When you are young, life is still ahead of you. You are optimistic and have many dreams. You think the trees grow into the sky although … it does depend on where your cradle is and in what time you are born. If you come from a well-balanced, loving family with sufficient financial resources, if you are smart and live in a prosperous country, there seems to be no problem. But there are also many young people who have a very different start in life and then there are bigger challenges ahead.
What was that like for me?
My father was a single-earner and poorly educated. He started his working life when he was 11 as a farmhand, became a truck driver and later a dispatch chief. He was able to accomplish this by taking evening classes. In our family, expenses had to be watched carefully, and for my brother and me that meant that study opportunities were limited. So after finishing high school, I started working. I was 16 years old at the time. My 1st job was typist. At that time (1968) it was quite normal to get a permanent employment contract and, if you wanted to, you could stay with one employer for life. Some people achieved tenures of 40 years. I started taking evening courses when I was 16 and my last one was at 64. That’s how I developed. There was no Internet and social media in my youth so my world was smaller then.
Young now
For young people now, there are many challenges ahead. In 2022, the Youth Platform of the SER (Social and Economic Council) conducted research on the development opportunities for young people in the Netherlands. Their report Veelbelovend shows that the position of young people has gotten worse in the past two years. Opportunity inequality in education has increased. Those with less education still struggle to find a job despite the tightening labor market. Affordable housing is also hard to find. Scholars, students, young workers and young parents feel more mental pressure. Especially for young people from non-Western migration backgrounds or with parents of low socioeconomic status, reaching milestones is more difficult.
Nuance
As an older person, I sometimes tend to think that this time for young people is all about fun. There is all kinds of everything, isn’t there? It also seems that they get everything and hardly have to put any effort into it but when I look a little further I see that they also face many challenges now. Every period has its specific challenges.
A more nuanced judgement and more leniency toward young people on my part is certainly in order. Johanna
