I resented the hell out of it until I was old enough to see that I was the lucky one because I'm completely independent. At 29, he is still leaning on the parents

DH luckily bears no resentment--it's frustrating for him because he can't understand why his sibs WANT to depend on their parents so much. He's fiercely independent.

With me & my twin, we were lucky that my parents had more when we were growing up than my older siblings. BUT not so much that we were spoiled and didn't appreciate what we got. The two of us actually are doing better than all our older siblings in regards to career and life success and independence.

Cash, I'm your DH! Woot!

Also, I'm fairly sure there were blowhard newspaper columns in 1879 or so about how the kids today are so self-centered and think they're entitled to everything, and it's all the fault of that damnable 14-hour workday giving them so much free time.

I coulda sworn there was a group in between the Boomers and the X-ers.

It has been speculated that there's a subset of Boomers that veer towards X-er mentality born in the late '50s/early '60s that was called by someone "Generation Jones," IIRC. It's a theory that never really took off in generational studies, but you do see it pop up every once in a while.

What makes it worse is the U's administration can be completely spineless about backing up their own student policies.

What is up with that? I had a friend who, when she was teaching as a graduate student at our alma mater, got ZERO back up from her department head or the University when she caught several undergrads plagerizing papers in one of her classes.

It's like it was too much of a battle to flunk them so the kids escaped the consequences.

Yep. I'm a child of Mr. Rogers (though moreso Sesame Street/Electric Company).

Me, too. Of course, I was born in 1967, so we're basically the same age.

At 29, he is still leaning on the parents

Sometimes, that isn't a function of age, it's a function of the person.

Signed,

My 45 year old sister is living with my mom who is paying all of her bills for her and she won't even pitch in with housework.

"What can I do about it? I'll send you an email that says, 'Do the work. Study for the midterm.' Then you can forward the email via an email time machine to yourself at the beginning of the semester."

Heh.

I think the real problem with defining Gen X and whatever is that people want to make new names every few years, and a generation should be at least 20!

Also, hooray for offsite coworker already sending one chunk of the stuff we were waiting for.

Oh, that makes me crazy. I take such pride in having paid for all of my big purchases in life and in having a nice savings account. I love being able to pick up the check with my parents when I visit and I can tell they take pride in it, too. I can't imagine being so dependent without having had some life-changing event to have caused it. That is just not in my blood.

My brother didn't have to suffer the health food kick. He got chips! I resented that.

However, I think that was just a case of Too Much Work.

You could tell him, "What can I do about it? I'll send you an email that says, 'Do the work. Study for the midterm.' Then you can forward the email via an email time machine to yourself at the beginning of the semester."

I think my response was along the lines of "I'm worried about it too, given that you flunked the mid-term, etc., and are just contacting me about this now."

What makes it worse is the U's administration can be completely spineless about backing up their own student policies.

This. With the above student, the first question would be "Did you talk to them about the problem?" "Did you let them know they were missing work?" Etc.