Tammy, you've larded this book with quotes from your target market, but it doesn't give the sense that you understand what people have told you.
First...this has the sound of a book written by a particular class in the northeast and select parts of California. But to an extent greater than what you knew growing up, various parts of the country were invisible to each other in the decades you're discussing. The 1970s-90s were very different for people in different parts of the country, and, what's more, we didn't know it. There was no "Roger & Me" in other parts of the Midwest. There was no "Bright Lights, Big City" in the devastated farm economies of the 1980s. There was no "Less than Zero" nihilism-lite in New England. Greed was de rigueur in certain areas, but power was the signature of evil and patriarchal oppression in the progressive North. (Remember, there was no widespread NPR till the mid-90s to tell the East Coast such places existed.) And Coupland...I don't know, maybe it resonates with young Xers, but I don't know anyone over the age of, say, 35 who finds it interesting. The child of 1965 and the child of 1979 grew up in very different worlds.
Second, we really don't need the kid next door to tell us who we are and what we lived through. Nor do we need to be told, at this late date, how to manage Boomers. We've been working with and for them and teaching them for decades, and many of us have older-Boomer parents or younger-Boomer siblings. As for telling us how to manage you...hey, I got news. You know this perma-recession thing? If we're in hiring positions now, we can find qualified people who don't need to have the job made fulfilling and interesting for them, don't need lots of contact, aren't high-maintenance, and will respect the fact that the company does not exist primarily for their personal and career growth. A lot of Gen-Y kids fit the bill. They're ones who'll get the jobs. The ones waiting for someone to chart an attractive career path for them will wonder why they've got no luck.
Third, I'm not sure you appreciate the extent to which unavoidable economic realities will blur these generational distinctions. You guys are going to have no choice but to become more self-directed and entrepreneurial. Your Boomer parents are going to continue to try to help you out, but the fact is that they can't afford their own retirements and won't be able to keep their jobs, and they're quickly finding out that the money is simply not there for their promised pensions, medical care, social security. They've also, if they weren't smart, mortgaged themselves to the hilt to send you to school. So you're going to have to get out there and fight, and you may wind up being their main supports, psychological and financial. (A lot of them, I think, will get to the psychological reality ahead of you. Their parents tended to be thrifty, and they remember how to worry about money. I think quite a lot of them will snap to when the reality's unavoidable, and you guys will wonder where these Depression-era strangers came from. It's just your grandparents' teaching, that's all.)(This is my hopeful prediction, by the way. I'm cringing in advance of a fifteen-year Boomer's lament/journey-of-self-discovery about the lost golden 30-year retirement to which they were entitled.)
Fourth, by and large, the helicopters are your parents, not us. We tend to think they've damaged you by this behavior and left you seriously unprepared for what's going on now, and what's likely to be for the next decade, and we're aghast at both the way they still try to do your thinking for you and the amount of money they've let you borrow for college. And by how many of them have signed their retirements away to send you, too.
Speaking of which....You and your college-grad cohort will have known parents who were ever-ready to write a check and sign a charge slip or student loan papers for you. However, by and large, they've managed their finances appallingly. I mean shockingly. This retirement debacle? It wasn't necessary, but it was fuelled by Boomer hope and optimism. In my 40s now, I hear my 50- and 60-something friends, who've worked professional, dual-income lives for decades, tell stories of financial ruin. To an Xer who learned thrift early, their fears seem totally overblown -- they still have many healthy years, they make good incomes. However, they are certainly vulnerable to layoff, and they really have no sense of scale when it comes to spending. They won't want to lean on you, but they won't have anyone else to lean on. You and they will have to learn thrift together or reality will not be kind.
I would suggest you start talking with them now about their retirements, how they're going to take care of themselves, what they will do when Social Security and their pensions don't pay out as expected. (They won't.) And talking about delaying retirement. These are conversations they'll want desperately to avoid, in part because the discussion has to do with aging, loss of beauty and vitality, loss of dreams. But since you will ultimately be responsible for them, and many of them will go leaping into retirement and then find they're financially unprepared, you guys really need to have these discussions. This'll be a little difficult for you, too, because your impulse will be to think, "We'll get through it, something always comes up." And that's no longer the reality. "Something came up" before because we were borrowing like mad, but that's stopping now. You'll also have children, and the expense of kids, in terms of time, energy, and money, is something that most of you don't yet know about; you may wind up assuming you've got much more to give your parents than you do. In time, of course, that will be corrected too.
Finally...I have to confess some amusement. The underlying feeling I get from the book is, "Hey! Here's how to make yourselves easier for us to work with, because we love ya, well not really, but you're like really challenging to deal with. You'll so miss out if you can't turn that frown upside down!" Ah, Gen Y. I dunno, man. I'm not worried. We were made for decline and economic hardship. The future's so crap, I gotta wear shades.
** and yeah. Again. Keep the copyright in mind.
