A quick preview of my Northwestern talk tonight on “How to hate women and have terrible sex.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/slavo/slavo15.1.html

This article says the unemployment rate is something like 15% for young people, yet 85% of people are moving home after college. It tells me that there’s something else going on here than just the lack of jobs. And then you have the idea of “job snobbery”- as I explained before a lot of people don’t believe that a job in retail is a “real job.” And sure, sometimes there are more jobs in one area than another, but just because there are a ton of applicants does not necessarily mean that all of those people ONLY applied in one place.

I understand that there are a lot of systematic inequities in the job market, and that colleges in general do not really prepare their students for the job market. However, I also do think that moving back in with your parents really requires more than just “I’m home!”

And the truth of the matter is that most adult children who go back to live with their parents don’t pay rent, they don’t pay for food expenses, and regardless of the chores they do around the house, it generally is less contribution than that of a full household contributor.

I think that the worst thing here is that most of the time, being back at your parent’s house is basically like back being their slave. They make the rules, they control all the money and how it is spent, and if you don’t like it, tough cookies. It is the same sort of squick that I feel when a guy lords his breadwinner status over his female spouse. I don’t like being beholden to anyone, especially not my parents. To me, moving in with your parents is a last resort- something that people should really only attempt if the only other option is being homeless or living out of their car. Because honestly, do you really feel that it is healthy to let someone have that much power over you as an adult?

Even the articles agree that most people who go home to live with parents end up earning less and having less successful careers when they do get a job. There is an old saying that familiarity breeds contempt, but it also breeds laziness and apathy. If someone pays for you to have a place to live and food and internet and all that good stuff, unless you’re particularly driven to become independent, there are plenty of people who basically become worthless leeches.

But then again, I do have to tip my hat to them a little bit. Were it not for their laziness and elitism to find a job that they think is “beneath” them, I would not have had nearly as many job opportunities as I have had in my life, shitty economy or no (and I graduated right when the economy went in the toilet, and have always been able to find employment, even in the city where I live, where there are very few jobs outside of retail). So thanks to the entitled assholes- I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

I don’t know if I can comment on the whole boomerang generation thing, because my parents all have money and I know they’ll act as a safety net if I need it. It is really, really shitty that I have that safety net and other people don’t. It is also shitty that so many wealthy people and the children of wealthy people buy into the notion that we earn that safety net, by being extra super hard-working and moral and all the rest of that totally absurd crap that we apparently think it never occured to poorer people to try. Right now, I’m living in a house that I wouldn’t be able to afford if my dad wasn’t renting it to me essentially at cost. I’m using the unfair advantages that I have.

But… I don’t want to, you know? I’d really, really like to find a summer job to support myself, I just haven’t been successful so far — a situation lots of students are in right now. It is absurd and unfair that my options are 1) find work or 2) lean on mommy and daddy for support, and so many other people’s options are 1) find work or 2) abject fucking poverty; but I’m still going to use my safety net if I have to because I don’t want to be in abject poverty.

Some days I just lie around being useless and not sending out as many resumes as I should and barely moving to get food and it’s pretty fucking pathetic, maybe, but I do it because I’m mentally ill, not because I’m happy that my parents will take up the financial slack. Which just makes me really damn upset about everyone in the same mental state whose parents can’t or won’t take up the financial slack, and it makes me want to help those people, but I don’t see how refusing the help I’m offered is going to do that.

I don’t know if this makes any sense.

Even the articles agree that most people who go home to live with parents end up earning less and having less successful careers when they do get a job. There is an old saying that familiarity breeds contempt, but it also breeds laziness and apathy. If someone pays for you to have a place to live and food and internet and all that good stuff, unless you’re particularly driven to become independent, there are plenty of people who basically become worthless leeches.

It’s nice that you’ve now explicitly spelled out that people whose salaries and careers don’t meet your personal standards are “worthless.” (Also, pretty damn funny when you were just complaining about “elitists” who don’t think low-paid jobs are “real jobs.”) It helps save folks the trouble of bothering to read your posts and see if you have a point.

@Jumbofish- I understand the need and usage of safety net programs and am actually very pro-social programs, but I think that the way that many of them are implemented do not serve the public. For example, most public universities are heavily subsidized with federal and state dollars, yet the tuitions are constantly increased and individuals are expected to take out loans to get into college from the government. There are few if any scholarship opportunities and grants are going the way of the dodo. To be frank, there are few, if any, true infrastructural supports for the average person who wants to go to college, and then when you get there, you have a bunch of bloated bureaucracy where they basically take advantage of the grad students and have them basically teach classes while hiring temporary lecturers to get out of paying benefits to them or giving them tenure. Then you have the absolute lack of support in finding career or post-graduate opportunities- you are basically forced to be one of a hundred thousand students trying to make a meaningful relationship with your professor, who rarely shows up in the actual lectures and has the TA’s (grad students, etc) teach for them instead. Oh, and the reagents? They vote to give themselves raises every freaking year….and then raise tuition, and cut classes and increase class size. Nothing says “fuck you” like making (mostly poor to middle class) kids incur thousands and thousands more dollars of debt for shittier education taught by unqualified people.

