I’ve read and heard a bit about Gen Y kids, that they expect the world but aren’t prepared to do the hard work to get it. They seem to cause Baby Boomer employers quite a bit of grief.

Baby Boomers are used to being boss. They have retained their positions of authority by menacing the threat of unemployment over recalcitrant workers to get them to do whatever the bosses want and are perplexed when these threats have no visible effect on the younger ones.

Until the advent of Gen Y, most people in the world lived in the shadow of the two World Wars and we were mostly raised by people who had known horrific pain, deprivation and poverty. Fear inspired most of what we were taught about life and the world, and poverty motivated most of our life choices.

Now we have two generations - Generation Y and the Milleniums - who know very little of all this. They are different. They see the world, and themselves, differently. This affects what they think, what they do, and how they do it. Because they are not crippled by the fear of destitution, because the vast majority of them have never seen it or had it held over them as an ever-present threat, they are emotionally free to make choices that feed their soul - as well as their belly.

A segment on CNN today reported on a young girl, Asya, is so aware of the life she wants to lead and so unprepared to live by other peoples’ rules that she, despite being only 13 years old, has become an entrepreneur, owning and running her own T-shirt designing business - called Stinky Feet Gurlz. Not only does she know what sort of life she wants to live but she is also very aware of the sort of world she wants to live in. Her slogan, “buy a shirt. save a child” arises from her desire to bring about “action and awareness of Child Sex Slavery & Trafficking through Social Responsibility.” A certain proportion of her profits are dedicated to this aim. She says by the end of this financial year she has will have donated thousands of dollars.

Talking to the young mums I know, they can see that the kids being born today are different. They know that the old fear-engendering parenting methods don’t work on these kids. These kids have too strong a sense of themselves, and they will protect and defend themselves from maltreatment and abuse. They will stand up fearlessly against injustice; they will not be cowed.

These kids have a strong knowing of who they are, seemingly intuiting the world as far bigger than the traditional views previous generations were raised on. It is as if they see new possibilities of social, economic, political reform becoming a reality; things that we oldies have only ever dreamed of.

If our world is going to change, if we are ever going to get beyond the limitations greed, abuse of power and inequality of opportunity have created in our world, it is going to be largely because of kids like these.

For this reason we must cherish the new generation. Let’s not stifle their ingenuity, kill their dreams with fear or intransigent tradition. They are going create a new world, they will do it by means we may not understand, but we have had our time and we need to acknowledge our limitations and let the young ones work their magic.

Eileen McBride
Eileen McBride is the author of Love Equals Power 2, a spiritual seeker and teacher. This article was published on June 8, 2011.