AITA for talking down to my grandfather when we found out my little cousin is pregnant.

Look, people who take their generations too seriously can be annoying, it’s true (whether millennial, boomer, gen x or other). But you are letting your emotions cloud your reasoning when it comes to linking cause and effect. A lot of what you say comes across as the same dramatic whining and hand-wringing you are complaining about.

There’s a lot of good statistics and studies which parcel out the different contributing factors for interesting trends like increase in divorce, single motherhood, etc. It’s not as simple as “people are having sex before they get married!”

Pre-marital sex may be one factor, but it probably isn’t a major one (especially given access to birth control and abortion). What about the welfare system, law changes, changing attitudes around women’s employability?

No-fault divorce only emerged in the US in the late 60’s, and relying upon alimony and child support is not as stable as being able to hold down a job. If your husband stops paying or dies, and you have no job skills or career to speak of, you are in a financially weak position.

I don’t know enough about US crime to comment on your second point.

Yes I find myself surprised about some of the things some younger people complain about nowadays. I don’t get the bathroom thing. But honestly mental illness is way easier to diagnose nowadays and there is less stigma around it. Before if husbands were drinking to deal with work, or wives were popping pills to take the edge off, that wasn’t necessarily recorded as mental illness. So mental illness numbers have in large part increased because we have more reliable data.

Yes it may be true that young people are probably “coddled” more in school and by parents than in the past. But if the millennials you work with all act helpless, that may also be a function of the young people your workplace attracts. Note that there are a lot of millennial nurses, doctors, lawyers, economists, posties, government workers etc who are all working really hard to try and fix the covid-19 crisis right now.

It would be prudent not to fall victim to confirmation bias and only listen to the things which confirm your preferred world view.

/r/AmItheAsshole Thread Parent