My college journey was semi-different than most- I went to a junior college and transfered for my last two years to university. In junior college, I had very small classes with highly motivated and engaging professors who got to know most if not all students on a first-name basis. In University, I was lucky if the person running the lecture (often a grad student) called on me when I raised my hand in an auditorium of several hundred. There were also lots of ridiculous trends, such as everyone going to school for the first week so they wouldn’t be dropped, then basically skipping out on class pretty much every time there wasn’t an exam or paper due. The buses were always crazy full for the first week, but afterwards, it was like a ghost town- and I was taking upper division classes, so this wasn’t just freshman bullshit.

I think that in order to make education both affordable AND valuable to society from an economic and career standpoint, we need far more catering of curriculum to actual real-world job applications- sure it’s important to use critical thinking and argumentation, but let’s put it in real-world career-track situations, not simply give people a topic and expect a 10 page essay or a comparative analysis on philosophy. If we’re just talking about learning for learning’s sake- I think that universities should offer free classes for people to just go to- to learn- I read recently that MIT is actually supposed to be launching a free website where you can take classes without paying tuition just so you can learn various things you might be interested in- and I know many junior colleges allow for people to sit in on classes and enjoy them without having to pay.

But I do honestly think that education (especially higher education) is a shitty product that people are being forced to pay ridiculous amounts of money to get so they can have an inkling of a chance to not live in poverty, and that is incredibly NOT OK with me.

Even trade schools and institutes of art and design are surpassing the average colleges in giving degrees/certifications that actually go to actual jobs and careers that pay decent wages. But until we stop blindly throwing money at colleges and expecting tuitions to go down and students (and their parents) to stop being financially robbed blind, I honestly think that there is going to be little to no changes going on.

As I said before, I can understand that some people have to work together with their families to make ends meet, and if everyone’s on the same terms, that kind of arrangement can be quite wonderful. But for every person whose parents are cool, there’s a parent who basically treats their children (even when adults) like control freaks and belittle, attack and even threaten physical harm on them. For those who are blessed to have good healthy relationships with their parents, that’s awesome. And I’m terribly sorry for anyone who is legitimately dealing with a mental health or physical infirmity that keeps them from being able to become financially or physically independent from family members if that is not something that makes them happy to be doing (I have a friend of mine who suffers from depression who was forced to move back in with her parents because of lack of job prospects and she is fucking miserable but without their support she would be unable to get health care services or afford food).

But I’m really tired of people who act like they are completely justified in coming home from college and then parking their asses in their parents house and refusing to be a part of the household and just go back to acting like a spoiled little kid….AND THEN THEY COMPLAIN ABOUT IT. I have no patience for people who think that their lives are so hard when there are people who are legitimately struggling, in poverty, in homelessness, in food insecurity, in their health, etc, and these people are legitimately acting like they’re SO ABUSED because their parents won’t let them borrow the car to go clubbing.

Honestly I am not sure why you directed that comment at me because it didn’t really refer to what I was talking about. I don’t think there can be much discussion here since most of the comment was about your own issues with the school system while I was talking about mostly your own attitudes of superiority towards people who rely on others financially.

But for every person whose parents are cool, there’s a parent who basically treats their children (even when adults) like control freaks and belittle, attack and even threaten physical harm on them. For those who are blessed to have good healthy relationships with their parents, that’s awesome. And I’m terribly sorry for anyone who is legitimately dealing with a mental health or physical infirmity that keeps them from being able to become financially or physically independent from family members if that is not something that makes them happy to be doing (I have a friend of mine who suffers from depression who was forced to move back in with her parents because of lack of job prospects and she is fucking miserable but without their support she would be unable to get health care services or afford food).

Ok I don’t understand why you are hating on the victim if they have to go back to their parents. Shouldn’t you sympathize with them instead of calling them leaches? Or do they deserve the abuse because they weren’t as independent as you were? Also how do you know that they aren’t depressed or physically handicapped when you judge them for staying home? Not everyone shows signs of being depressed or handicapped.

But I’m really tired of people who act like they are completely justified in coming home from college and then parking their asses in their parents house and refusing to be a part of the household and just go back to acting like a spoiled little kid….AND THEN THEY COMPLAIN ABOUT IT. I have no patience for people who think that their lives are so hard when there are people who are legitimately struggling, in poverty, in homelessness, in food insecurity, in their health, etc, and these people are legitimately acting like they’re SO ABUSED because their parents won’t let them borrow the car to go clubbing.

Wow, that’s really horrible that some people are like that. Except the majority of people are not actually like that. Why are you talking about them as if they’re the majority? That’s what I don’t understand.

Oops, ninja’ed by jumbofish 😀

@Jumbofish: Every time I have ever had to rely on someone financially, I have been abused, taken advantage of, or physically assaulted. There is a very good reason why I hold my own financial independence to be more important than most. The world is a very, very fucked up place, and most people don’t care about hurting you if they can profit off of it in some way. And honestly, that’s one reason why I’m here- because I’m tired of assholes who think that I would ever actually WANT to have some man “take care of me” just because I have a vagina. “Take care of” is equivalent to slavery to me- the idea that someone could hold their paycheck over my head and force me to do whatever they say or throw me on the street is NOT the sort of thing I want in my life.

