Judith Woods Why those millennials have got it right
Have you heard the one about snowflake millennials? No, not: “How many millennials does it take to change a lightbulb? None. They accept it for who it is.” I’m talking about the insistence that they should be allowed to work part-time, take regular career breaks and basically reshape the world to suit themselves.
The NHS says it will need 200,000 more staff to cope with the knock-on effects of these attitudes – unless productivity improves and “decisive action is take to prevent ill health”.
Now, I’m the first to poke patronising fun at Generation Crybaby’s querulous demands for “safe spaces” and right-on humourlessness. Frankly, I almost ripped up my newspaper when I read that students had chosen to take offence when University College London, tweeting about the snow, said: “Dreaming of a white campus?”
Madness. No, not just madness. Flouncy, attention-seeking, juvenile madness. After the farce came tragedy; UCL was bullied into apologising. Apologising! Presumably Bing Crosby’s original version has been blacklisted (oops…) for its Ku Klux Klan overtones.
So I have no truck with millennial preciousness. But when it comes to work-life balance I think our young people may just have a point. I swear I haven’t touched the cherry brandy – stay with me as I unpack the evidence.
Firstly, can we, hand on heart, say we have made such a great fist of modern life when half of all adults are taking prescription drugs including antidepressants, statins and blood pressure pills? The new NHS Health Survey for England makes for deeply dispiriting reading and paints a picture of a fat, unfit, boozing population, an estimated fifth of whom have “probable” mental health conditions. Obesity-related illness is on the rise, hence the statins for high cholesterol. Stress, lack of exercise, alcohol and other issues have led to an epidemic of low mood and huge reliance on anti-depressants.
Experts have voiced concerns that eating much less and moving around much more would be just as, if not more, beneficial. This is undoubtedly true, and arguably what the NHS really needs is a crack team of dietitians and ex-military personal trainers.
But speaking as someone who takes statins for genetically elevated cholesterol levels, and anti-depressants for my proverbial black dog, I am daily filled with gratitude that medical science is not only prolonging my life, but making me feel it’s worth living.
That makes me an exception, obviously. But then again we all feel we are the exception, don’t we? That’s easy to argue on a case-by-case basis, and of course an ageing population means a
greater reliance on drugs; between 2015 and 2020, the general population will rise three per cent, while the numbers of people aged over 65 is expected to increase by 12 per cent.
Look at the data and it’s impossible not to feel both alarmed and convinced that something is gravely amiss. Last month, the respected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) revealed we are the most obese country in western Europe. More than a quarter – 26.9 per cent – of us are obese. Another 40 per cent are overweight. That’s a lamentable public health crisis in the making, or rather a deepening of the current state of emergency.
But there are signs that millennials have a self-awareness that their elders either lack or have smothered with mountains of junk food and pills.
When a report by events organiser Eventbrite, entitled Brighter Futures: Challenging Perceptions of Millennials,
was published in September, it depicted a sober, health-conscious generation preoccupied with yoga and Instagramming their smoothies. Yes, it is irrationally annoying to us proper grown-ups, but plus ça change; I vividly recall my parents’ generation finding me and my anti-apartheid, anti-poll Tax marching comrades unfathomable and possibly tiresome.
But back to the youth of today, who, if estate agents are to be believed, are too busy frittering their disposable cash on posh sandwiches and lottery tickets to ever afford a deposit on a first home.
They’re obviously doing things differently from us, whether through choice or circumstance. I think we should wish them luck, especially the girls; another new NHS survey has just concluded that women spend most of their lives feeling less happy than men.
It’s telling that women’s happiness increases after retirement, and only overtakes men when they reach 85 – essentially, once their husbands die.
Psychiatrists have concluded that losing a life partner makes men more miserable but raises women’s spirits. Gosh. It would be funny if it weren’t so heart-rending. Oh, and if you simply don’t believe it’s true or struggle to understand why on earth that could be, go and ask your long-suffering wife.
The happiness gap is mostly due to the blessing – curse – of multitasking. Women hold down jobs, do the bulk of child rearing, housework and care for elderly relatives. No wonder retirement feels like a holiday and widowhood comes as a relief. Is that what we want for our daughters? I certainly wouldn’t wish it on mine. But the truth is that if you do what you always did, you get what you always got. Millennials appear to be breaking the mould by placing demands on employers to facilitate a better work-life balance.
Isn’t that something we all crave? Recently, father-of-five Jamie Oliver said he was considering early retirement at 42 to spend more quality time with his children. Barack Obama has expressed regret he wasn’t around more for his two girls. Mary Berry, Victoria Beckham, Scarlett Johansson, me… there isn’t a working mother on the planet who isn’t plagued by guilt.
It may seem toweringly arrogant for millennials to be calling for job-shares and sabbaticals. But if the alternative is stress, self-reproach, a fistful of pills and counting the days until your 85th birthday, it might just turn out to be not just the height of good sense, but “a decisive action to prevent ill health”.