In my opinion, every generation beginning with the Baby Boomers has had a sense of entitlement. It’s just what each generation has felt entitled to that has changed. For instance, Baby Boomers developed a sense that they were entitled to retire. Gen Xers developed a sense that they were entitled to successful careers. Millennials developed a sense that were entitled to everything on their terms. What is overlooked is that entitlement is rooted in expectations, and each generation is guilty of having those.
Did the “Traditionalist Generation” (a.k.a. Greatest Generation) have expectations? I’m sure to some extent they did, but they also went through the events like the Great Depression and World War II. Until very recently (see Great Recession), I don’t think that anything in the last 100 years has tempered the expectations of Americans as much as those events. Therefore, I think that we would be hard-pressed to call this generation “entitled.”
As for the Baby Boomers, they’ve lived their lives expecting to benefit from pensions, retirement plans and social security. Over time, they developed an expectation that they could spend their golden years traveling or living on a beach somewhere. It was their reward for working hard and paying into the “system”. Pension cuts, bad economies, ageism, longer lifespans and other factors have all contributed to a much different retirement reality for countless Baby Boomers.
As for Gen Xers, we grew up thinking that a college degree was the gateway to long-term careers with plenty of upward mobility. For example, when I started in college in the late 90’s, I knew recent graduates who were getting great tech jobs with significant signing bonuses. I truly expected to be on the same track…and then the dot com bubble burst…then later the Great Recession hit. Based on these events and others, I no longer expect to move up in a company – let alone stay at one for 20+ years.
As for Millennials, they are faulted for being the entitlement generation because they are viewed as being narcissistic and perhaps they are, but it’s rooted in expectations developed in their childhood – a time of economic boon and perhaps “over-sheltering.” If we label them based on their expectations, we must fairly call out our own.
– Parsec
No, they aren’t. My reason is both completely opinionated and rooted in what Parsec wrote above. Parsec wrote that “every generation beginning with the Baby Boomers has had a sense of entitlement,” and I agree 100%. The millenials are not the entitlement generation because in my opinion, we can’t label just one. Every generation is the entitlement generation.