Perhaps most of you are blessed not to have this experience in your life. That’s awesome for you. But for people like myself, there is no safe person, there is no safe place- there is only another person who expects that if they give you something however small, that you owe them back in blood and body.

And that is not something I am ever willing to make myself vulnerable to again.

I would honestly rather die.

Ok I think this is kinda pointless because you seem to be on your own planet of those “kids are so lazy with their cellphones and computers why in my days we did real work!!”

Like explain what this:

I know people who are in their mid 20′s and don’t understand that they need to pay their credit card (preferably to 0) every month. I know people who are in their mid 20′s who think that cooking boxed mac & cheese is cooking. I know people in their late 20′s who seem to think it’s totally acceptable to flush tampons down the toilet (GROSS) and then deny it when the plumbing gets all fucked up.

and

or whining about how his mom wouldn’t buy him a new iPod with a COLOR display (ZOMG SO ABUSIVE AMIRITE?. Similarly when someone would complain about “only” being able to eat at mid-level restaurants, or complain about how their meal plan card was only for 5 days because they had to go home for the weekends.)

Has anything to do with what we were even talking about. This is just pure whining about modern kids and suggesting you are better because of whatever reason. (also the only one who seems to be implying its abusive is you. I’ve never seen a kid say not getting x expensive item was abuse like ever.)

that parents are REQUIRED to keep their kids in the lap of luxury was so infuriating to me that I could

Parents aren’t required to do anything for their kids after they turn into legal adults but in the end most do because they love and care about them and want them to do well. The parents are the ones allowing it because they want to. You may not like it but too bad that’s just the way it goes. It makes no sense for you to get angry at the kid when they aren’t even the ones in control. I mean if your parent offers to help you of course most kids are going to accept it. Right now you just seem jealous and are grasping straws to make yourself feel superior. In the process you forget that not all those kids are staying home because they want to (physical mental illness) and just come off as even more rude.

Nanasha, I kind of get what you’re saying, though I think you’re ascribing very specific entitled attitudes to a much, much larger group of people than actually hold those attitudes in real life. However, the way we’re talking about my mental health — just mine, not necessarily in general — is making me somewhat uncomfortable. For the record, I can’t cook worth a damn, my finances are all fucked up, my house is a mess, my life is a mess. And while these things are fed by depression and feed it in turn (turning into a giant positive feedback loop, yay) I’m not confident that I would magically learn how to handle these things well if I wasn’t sick. I don’t feel that these are necessarily terrible, shameful things in neurotypical people; nor do I think that, in my specific case, having a mental illness “excuses” me from how terribly shameful they are. I think these are faults, not necessarily terribly serious ones, that some people need to overcome, myself included, and that’s okay. I also think that they are faults that I could overcome, depression be damned, if I really worked at them. I feel a little like I’m being told that my life and my decisions are really, shamefully terrible, but it’s okay for me because I’m a helpless child with no agency. I totally, 100% get that that’s not the message you were intending to send, and it’s not even just about what you’re saying, it’s just how this conversation ended up making me feel.

I shouldn’t have brought up the subject of my mental health in this thread in the first place, silly me. Can we pretend I didn’t make that silly mistake and take the subject of “Viscaria’s brain things” off of the table? 🙂

He’s hallucinating, or just making shit up.

Well, he can twist the “Men who should not be with women ever” tag into sexual jealousy or cockblocking or whatever the fuck he thinks it is, so obviously his powers of misapprehension cannot be underestimated.

There once was a thread with Nanasha
that I didn’t even begin to read.

(see what I did
there like a kid
who’s just learned to limerick at speed?)

Ok, this conversation is getting pretty yucky as far as my own mental health is concerned.

But before I go:

1) I did not say that the entitled assholes are the majority of people ever in the world, but the proliferation of them, especially in my experiences at university, really threw me for a loop. I mean, here I was, practically starving to death and even *I* could make it to every class and get the homework done. I just get tired of the amount of entitled whining and “oh it’s so hard” conversations that people would have with each other all the while holding their newest gadgets and wearing the best, most fashionable clothes and eating delicious, delicious healthy edible food.

2) I think that mental illness is something extra you have to work through, that may need extra support and other stuff to help you cope and succeed, but I certainly don’t think it turns anyone into a “child.”

3) Working hard is important in this society- if you just sit on your ass and do nothing whatsoever because you’re lazy, you should not expect respect from others, nor should you, like those who refused to go to class and then sent in half-assed reports only to get failing grades, complain when you get called out on your shit. That is not classist or racist or whatever -ist you might want to throw at me. It is simple fact.

4) My experience is not the same as everyone else’s- I get that- but I don’t understand how my experience and my thoughts on a subject are totally invalid/false/disingenuous just because they don’t apply to EVERYONE EVERYWHERE AT ALL TIMES.

So yeah. My brains hurt. I’m out.