MENTAL HEALTH
Generation X has managed to thrive up until the anxiety epidemic. But for how much longer?
An entertaining look 30 years on from “The Breakfast Club”
One evening I decided to enter “Generation X” on Google Search, only to be immediately faced with photos of the cast from the movie The Breakfast Club. This was both hilarious and comforting: not only because this is one of my favourite movies of all time, but because the film does manage to paint an accurate impression of some of the types of frustrations and pressures that shaped my generation.
Disaffected and Directionless
One of the online dictionaries defined us in just two words: “typically disaffected and directionless”. As I burst into laughter, at the same time I couldn’t help but feel slightly exposed. There was a big dose of truth here. I had definitely grown up disaffected and sceptical of authority and “the establishment”, and as for the directionless part, I think my generation invented directionlessness. As much as the dictionary definition was overly negative and unfair, it somehow made me feel at home with “my people”. I wanted to understand the characters of the film better, so that I can see if I can draw any parallels between their lives and my life.
A generation growing up on their own
The five characters are high school students from vastly opposite corners of the socioeconomic tapestry, yet they all have some type of “disaffection” that has landed them in detention for the day. Their punishment is to spend an entire Saturday with each other at school, and their detention assignment is to write an essay about “who they think they are”. As the five characters begin to interact with each other, the day turns into a group therapy session through which they all eventually discover that they have a lot more in common than they thought: they have all seen their freedom to choose their destiny crushed, in a world that has placed so many rules and expectations on them. This stifles them to the point that they struggle with developing their own identity. Lack of direction soon turns to frustration with, and disaffection towards, a system that may have done a lot for them, but certainly not much to help them grow from the inside. Two of the characters are living their lives for their parents, doing as much as they can to please them with their achievements. The other three have a severe deficit of attention from their family. What all five have in common is that none of their environments have asked them who they want to be, thus helping them to find their own direction. As I started to recall the movie in my head, I realised that my high school class was full of examples of all five of the characters. I also found elements in myself that I think I had in common with virtually all of them:
Brian “the Brain”
A “straight A” student who does not want to let his parents down and defines his entire worth by his performance at school. I went through a “Brian” stage myself, stayed on it, and carried parts of it through to my adult working life: dangerously resting the entirety of my self esteem on my performance at my job and what colleagues thought of me. Brian finds himself in detention because he tried to kill himself when he failed one of his subjects.
Claire “the Princess”
A spoiled rich girl who seemingly has nothing to worry about and enjoys the false safety of a comfortable existence, only to realise that she is trapped in her own shallow demographic (both figuratively and numerically), the oppressive rules of her social circle, the life options that have already been decided for her, and a family separated by their very wealth and in the process of divorce. She is in detention because she skipped school to go shopping. I think Claire is the typical 80s kid who is a victim of a flourishing economy: she receives a lot of attention in terms of tangible structure and support as well as daddy’s credit card, yet not enough emotional availability by her parents. This void is fulfilled through coping mechanisms such as shopping therapy and trips to France.
John “the Criminal”
Permanently traumatised by uncaring and irresponsible parents with their own serious issues, John accepts that he has nothing to expect from life and decides to self-define as an outcast: getting in trouble as often as possible, in order to express his anger and reaction towards a world that “owes” him big time. What he is doing in reality is trying to re-live his childhood trauma. Deep down he still hopes for love and attention. As for why he is in detention, any of the number of recent misdemeanours will do.
Allison “the Basketcase”
Feeling ignored by her parents, without any structure or direction, Allison has internalised a wrong message: that she is invisible to other people. Her desperate strategy to seek attention involves pretending to be a weirdo, a pathological liar and a pickpocket. She is so desperate for company that she has joined detention because she had “nothing better to do”. Both Allison and Claire are victims of an increasing proportion of parents in the 80s who worked late and focused on their professional development, leaving less time for family.
Andrew “the Jock”
The school athlete who is constantly at risk of not meeting his father’s expectations, as well as stereotypes of masculinity he does not agree with. He has completely suppressed his own freedom and decision-making. He is in the group because he bullied one of Brian’s friends to impress his father, despite the fact that him and Brian are almost the same type of person.
