Can you hang a picture frame? How about change a light bulb? According to a new survey by Halfords, your answer to those questions is likely to fall down generational lines. Given their reputation as feckless snowflakes, you might not be surprised to hear that Gen Z adults are more inclined than their elders to call in outside help for basic household tasks – but before you start pointing and guffawing, it’s worth thinking about why that might be.
In 2025, people in their twenties are more likely to be living with their parents than ever. The proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds still in the family home has increased by a third over the last two decades, from 13 per cent to 18 per cent. Is that because they are soft, useless children, who can’t hack the real world and expect mummy and daddy to do everything for them forever? Or did their parent’s generation foster an economic climate so hostile that they can’t afford to leave home, even a decade after finishing school?
Having presided over a litany of crises, from the 2008 financial crash to the more recent mini Budget and house price inflation, Gen Z’s elders might be shaking their heads at their overgrown kids, but they’ve only got themselves to blame.
It’s no wonder that someone without their own four walls would be less proficient at household tasks. Economic circumstances keep young adults from striking out alone; inevitably, they are less independent as a result, which makes them less likely to leave home, less likely to build essential practical skills, and so on.
House prices have left young people with nothing to work for
Read MoreThat cause and effect is something we take for granted the more it’s repeated, losing sight of the social and economic conditions that underpin generational trends and leaving empty caricatures in their place – not unlike a horoscope. Millennials are whiney and boomers are loaded, just like Virgos are highly strung and Geminis are two faced; that’s just the way things are.
Except it isn’t. After all, there’s nothing about being born between 1981 and 1996 that makes my fellow millennials inherently interested in social justice, or between 1946 and 1964 that makes boomers economically successful, any more than a birthday between 21 May and 21 June makes you duplicitous.
As both a Gemini, the much-maligned villain of the horoscope, and a millennial – charged first with being a whiney social justice warrior and then suddenly a side-part sporting oldie – I’ve come off badly on both counts. But while I’d love to dismiss each in turn, I’m afraid that the millennial stuff hits home in a way that the astrology just can’t.
Unlike star signs, generational demographics do statistically trend in particular directions because of what was happening when they came of age. How could you not be impacted by the state of the housing market when you went to buy your first property, or attitudes to parenting while you were growing up?
We are products of our environments, over which we have very little influence until we’re adults. If Gen Z is less au fait with DIY than their parents, those parents surely have to shoulder some of the responsibility for creating a world with nowhere to DIY.
Neither intergenerational sniping nor astrology are anything new, yet both have enjoyed a resurgence in recent years. Facing unprecedented political and environmental chaos, humans crave the clarity of easy categories more keenly than ever – but while such shorthands (Boomer! Aries!) are comforting, they’re risky too. Before you know it, you’re refusing to date someone because they were born on a Tuesday, or laughing at a whole generation who grew up during austerity, had their best years stolen by a pandemic, and are now facing down a climate catastrophe.
Both, I’m afraid, are ill-advised. We must maintain a bit of rigour to stop generation-chat melting into the nonsense territory of star signs – not least because I enjoy it as much as any bitchy Gemini.
Whether you’re bashing up or down the generation tree, try to keep the big picture in mind, and take the piss with integrity as we welcome Generation Beta, born since 1 January 2025, to the arena. Welcome, little ones – I wonder what we’ll make fun of each other for in years to come.
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