THE LIMBO GENERATION: The one phrase millennials don’t want to hear from their boomer relatives this Christmas

Experts are warning baby boomers that a popular phrase they often use to preface nostalgic tales regaled over Christmas lunch can feel “like a punch in the guts” to millennials who have been dealt wildly different economic circumstances to previous generations.

Leading Australian demographer Liz Allen says millennials dread hearing anecdotes from their baby boomer relatives over the holiday season that begin with one commonly used turn of phrase.

“Many will go home to their family of origin on Christmas day and grandma or grandpa might say, ‘where are the grandkids?’ or ‘when are you going to marry? and why are you still renting?,” she said.

“Then they say ‘when I was your age…’

“And that’s the kicker.”

Baby boomers refers to the generation born between 1946 and 1965. They are currently between 59 and 78 years old.

Millennials — also known as Generation Y — were born between 1981 and 1995 and are currently aged 28 to 43.

Dr Allen, from the Australian National University in Canberra, said “when I was your age, I was doing X, Y and Z” is something millennials hear a lot, particularly during festive family gatherings.

Similarly to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, the phrase can imply that no matter your circumstances, you should be able to succeed, and millennials lament it sometimes sounds dismissive of the challenges younger generations face.

Dr Allen, who is Generation X but only just, said life for those in their late 30s and early 40s looks vastly different to what this life stage looked like 50 years ago.

“Well, actually, when you were this age, life was simpler and life was easier,” Dr Allen said.

“The people who created the hamster wheel and then kept it going have just sat idly by and gone, ‘well, you know, back in my day…’

“In your day, it was totally different … you have no idea of what it’s like now.”

In a series of interviews with sociologists and demographers about the issues facing median-aged Australians — who are now around 39 years old — Dr Allen said this cohort was now achieving key adulting milestones decades later than previous generations.

“If we look at a number of indicators such as home ownership, rates have declined generation on generation since World War Two,” Dr Allen said.

“So we have seen the Great Australian Dream slip out of reach, generation on generation.

“This (housing) crisis was once on the fringes for the highly economically vulnerable but we are now seeing this crisis go mainstream.”

Other experts have told The Nightly that the current housing crisis and cost of living pressures mean hustling millennials are “caught between the dream and reality” of what their 40s would look like.

“If we think about grandparents’ generation, grandma was unlikely to be educated beyond high school,” Dr Allen said.

“Even if there was great pressure on men to be the breadwinner of the family, mum did all of the unpaid labour.

“So there was a system in our grandparents’ era where you could survive quite comfortably on a single income — and we’re not talking about high incomes here — but that was just the norm.

“So we had this trajectory through life of finishing school, getting a sweet job, being supported by a wife if you’re a man, and then having the ability to buy a beautiful home on a lovely big block on a single, meagre income.

“And in a lot of cases, that home was bought outright and then started the kiddos, generally in grandma’s early 20s.”

But millennials are now having children much later in life than previous generations.

The proportion of women who have three or more children has fallen from 55 per cent in 1986 to 30 per cent in 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

And in 2022, the median age of mothers was 31.9 years, compared to 25.8 years in 1975.

“You just get to this point where it’s not doable,” Dr Allen said.

“We have a lot of people who are missing out on much-wanted children, which is a human catastrophe, because we don’t see Australia as being a place where people can have their dream of a family and a home.

“It is now so out of reach that many are missing out.”

The ABS’s 2021 Census also revealed that women with higher educational attainment were more likely to delay having children, have fewer children overall and were less likely to have children at all.

“They are more likely to postpone the timing of their first birth due to the time taken to complete education, develop careers and achieve financial security,” the ABS said.

Dr Allen said every generation has faced its own unique challenges but starting conversations with “back in my day” can alienate younger people.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Grandma’s era was great. It wasn’t,” she said.

“There were issues. Grandma spent every waking moment doing unpaid work.

“But there was an environment of support socially where … communities really did raise children.

“Think of (Prime Minister) Anthony Albanese’s narrative of being raised in public housing. He was able to thrive because of that community that raised him. That’s long gone.”

Dr Allen said the Government had done “little to nothing over time” to relieve the stress of this sandwich generation who are working, parenting small children and caring for ageing parents.

Millennials also bristle at the implication they are lazier than previous generations when many are hustling, juggling multiple (insecure) jobs and gig work to make ends meet or make mortgage repayments.

“We’ve essentially got this really beaten up generation that is being kind of clocked on the head from above with previous generations going, ‘in my day’ and ‘why aren’t you doing this or that?’ but they’re just trying to survive,” Dr Allen said.

“They’re paying all of the income tax toward the Government’s survival and they’re not getting much in return.

“So saying ‘when I was your age’ feels like a punch in the guts because it is an unrealistic expectation and an utter denial of what the reality is in 2024.

“And here’s the big kicker ... it’s only going to get worse.”