A Gen Y’er writes . . .

IT MUST be nice to live in a world where everything your generation did was amazing and the next could never possibly live up to it. Where you’ll always be right, have done it all and have absolutely no qualms about the state you’ve left the country in.

I imagine this Baby Boomer paradise to be a kind of smug bubble, full of Abba songs and mortgage-free homes where all that’s left is to hang on to your job until retirement and look forward to the advent of grandchildren.

And I can also imagine how at that stage of life, a group of lippy, tech-smart, ambitious young people who like to point out your flaws would seem both annoying and threatening and you’d probably, quite rightly, want to put them in their place.

Currently, it’s a bit trendy to have a go at Generation Y – the 15-35 age group – a rash of recent ‘‘studies’’ have found we’re not only narcissistic and have a huge sense of entitlement, but we can’t take criticism, we take for ever to grow up and we also cheat, lie and steal.

These same studies also purport that to ‘‘deal’’ with Generation Y in the workplace you have to be prepared because they’re ruthlessly ambitious but also want a ‘‘lifestyle’’ and to wear jeans in the office like some kind of psychopathic version of Mark Zuckerberg.

I’m sorry but, what? Yes Generation Y’ers are ambitious and value free time just as much as their careers. But it would pay to remember that this is the first group to grow up with two parents working fulltime, and many with solo parents, so quite rightly, family has become important.

This is also the group who were brought up with parents who told them they could do anything. You filled our hearts with confidence, our ears with the peppy girlpower of the Spice Girls, and sent us off to school where ‘‘everyone was a winner’’ – and now you whinge when we enter the workplace believing we deserve to be listened to?

It’s almost as hypocritical as spending your youth protesting for feminism and sexual freedom then voting against gay marriage.

As arguing for solo women to have the security to leave their husbands then begrudging the next group in need of any form of decent social welfare.

As buying six houses and owning them freehold then turning a blind eye when today’s youth are unable to afford to even enter the housing market.

As having a free university education and then denying that to your children.

As happily lining up to take a pension when you don’t need it.

Resentment? Maybe, but they say children learn from their parents, and as we’re repeatedly told, ours strove to make a difference and to live the lives they felt they deserved.