Also it sucks being a mom. I have no kids, but a stay at home parent does it all. Sure no pay, but geez a lou! It takes a lot of patience to sit and home and care for a kid. I think it does involve “work”.

And Meg don’t you have inherited money in the bank? To the tune of $200k or something? From college money?

That said, my take is that these days more people have the luxury of CHOICE, in contrast to previous generations where the norm may have been to basically accept whatever [hard] work was available and make the best of it.

Chosing to start your own business or work for a family business is a choice. Becoming a SAHM is a choice. Retiring to a life of leisure is a choice for some. Many of us are fortunate to live in a world of many options. And if you have the option to maximize enjoyment and fullment (over hard and unfulfilling work), then of course, that is what most of us would do.

Perhaps what Ben was so fussed about is that this generation of young adults seems to have more options that our generation – especially options that include study abroad, volunteer work, living off mommy and daddy while they find themselves, etc. I know its a gross generalization, but I don’t know too many teens these days holding down after-school jobs. And summers are more likely to be spent in travel, sports camps, or “internships”, not working behind a counter at 7-Eleven.

But, the problem with Ben’s view, as well as my own, is we are very skewed by the population we’re around – namely upper-middle and wealthy families. What might be true in affluent suburbs of LA or NYC, might not hold water in Oklahoma. So, again, I’m not so sure all the generalizations really say much, accept to express our own very limited personal observations.

Oh, just get over yourselves and get on with the business of growing up. Every generation before you went through this same sort of self-justification before you. You really aren’t that different.

I partially disagree with this. I started out working hard at ten, shoveling driveways and sidewalks to make money. At twelve I had my first paper route. I’ve delivered pizzas and was very good at it, and worked hard at it. I’ve also had jobs I hated intensely; fortunately these generally had very flexible schedules so I could work two or four hours at a time, take an extended break, and return to work some more.

I’ve put in a lot of hard work over many years, and seeing what little I have had to show for it has led at times (not currently) to suicidal self-loathing. Why would Ben – or anyone else – expect a dead-end hard worker to be exempt from suicidal self-loathing?

Having had jobs I liked (pizzas) and jobs I’ve detested, I can say it’s a lot easier to work hard when you don’t hate your job. So I suspect a lot of “slackers” are people who don’t know (or can’t get) what they want to do, and are stuck putting in time at jobs they hate.

Perhaps there should be a financial bloggers’ adage as well: “don’t generalize about people” or perhaps “sleep on a blog before posting it.” Most folks know that there are dozens of reasons parents “stay home” to raise their children. Fortunately, laziness is not one of them.

Thank God (literally) that I don’t have to “work hard” like my grandparents and parents did–they all grew up in poverty, working hard to get every dime they ever accumulated and for every luxury they ever indulged. And they succeeded so that as hard as I might work-whether as a SAHM, entrepreneur, volunteer, or 9-5er–I’m not going to go hungry if I miss work for a week. And as great as that is, I also feel like that part of my parents’ characters that were shaped by that hard, necessary work will never develop the same way in me.

That’s all I was trying to say; I certainly wasn’t as clear and specific as I should have been, and I apologize for any offense. And I appreciate those of you who read the whole post (and the linked article) and attempted to understand my muddled insights.

By the way, as far as a solution: of course there is none. We have been simultaneously blessed and cursed by our booming economy, just as our ancestors were blessed and cursed by their struggling one.