I was thinking today about the attitude of entitlement that
so many young people have, and how different that is from the attitude of the
generation before me. People who lived
through the Depression had a totally different mindset. As they die out, our society as a whole
becomes more self-centered and more demanding of parents and government.
My Uncle Roy was born in 1920 and died almost 6 years ago at
the age of 91. In his later years, he
talked about some of the defining times of his life. One of these was during the Depression, so he
was probably about 10 years old.
Uncle Roy had a paper route which was all well and good
during the spring, summer and fall, but as winter set in with bitter cold, the
daily route become arduous. He was
really still a child, and he decided the situation was unbearable. One night at the supper table, he announced
that he planned to quit his paper route.
His father (my grandfather) replied, “You can’t quit your
paper route.”
“Oh, Pa, it is so cold.
Why can’t I quit?”
“Do you see that loaf of bread sitting here on the
table? The money you earn puts that loaf
of bread there. You can’t quit.”
Even though he was a child, he understood that he was
helping to feed his family, and they were depending on him.
My father never talked specifically about the Depression
years, but he was 5 years older than Uncle Roy, and I know he worked in a
grocery story as a teenager. By the time
he was in his late teens, he was training as a butcher. That did not end up as his career, but he was
great at carving the meat at family dinners, and I suspect that skill was not
the only lesson learned during the 1930s.
About 20 years before the Depression, my maternal
grandmother also experienced the need to help support her family. Her father was murdered and she had to drop
out of school and help support the family by working as a seamstress in a
clothing factory. She had only finished
8th grade. I don’t know
whether the factory was a “sweat shop,” but I do know she was accepting
responsibility far beyond her years.
Today’s youth are whining if they don’t have their own TV
with cable and smart phone with wifi access.
It is not unusual for a teen to drop out of school and sit at home
playing video games. Some finish high
school and then don’t go to college or get a job. I was visiting with friends
one day, when the father sarcastically remarked that his son didn’t have to
work, because he was “independently wealthy.”
What he meant was that his son expected his parents to support him.
I hate to see our society crash because of a depression or
other disastrous event, but if young people never experience hardship, our
society may crash anyway. I don’t see
how we can continue to survive with so much expected of parents and of the
government. Someone has to pay for this.
Someone has to put the loaf of bread on the table.