Neglected and “existentially challenged”
There are two distinct groups among the characters. Two of them, Brian and Andrew, are torn between pleasing and rebelling towards overbearing but well-meaning parents. The other three lack enough attention to feel secure and confident in their steps. Although the two groups may seem like opposites of each other, in reality all of the characters have an existential dilemma that may be typical to my generation: they are not getting enough of the right type of attention that will help all of them find their direction. It is no wonder then that, when asked to write about who they think they are, the response can only be a sarcastic one:
Dear Mr. Vernon,
We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it is we did wrong, but we think you’re crazy for making us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out, is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club.
This iconic, and laconic, essay reveals both disaffection and lack of direction. The main answer to the original question “who do you think you are” is “you should have known who I am by now” or even “ you never cared to find out who I really am”. Describing themselves in single words, they expose the older generation’s ample use of convenient stereotypes (a “jock”, a “brain” etc.) instead of recognising them as unique individuals. The characters also choose to all adopt the same, multiple personality, split between a brain, an athlete, a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal — as if almost to signify that they are being torn between the multiple directions and multiple roles and stereotypes they are being expected to fulfil.
Gen X had no choice but to become “fighters”
But “dissatisfied and directionless” is only part of the story of Generation X. Born between the early-mid 1960s and early 1980s, it is agreed that Gen Xers grew up in a society that was much less preoccupied with children and more focused on adults.
Increasing employment and the entry of mothers into the workforce meant that parents were spending record low amounts of time with their children.
It has also been noted that GenX’s parents, the Baby Boomers, were one of the generations with the highest divorce rate ever. It is these factors that resulted in so many dire predictions for Genx, who developed an image of being neglected and at danger of growing into an adult generation of directionless slackers. While it may be true that we initially became directionless, cynical, disaffected and hostile to authority, in time this proved to be a driving force for good. One has to reject the world before they can recreate it, even if this rejection initially comes off as apathy or a knee-jerk dissatisfaction with the prevailing system
Surprisingly, and contrary to the predictions, surveys have suggested that it was the very adverse factors in GenX’s upbringing that resulted in them resorting to forming their own view of the world, relying on their own devices, and blossoming later on in life as the most independent, hard-working, self-managing and entrepreneurial demographic.
We are credited with having taken tech disruption and globalisation “on the chin” and emerging through the other side as successful, competent professionals. Who ever thought that Gen Xers would be the demographic with one of the highest proportions of start-up founders in its ranks? This hardly sounds directionless to me. I would make the argument that it was the sheer multitude of directions that we were pushed in that was often the problem, at least in my case.
We had to learn to over deliver, and to assume multiple roles, becoming Jacks and Jackies of all trades
Other studies have remarkably found us to be self confident, optimistic and according to one study “active, happy and achieving a work-life balance”. Although there is probably a great dose of truth in all these findings, I do think that we are approaching a dangerous time where this generation may be at risk again. Being hard working and entrepreneurial in a time of so much technological progress means that GenX is caught in the middle of the AI storm. This is a generation that has experienced four decades of continuous technological disruption, and may have had enough by now. Further monitoring of my generation will be useful to understand how it is coping in this environment. But for now, for what it is worth and 34 years later, here is what a follow up to the Breakfast Club detention essay may have looked like:
Dear Mr Vernon,
We are sorry to disappoint you, but we still don’t know who we are. In fact, we do not like to be defined by what we are, but by what we have achieved. For what its worth, and if this helps, here is what we’ve been up to: we’ve been busy learning, working, innovating, inventing. We’ve been connecting the world and bringing down the borders we inherited from you. We’ve been fighting for equality. We’ve been continuing the destruction of the planet. We’ve been on our phones. A lot. We’ve been getting stressed. We’ve been wondering who we are.
Sincerely
The Breakfast Club Reunited
You have just read an excerpt from my book Becoming Imperfect — available through Amazon on Kindle and Paperback.
