Do the young think the same way we did back then?

One keeps hearing about how attitudes of youngsters today are so different from what ours were, back then. My response to this usually is that it isn’t really so: young people have essentially behaved, and believed the same way: it’s just that the older generations tend to romanticize the past and suggest that they had better ideals and attitudes. But two rather unconnected remarks by two young men in their twenties, who I interviewed this week, made me rethink a bit.

One of them was looking to chuck his well-paying night shift call-centre job because he wanted to ‘settle down’; which on probing, turned out to be a condition set by his (wealthier) in-laws to be. You see, he was to marry a girl who was more qualified and earning far more than he, and when I asked him if he didn’t feel uncomfortable about this, his response was, “I don’t feel uncomfortable eating off my wife; after all, I live in 2007, and can’t be expected to have attitudes of 20 years ago.”

The other chap, who’d been forced to start working just after school because his father passed away, had this to say about his situation: “I had to make money, because all that my father left us was a house.”

Smart, I thought as I listened to these statements, even though inwardly wincing a bit. And try as I might I couldn’t help but imagine if I, or my friends could’ve ever uttered them, when we were young.

I mean I’m not a chauvinist, and sincerely believing in the equality of the sexes, have always tried to ensure that my wife took all the opportunities that came her way to become financially and emotionally independent. I would even venture to think I created some of those opportunities. And today, when she’s as, if not more, economically independent and successful than I, it still never enters my head that I could sit back and live off her earnings. Not one bit. Egoistic? Old-fashioned? Sigh—you’re right!

Things have changed, after all, haven’t they? Because I can’t remember ever, EVER, thinking what my father would ‘leave’ for me. Call it the foolhardy idealism of the Ayn Rand-seventies, or an unspoken respect for the generation that fought Partition and picked up the broken pieces of their lives all by themselves, I’ve always believed in the power of the individual. And that to me has meant that parents can only leave behind their ideals and values, not property and cash for their kids. If in the process, they ensured that children got educated in good schools (and this they often did, to the best of their ability and means), so much the better. But, that’s about it. The next generation must generate its own wealth, and make its own place in this world.

So, what’s happening here? Have the young become more ‘Western’ or “Global’ as many lament? Well, maybe, but remember, most Westerners are fiercely individualistic—after all they leave home at 16 and pay for their own higher education. And neither the average man nor the woman believes seriously that he or she can live off the earnings of the spouse.

I suspect this is more a case of getting impressed by the veneer than the solid wood inside. In a way, our kids are just reacting to newfound materialistic success that India is experiencing today. They still have to grow up and make a place for themselves in this world!

Sorry if that sounds old-fashioned and clichéd. But that’s how it is!