Susie O’Brien: My kids are judging me for partying while they count steps at dawn
While Gen Z counts steps and sips water, their Gen X parents are living it up at casinos and belting out Cold Chisel until dawn. Susie O’Brien wonders how today’s youth became so old.
When did old people become so young and young people become so old?
Two Saturdays ago after watching the races, some friends and I were still up at 1am, belting out 1980s Aussie rock bangers at top volume.
My teenage and twenty-something kids were tucked up in bed – fast asleep, or trying to sleep through our massacre of Cold Chisel and Acca Dacca.
In the morning they went for jogs at dawn. We emerged at 1pm like vampires exposed to sunlight, nursing hangovers that could cripple a horse.
They were checking their chakras and holding child’s pose on the beach as the sun rose.
We were cursing whoever invented childproof aspirin bottles and wondering why someone had replaced our tongues with carpet samples.
And last weekend at a work function in Sydney, we ended up drinking at a casino sports bar until 2am. Because of course we did. That’s what happens when the boss is buying and there’s no curfew.
My generation is partying like it’s 1999, watched on with palpable disapproval by the younger generation who are wondering when we’ll finally sober up and drive them somewhere. Anywhere.
They cart around drink bottles larger than small dogs, count their steps like their life depends on it, and organise their social media feeds with the precision of museum curators.
Meanwhile, us oldies think nothing of all-day binges at the races where the lucky ones will drop $1000 on horses they chose because they liked their names. Twelve-hour marathon sessions at school parent events? Amateur hour.
We’ve been training for this our entire lives.
In our teens and 20s we were pashing strangers in bars, getting kicked out of nightclubs and decorating gutters outside kebab shops at 3am.
When you’ve got a Prime Minister who rocks a Joy Division T-shirt, what else can you expect?
But young people don’t want to have fun like us. Their idea of a good night involves staying up playing video games or bingeing the latest Netflix series on a laptop in their bedroom. Alone. By choice.
“It’s too expensive,” my 21-year-old son told me.
“No one really does this anymore,” my 19-year-old daughter said last weekend, giving me a look of pure disappointment as I groped around the kitchen for water to combat the wildlife convention happening in my mouth. “It’s a bit sad.”
I would have hoped for more respect from the generation that gave the world the Rachel haircut, acid-wash double denim and the McJob.
But the younger generation hates us for our hedonism, failure to appreciate the importance of pronouns, and refusal to stop using Glad Wrap despite its devastating impact on the planet.
They’re also judging us – not just for our terrible taste in music – but for having actual jobs with weekly pay packets.
You know, the pay packets that fund their oat milk lattes and that organic deodorant that costs $18.
So what’s brought about this seismic shift in just one generation?
One reason is surely that we came of age before smartphones ruined everyone’s fun by turning every occasion into content.
When we were young, what happened on the pub crawl stayed on the pub crawl. Now it’s on TikTok within seconds and haunting people’s job prospects for decades.
Another is that the oldest Gen Xers, born in 1965, are now hitting their 60s, and are in serious denial about their age.
They refuse to go quietly into that good night. Or any night before 2am, apparently.
Young people feel they have no choice but to be more responsible than us.
Thanks to us and the Boomers ruining the economy, the housing market and the planet, they feel they have to be the adults in the room.
There’s no doubt the younger generation has it tougher than we did.
Unlike Gen Xers like me who stumbled into home ownership and are now tied to mortgages in middle-ring suburbs and full-time jobs, they’ll sacrifice cash for credibility and put their energy into worthy social causes.
As this week’s Youth Barometer from Monash University shows, four out of five young people think they’re worse off than their parents.
I’m pretty sure my kids would agree with that assessment – especially when they were trying to sleep while we used empty beer bottles as microphones and butchered Khe Sanh.
Sorry kids. We may be old, irresponsible and damaging to your hearing, but at least we know how to have a good time.
Even if you have to remind us what happened the next morning.
Do you agree? Leave a comment or email education@news.com.au
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Originally published as Susie O’Brien: My kids are judging me for partying while they count steps at dawn
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