If you are younger than 40, some of this history may be news to you.

Many of my friends’ folks were children of the depression.  They grew up in an economy in ruins, one where it was not clear from where the next dollar would come or what would be on the table for supper.   That experience made many of these folks husband their cash, to preserve what they had for a rainy day.  And, these parents wanted their kids to learn skills that would carry them through economic downturns and prosperity.

Many of my family- and my friends’ families- lost many relatives in the Holocaust.  The extermination of the Jews as exercised by the Germans, the Poles, and the Russians.    It’s why folks like me distrust older Germans, Poles, and Russians- the hatred of my people ran deep and was inculcated in their young.  As we learned about the Holocaust and its perpetrators, it was clear who considered us their enemies and would think nothing of bringing us harm.  (In my case, it didn’t hurt that the neighborhood in which I was raised was replete with anti-Semites who were taught that we (the Jews) killed their god.)

Which brings us to the problem that many of our younger population feel now.  I have a millennial child or two, and a few just a mite older.  These younger folks experienced the Great Recession, a downturn that exceeded almost all of our earlier downturns in duration.  On top of that, the Great Recession coincided with the middle portion of the era of destruction of the American Dream, a concept where we all thought we’d do better than our parents, that we had a chance to make it big in America.  (Those rules have now been rigged by the rich to ensure that us benighted folks will be mostly barred from the upper echelons of the economic strata.)

The Great Recession also disrupted professionals in academia (America cut the funding of higher institutions, which also affect salaries and employment numbers), journalism, even the legal profession.

Most millennials were raised by Boomers (folks like me, born during the baby boom years of 1948 to 1960), and as such, were inculcated with the belief that meaningful employment, with reasonable salaries and financial security would be so attached. But, as the millennials graduate from college and see the economic situation, they realize that is not the picture they were promised.

Instead, wages suck.  Benefits are often non-existent.  Security in employment is lacking. So, the millennials begin to doubt their heretofore career choices.   They question almost everything they were taught to believe, since they feel they’ve been sold a bill of goods that has no basis in reality.

And, then, if they consider starting a family, the sticker shock associated with child care reminds them of the tremendous student debt they possess, as a result of their college tuitions.  (I will have more about this on Monday- the schedule was upset to accommodate the #FreePress action of yesterday.) To top it off, if they have kids- and, therefore, familial responsibility, they are considered to be “unserious” and are replaced with those that have no kids- or no spouses.

Is it any wonder that the birth rate in America is the lowest its been in decades?

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