigm of the nation overnight won’t result in a massive mental health event.

Gen Z is starting their adult life, the vast majority of them, with pretty significant mental health issues, ones that are going to take years to properly address and rectify.

That’s Point 2.

Workforce demands: are you nuts??

An exceptionally exciting movement that’s largely credited to the youngest Millennials and Gen Z is the absolute turmoil they’ve created in the American workforce.

For decades, we’ve been participating in a wildly unsustainable model of work in which we must give forty (now closer to sixty to actually account for the cost of living) hours of our life per week to our jobs. That does not include commutes, breaks, lunches, and work done from home. We also absolutely had to dress a very specific way, cut our hair and keep it a natural color, refrain from visible tattoos and piercings, and absolutely never engage in discussions about our salaries with our coworkers.

Women in the workplace were expected to do all this while wearing hosiery, ‘ignoring’ the comments and occasional touches by the men in our workplace, and keeping a demure, polite ‘professional’ demeanor.

We were to do all of this for a gradually declining wage, one that decreased in value substantially during our adult working years, as employers refused to appropriately compensate employees to match the rising cost of living.

Gen Z took one look at all of that and said, “Yeah… no thanks.”

They showed up to work with blue hair and said, “I’ve got the degree and the qualifications: you want a worker or not?”

They clocked out at precisely 5:00 p.m. and when challenged, shrugged and said, “Talk to HR and the Labor Board. I work 40 hours. Excuse me, I’m late for dinner,” and walked right out.

They are the first generation to abjectly not give a single shit about their employer’s feelings and to simply but firmly hold their workplace to existing labor laws and even challenged those until they have been modified to be more appropriate.

I think I can speak for all of us Gen X, elder Millennial types when I say we’re all over here with our jaws on the floor going, “We could just do that?? All this time we could just have said… no?!”

If you don’t think that’s the hallmark of a great generation, I don’t know what is.

They’re brave. They’re bold. They are self-assured and confident. They stand up for themselves and demand respect, and if they don’t get it, they simply leave. Find another employee. Sayonara, sucker.

Gen Z is starting their adult lives, the vast majority of them, with a strong sense of loyalty to self over work, and a deep desire to engage in meaningful pursuits outside of the workplace. They engage in work-related issues with facts, not feelings. If the facts are that I get off work at 5, I’m leaving at 5 and I do not care if my manager “feels” some way about it. I have obligations at home, and I will honor my family obligations over some work things.

That’s Point 3.

What are these points adding up to?

The next Greatest Generation, that’s what.

Do you know who else had significant educational deficits, massive mental health issues, and a deep desire to change the workforce and also have meaningful family lives?

The Greatest Generation.

They suffered through the Great Depression, fought in a World War, came home, and built their lives exactly the way they wanted them, to the best of their ability given their individual situations. They built or bought nice homes for their families, they took vacations, they were able to provide for their families on a blue-collar salary, and they gave their children the world on a platter.

This doesn’t mean their lives weren’t hard — on the contrary, they tackled hard stuff every day from probably their earliest memories. But they didn’t mind working hard so long as they were working towards building a life for themselves.

They established the 40-hour work week and also demanded and established a federal minimum wage.

They strongly supported the arts, creating an explosion of film, radio, music, and television entertainment and boasting a slew of prolific authors among their ranks. You couldn’t tell that generation that the arts were for “liberals” or “pansies.” They wholeheartedly comprehended the value of the arts and it showed in their fervent, lifelong support.

They also weren’t keen to all jump in line to enlist for a world war, so a draft was enacted to fill all those boots.

Obviously, there are ideological differences between the two generations. I’m not here to claim Gen Z is conservative. Far from it. But there are some very strong characteristics and traits linking these young people to their great, or great-great grandparents.

Where do we go from here?

What if, just what if, we stopped putting all of our trust in geriatric octogenarians who are currently “leading,” and I do use the word loosely, the nation and we stepped back and let this younger generation step up and take the reins?

What if we stop placing expectations on them that are outdated, unproductive, and dare I say, simply foolish? (Raise your hand if someone performing a job in your presence had the literal performance and execution of their tasks be hampered simply by having blue hair or tattoos. I’ll wait.)

What if we treat them like adults since we expect them to behave as such?

What if we ignore their tattoos and hair and listen when they speak, honor their requests, and move over and give them the space they need to be adults?

What if we simply support them as human beings, the human beings who are ultimately responsible for the future of our nation and our world? I mean, let’s be honest: those of us in our forties and older, we’ve kind of allowed it to come to this — to senile octogenarians running the house.

If Gen Z is willing to step in and fix what we didn’t, who are we to stop them?

And finally, if you think everything I’ve said is bullshit, I want to remind you that this generation is growing up and taking positions of leadership regardless of how you feel about it. They’ve been marching in the streets from ten years old, for causes from Black Lives Matter to women’s and trans rights. They are not playing around.

What if we say that this is the next Greatest Generation and they will begin to believe it and behave accordingly?

I think it’s worth gambling on supporting and uplifting this generation rather than attempting to tear them down, discrediting them, and making them feel foolish for demanding to be treated appropriately at work, at home, and everywhere in between.

It seems a lot of our elders have forgotten the golden rule: if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything. If you cannot support the newest generation of young adults, keep it to yourself. They’re becoming adults and they’re going to be leading our economy, our businesses, our schools, and our nation whether you like it or not.

I’d much rather cheer on and support the next Greatest Generation to give them the emotional and mental undergirding they need to take on the epic challenge of fixing what we’ve all gotten wrong.

I hardly think I’m exaggerating when I say the future of our democracy rests in their tattooed knuckles, and I for one think it’s in great hands. Let’s back off and let these kids soar.

Perhaps they are who can truly make America great… finally.

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

If you like my content, please consider subscribing… click here and follow along as I explore the themes of parenting, political ideologies, religious deconstruction, life as an adoptee, and LGBT allyship and family.

If you love my work, consider buying me a coffee? Or further, become a member for exclusive content and more!