As I begin to see graduate school directly in front of me, it is starting to dawn on me that I will be functioning as a student with a child to take care of. Instead of a child however, I will be worrying about, checking in on and financially supporting my mother. While the economy has hit many families hard, I have noticed a dramatic shift in the amount of responsibility my generation has taken on. While it was normal for my mother's generation and the generation before hers to take care of their parents, my generation is faced with the expectation to acquire post secondary degrees, support their parents and do it all by the age of thirty. Whether this is a sign of the times or just the economy, it is having a dramatic effect on the mind-frame of the U.S's current twenty-somethings. More often than not, when I sit to have a conversation with friends, not a sentence goes by that isn't about the money we don't have and the help our parents desperately need. As a generation, we have been taught not to wait to have something handed to us; and for that I am grateful. However, this has also lead to a generation of young adults who are living with very intense- adult anxiety. What I mean by "adult" anxiety is; worrying about bills, their parents, keeping roofs over the heads of themselves and their parents and for some, worrying about taking care of their younger siblings. This not only creates stress socially and financially, it contributes to psychological and biological stress that makes focusing, working for long periods of time and multi-tasking impossible- all things required from post-secondary programs.
So my question is: when I'm older and need help, how will society dictate how I need to be taken care of, and for that matter who will care for me?
Are we the Helping Generation?
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