MILLENNIALS are people born between the late 1980s and the beginning of the 21st century, give or take a couple years. Out walking my dog, I've made the acquaintance of several on my street. They are all living in much more modern and expensive buildings than I live in, or renting houses with more than one person contributing to the rent.
Maybe it's just the MILLENNIALS on my street, the one's I'm meeting, but they don't seem to be very independent for their ages. None of them aspires to living in their own place, but is depending on a working girlfriend, parents, a trust fund, or some other supplemental income to make it as is, even as they drive for Lyft, Uber, take in people through AirBNB, post YouTube Videos, EBay, Etsy, or find some other cell phone - Internet - computer way to have some money coming in.
I'm not saying that I have nothing to learn from them. I can see that these are opportunities they seize rather than deal with being evicted or ruining their credit when they have no regular full time job to depend on.
But just so you know, there are also OLDER people on the street who have addressed their money and work issues with DRIVING in particular, and the way they do it is that they take Lyft or Uber as their full time job, keep themselves to a regular schedule, such heading for their car every morning at the same time, and not coming home until 5 or 6 PM, when they have their dinner with their partner or spouse and then go walk the dog. These OLDER people are also using their driving experience to get full time work driving for one of the van services for the disabled, the MTA or smaller Community Shuttles.
Maybe they have given up on their dreams. I don't know.
I see part economic crisis and increasing unaffordability of the city, mixed with an unwillingness to let go of their basic need to be creative, or an unwillingness to redefine themselves in some boring, go nowhere job (of which I've had myself) that will kill their spirit, as the Millennial's dilemma..
To me the crisis point comes when someone gets pregnant and the possibility of having to financially and otherwise support offspring hits home. Luckily there is contraception and legal abortion. One couple on the street, married for seven years, both employed full time with the same companies, had their first child despite knowing that they may never afford an actual house. Another couple, living together for a couple years, and also employed full time with the same companies, got married last year, but have their parents providing a down payment while a real estate agent friend combs the neighborhood for a small house they can get into, which they see as the first step before they have a child.
These people aren't aged out of having children yet, but they are approaching it.
The other day one neighbor who has been doing ALL of the things above to pay his share of the rent on a house, while his girlfriend with a Master's Degree is out hustling, making cold calls as a sales person, and I were talking. He had just gotten his Real Estate license and had put a couple thousand dollars he BORROWED from her to pay for nice business cards and postcards which he is leaving everywhere he goes. He had some early success in a creative field but it's been bumpy, he's trying to learn the business and doing office time, makes no money, and then drives in the evenings. The other day this all went on hold when he got a call from one of the big film production companies to do some free lance work. You could never say this man is lazy, but the fact is that if his girlfriend wasn't making a reported $100,000 a year, then he would likely be living in a single apartment alone.
He told me he wants children. She however decided she does not because she fears the pain of childbirth. (When I said, "There is always adoption. There are also lots of foster kids who need a good home," the conversation stalled. )
A recent article in Daily Mail UK covered the great numbers of women who are avoiding pregnancy and childbirth for this very reason, even electing to have unnecessary cesareans.
I think, but do not say to him, that I think he should break up with her if he really wants children. He loves her for sure, and she probably loves him too, and rather than either of them break up or do something about meeting someone more compatible, they do not. They get along, there are no bad fights or abuse happening in their relationship, and they do have more time to decide. Certainly many people have chosen good partnerships without children over bad ones with. Makes sense to me.
About once a year, usually around her birthday when this couple go out with her well to do family, she announces to him that she doesn't think their relationship is going to work out. He becomes depressed and threatens to leave town and go back to his parents. They have a dog as a child, and he is the full time caregiver of the dog while his girlfriend actually owns it.
Recently the dog was injured and a vet gave the price to do surgery on it as $10,000! Poorer people would have faced the fact that their beloved pet needed to be put to sleep and suffer for it. Instead he started looking for inexpensive or free surgery for the dog. It was about that time that he revealed that she was earning $100,000.
Well, if it were MY DOG and I were earning "bank," I might get a second and third opinion, or some price quotes, but I wouldn't let my boyfriend search out cheaper or free alternatives or let the dog suffer.
I don't say it but I think, "She clearly wants a man who is making a lot more money than you are. That is the bigger issue in your relationship." Who ever heard of a true partner only LOANING money to the other, especially when it comes to using that money for something like classes, rent while doing an Internship that might lead to paid work, business cards and marketing/promo postcards. Our culture and tax system is set up to favor the married. If they were doing joint tax returns a lot of this could be taken as tax deductions and business loses. When one person is making so much more money than the other, and finds fault with their ability to make money, then I think it would be more than "nice," to help them in these practical ways.
I think these two have never been NMNK in their mind set.
Instead of being an educated, hard working, BUSINESSWOMAN who prefers really to be out in the word and someone else to care for her dog child, she has the prop of a boyfriend and the marriage substitute called "living together." She doesn't want children, be it painful childbirth or any other reason, and that's OK, especially because there is contraception and abortion, but she does not want to SUPPORT HIM.
If it were a traditional marriage-like relationship in what we used to call "role reversal," where the wife goes out and makes the living and supports the family and the husband is the person who stays at home and takes care of all the domestic duties, she would not MIND SUPPORTING HIM.
He prefers to be a STAY AT HOME HUSBAND and FATHER, and a CREATIVE, that's clear. He's not money motivated or a corporate person like she is. I think the Real Estate gig is him trying to prove to her that someday he too will make big bucks and then maybe when they are financial equals they will marry.
I like this man, very much. He is a sensitive, kind, and caring person, and his parents did tell him over a decade ago, "We've done our parenting, now you're on your own." Every time I talk to him though, I think he's going to tell me that they have realized that they don't belong together, and that he's moving out and on.
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