The cost of raising global millennials
The pride we feel for kids forging lives overseas turns into fear as terror strikes
There have been images of anguish this past week as innocent people cope with unspeakable terror — in Brussels, in Istanbul, in Lahore.
But the image that most spoke to me of familiar and frightening things was that of Dutch nationals Sascha and Alexander Pinczowski, before they were killed, a 20-something brother and sister who had lived in New York. They were in the Brussels airport en route to the U.S., on the phone to their mother in Holland, when the line went dead and their shining futures were lost forever. It may be shallow, but we relate to what we know. These could have been my two.
According to news reports, Alexander, 29, was a “brilliant young man,” engaged to the daughter of a diplomat, and Sascha, 26, educated in New York, with a business degree, split her time between America and Europe.
In short, they were the new global millennials — a cohort of well-educated young people who not only travel more than any other generation, but often put down personal and professional roots far away from their families.
They were what we baby boomer parents proudly raised them to be in a globally interconnected world — adventurers, sophisticated travellers, capable of teaching English in Seoul, interning at an NGO in Geneva, or in our daughter’s case, making a life in Paris.
It all sounds glamorous, exotic and accomplished. But when terror strikes, it becomes something darker — pit-in-the-stomach fear until you safely locate them, and then try not to blurt out what you’re thinking: come home right now.
When news of the Brussels attacks hit, I instantly emailed a Toronto woman whose daughter works there at a major international organization — “Is she all right?” This was her first indication that something was amiss.
Thirty minutes later, she replied her daughter was fine (she drove to work), and so were all her friends, although many regularly got off at the subway stop that was bombed.
A second young woman from our neighbourhood, a dancer who has lived in Brussels for years and is always on the subway, was also safe. I spoke to her mother, who told me that because of her daughter’s performing schedule, they sometimes don’t even know what city she’s in.
This woman and her husband also have two other daughters — both doctors — who went to school in Ireland when they couldn’t get in, even with high marks, to Canadian medical schools, and now practise in other countries. “They will never be able to come back and work here,” she said.
It’s not just North American parents with roaming millennials. When we travel to France we meet couples in airport lounges or bistros, who all seem to be trekking to see their kids or new grandkids, whether it’s a retired Sydney judge and his wife, in public relations, who were going to see their Britainbased kids, or a Scottish couple in the departure lounge, who live in Provence but have children scattered from Toronto to Vancouver.
They make good natured jokes: “Every vacation we have to go see the kids, we haven’t been anywhere new in years.” (By the way, the kids feel equally obligated, sometimes wishing they could go off by themselves instead of heading home to see family.)
“All we’re left with is the dog,” says a friend wistfully whose daughter lives in London. Over tea we asked each other “how do you keep a family close when your children live far away?”
And then she said what was really on her mind: “If she marries the man she’s with, their kids will grow up away from me. I won’t be able to say spontaneously, ‘I’ll take them swimming today.’ ”
Fear of not being close to grandchildren, the sadness of missing a spur of the moment coffee, concern for their safety: it’s all in the mix for parents of global millennials.
But look at it from a millennial’s perspective: living abroad is a romantic — many either meet someone there or go to be with someone — and life enhancing thing to do.
Jessica Whitford, 33, a Toronto arts manager spent three short spurts in France and then lived in London with her partner, a man from Australia, for three-and-a-half years.
At first it was difficult, but she eventually found some work and adored “the freedom of living away in a city which gives you the feeling you should take advantage all the time of what is being offered. I loved being able to go to world- class theatre, free museums, walk down iconic streets.”
She felt bad about missing life events — “weddings, babies, family members getting sick” and finally they moved to Toronto. While still adjusting, “we are already feeling so much more settled than I ever felt in my time in London.”
Immigrants have always had to leave their parents and forge new lives in a foreign country. Millennials seem to be trying for lives that are geographically fluid (at least until they have those kids).
Even in beleaguered Europe, terrorism is really only a small part of the mix. “I simply can’t tell my kids, wherever they are, that the world is a safe place,” said the mother of a daughter in Brussels.
Of course we still believe here is safer. And we still wish they would come home. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson.