Generations X and Y suffer boomer-angst

CHICAGO — Abby Lovett’s friends would die laughing if they heard her.

Here she is in her office at a Chicago advertising agency, the place she spends many a night and weekend, loudly proclaiming that people in her generation need to work less than their baby-boomer parents have.

Sure, she’s putting in more than 50 hours a week to establish her career. But in her heart, Miss Lovett knows she’ll end up miserable if she doesn’t eventually find a little balance.

To her and many other young adults, “having it all” quickly is becoming a myth, not the mantra it was for boomers who left behind their protest signs and tie-dye to climb the corporate ladder.

“No one is happy. Everyone is overworked, overstressed. No one’s spending the kind of time that they want with their kids or their spouses or partners. And I think part of that can be attributed to the boomers,” says Miss Lovett, 27.

You could call it “boomer backlash,” or just high anxiety. But as the first of the baby boomers turn 60 next year, it’s one of many ways that young adults are feeling conflicted about their graying elders.

They both love boomers and love to hate them. They see a talented, successful and outspoken generation that also can be hopelessly dismissive and self-absorbed.

They are awed and sometimes intimidated by baby boomers’ accomplishments and a generation so larger than life that some of its most famous members are known by only one name — Madonna, Oprah, Bono — or nicknames such as “W” and “The Donald.”

But at times, they also see boomers as hypocrites who were challenged to “ask what you can do for your country” and ended up focusing on what was in it for them.

“There’s a disconnect between the younger generation and anyone over 45 or so,” says Steve Rubens, a 29-year-old businessman from Palo Alto, Calif. “Something happened; I don’t know when.

“But they don’t really listen as much as they think they do. They just go with their agenda.”

It’s an agenda that leaves him and other young adults — members of generations known as X and Y — wondering what will be left for them, especially as the cost of living rises, national debt increases and as the huge population of aging boomers begins to devour Social Security and company pensions.

“A lot of people are disappointed with big corporate America and just how ineffective it is and the fact that the decision-makers — a lot of them are baby boomers who can’t even get you a raise that’s going to match inflation these days,” says Geoff Persell, a 26-year-old construction manager in Tampa, Fla.

He and others his age are ready to revamp the system, to create a new workplace that embraces both flexible hours and new technology — improving efficiency and giving workers more time for life off the job.

That restlessness isn’t limited to the corporate world.

Young adults also are ready to wrestle away their pieces of the pie from boomer politicians, from “helicopter parents” who hover over their adult children and even from aging rockers who have yet to give up the stage.

The question is: Will boomers let them?

“I feel like that whole generation is coming into that space where you’d think that they would be getting ready to give up. But it doesn’t feel that way at all,” says Marcos Najera, a 33-year-old former teacher in Phoenix who now works as station manager and host for the city’s youth and education cable-television network.

He wishes more boomers were willing to be mentors — to collaborate and inspire a group of young adults that he worries have become apathetic, partly because they feel powerless.

“They have no idea that they’ve left us in their dust,” Mr. Najera says. “So, we’re either going to have to run and catch up and poke them on the shoulder and say, ’Hey, you guys, don’t forget us,’ or it’s not going to happen.”

Some young adults admire the young boomers’ daring — but wonder what happened to it.

“Now it’s like ’Women shouldn’t have the right to choose’ and ’Gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry.’ Where did all that freedom of individuality and freedom of expression go? Now that they’re older, we can’t have that?” asks Elizabeth King, a 26-year-old graduate student at Northwestern University.

Many young adults talk about feeling the pressure to achieve and wish boomers would lighten up.

“I think baby boomers have this fear that if we don’t take the traditional steps, we’re going to mess up,” says Jessica Coen, the 25-year-old co-editor of Gawker.com, a press and pop-culture blog based in Manhattan.

Miss Coen is among young adults who also want to forge a new take on family life — and how material success fits into it.

“Obviously, I someday want to raise a family and do those traditionally important things,” she says. “But also I don’t have some image in my head that it’s going to be this perfect, green, mowed lawn — because that doesn’t work. And we’ve seen that it doesn’t work. You can have it all on the outside, but that doesn’t mean your family is going to be healthy or happy.”

For her part, Miss Lovett competed in a triathlon last summer and has taken up oil painting — steps aimed at achieving that balance for which she’s looking.

It’s something she learned, in part, by watching her boomer father, who worked 14-hour days much of his life only to collapse from a stroke in a boardroom at 50.

He survived. “But suddenly, it turned our lives upside down,” says Miss Lovett, whose parents still live in Denver, where she was raised. “Sure, they moved into a smaller house, and they’re probably not having the same middle adulthood that they thought they would.

“But they’re together, and they’re alive, and they’re now enjoying the things that are the essential life qualities.”

Miss Lovett, too, plans to put a new spin on the notion of having it all.

“It’s a different sort of investment,” she says. “It may cost me a lot of money. But ultimately, when I’m 80 years old, hopefully, I’ll have some kids coming to play shuffleboard with me, you know?”