Youth is fearless. Or, it’s meant to be, anyway. Half the point of being young is to feel invincible, not ground down like your boring old parents: to be convinced you’re going to do things differently and better. Yet more than half of British teenagers think they won’t be as well off by the age of 30 as their parents were, according to a survey of 14- to 17-year-olds by the children’s charity Barnardo’s.
This ought to set off alarm bells. It both confirms something we’ve long known – that it’s getting harder for young people to tick what were once considered the boxes of successful adulthood, such as being able to buy a home – but also highlights something less frequently discussed, which is the emotional impact on children of watching their own parents struggle to get by, no matter how hard they try.
