06/03/2007

The different faces of Generation Y

By Kathy Gibbons
Features editor
kgibbons@
record-eagle.com

Read Kathy's past columns here

There was a report on the radio the other day about how some companies with a lot of employees in their 20s are instituting new recognition and rewards programs because one of the things these workers say they need is more positive feedback.

The report went on to say that these young adults are of a generation whose parents were preoccupied with imbuing self-esteem in their children. They grew up in an era of inflated grades, the report said; on their teams, everybody got a trophy.

What that has produced, the report concluded, is adults who expect and require stroking. In response, some employers are jumping on the bandwagon to meet that need.

So when, at one company with a large percent of young workers, a woman in her 40s who had been on the job for about 18 years won the company's recently instituted "Employee of the Day” award, she was dumbfounded. Why so surprised? Uh, she said, she was just doing her job, like always.

Now, with kids age 23 and 20, I am probably among the guilty here. I did think it was important to give my children positive reinforcement and a sense that they can do anything they set their minds to if they're willing to work for it. However, there is a difference between healthy self-esteem and being overly self-important/absorbed, and I'd like to think they fall into the former.

But there were times along the way that I'd stop and think about how my mother, with five kids within six years of each other, could never possibly have been as involved in her kids' lives as I was being in mine. And that wasn't what parents generally did then anyway.

Then the other day, several of us here at the Record-Eagle met with some young adults who are participating in a program to support foster kids who "age out” of the system, which is when they make the transition to adulthood once they turn 18 and no longer qualify for foster care.

The same age as my kids and their friends, most of whom have had the love and support of parents and family every step of the way, these young adults had none of that and worse. They told of being moved from foster home to foster home to foster home. Of acting out as a teen and getting into trouble and having not one single person there to advocate for them as they navigated the legal system. Of turning 18 and being homeless — not because the foster parents were heartless, necessarily, but with funding cut off and a houseful of other kids, they couldn't afford to keep one more.

These young adults aren't seeking strokes or empty recognition. They're looking to make a future for themselves, and to keep younger foster kids from running into the same obstacles they did. They're poised and well-spoken — passionate about their own futures and most definitely, on the issue of foster care.

And there's nothing superficial about that.