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Morgan Trantham
Jessie Carty
UWRT 1102
November 24, 2014
Age or Generation: Whats to Blame?
My mother does not understand my grandmother. My grandmothers duty is to
worry endlessly, remind you of that spot you never cleaned, and to make a little remarks
about the way you live in passive-aggressive comments or back-handed compliments.
When I defend my grandma, my mother asks how in the world my I can deal with her;
with this I always reply: Shes from a different time.
There has been a lot of talk about generations causing this huge gap in
personalities of teens, adults, and senior citizens. I have often referred to my peers as
my generation, never as teenagers. However, it was brought to my attention that
maybe it isnt a generation thing-maybe its an age thing. That made me think about a
lesson in a psychology class I had a few years ago; in this class we discussed Erik
Erikson (Bill Segfreid, Psychology 1101). He believed that we had different virtues and
psychological crises at each age and that shapes how we acted at that age. This made
me wonder- what if Erik Erikson is right? What if its our age and our inner or social
conflicts that make us act a certain way differently and we are just blaming it on a
generational gap. To figure this out, I asked one or two people from the same age group
about their goals, words to describe themselves, most important things to them in their
life right now, and how these answers wouldve been different five or ten years ago and
ten years from now. I also asked about what they would save in a fire (considering all

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people and animals were safe) and who/what they would take to if they were going to
live on a deserted island for a year. After discovering little differences in some thingsand huge differences in others- Ive discovered that both our generation and age have a
huge effect on our personality.
While I was comparing similarities and differences of my interviews, I noticed an
unexpected connection. Think about your goals as a person aged fifteen to twenty- what
would you say your goals were for the next year? The next five years? I was expecting
more social and personality answers to be honest- just to prove that we are a more selfobsessed age or generation, but every answer had to do with school. The interviewees
between fifteen and twenty-two had either all short-term goals being related to school or
at least one goal having to do with school. The long term goals of these three ages also
all had success listed. This made me wonder: is it our age that is obsessed with this
idea of success, therefore striving to excel at school? Or is it primarily a consequence of
our generation?
Wanting to investigate this a little more, I asked three adults (aged between forty
and fifty): What were your goals in high school? My aunt told me it was to have a
family, a good job, and a nice house. My mom told me she had no goals- she was just
working on being self-sufficient. My dad said he was doing terrible in school and was
just hoping to graduate, afterwards he wanted to go to work in a factory. (InterviewTrantham, Lathrop) According to Value Options, millennials have a fear of living poorly
for the sake of a worthy lifestyle rather than wealth. I asked my dad if he thought this
need to do well in school and be successful is really an age difference or a new time.
Without hesitation he blamed it on the timing- When I was in school, there were so

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many industrial jobs that always had openings for basically any one. When NAFTA
(North American Trade Agreement) happened [in 1994] your generation lost all of those
entry-level opportunities and was raised to know how competitive jobs were and you
knew that just graduating high school didnt cut it anymore. (Trantham, Interview)
Erik Eriksons theory for ages twelve through eighteen is that we are struggling
with our roles in society. We feel a need to find a place for ourselves in society and
figure out what we are doing with our lives or else we will suffer from role confusion.
Role confusion is when you feel lost in society and start exploring different lifestyles,
whether it be politically, education-wise, or sexually. The virtue focused on at this age is
fidelity, in the sense that we feel the need to pick a future identity and stick to it so
others will be viewing you that way also. In other words, we feel the need to make
permanent decisions for our future in hopes that people will recognize you for your role
in society (Simply Psychology). I think thats why we always find ourselves freaking out
when we find out that our plan in life isnt going to work out the way we want it to.
In a way, you can see that in all the answers from the people, adults or young
adults, I asked about high school goals, they were all (except for my mother) about our
part in society. Whether it is to be a mother, a factory worker, a college student, to be a
successful career woman/man, it was what they were trying to make their role.
At one point during my interviews I asked one of the hardest questions for
someone to answer without trying to ask someone else: How would you describe
yourself? I asked each person to give me three words they would use to describe
themselves, these words could be nouns (such as mother or daughter), adjectives,
positive things, or negative things. What I noticed is that the people I interviewed

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between fifteen and nineteen used one noun as a choice- two being friend and one
being giver. As the ages got higher (twenty-two and thirty-one), the word hard-working
popped up which, in my opinion, means a new stage in your life that you are working at.
The most interesting part of this was the older adults (forty and older) answers. The
answers were reflective in a way, they symbolized almost a result. The answers were
words such as semi-happy, satisfied, free, and relaxed.
In fact, I also asked everyone a question about Maslows Hierarchy of Needs.
Abraham Maslow believed that we spent our whole life climbing a pyramid of sorts to
try to fulfill our lives. The base of this pyramid was composed primarily of basic needs to
survive- water, food, oxygen. You work your way up through safety and security, love
and belonging, self-esteem, and then self-actualization is the zenith. Erikson says
hardly anyone has ever completed this, only the likes of people such as Albert Einstein
and Steven Hawking. Self-actualization is reaching your full potential in all areasmorality, creativity, intelligence, and etcetera. Yet, the interviewees thirty-one years old
and above all said they were working on self-actualization now whereas every individual
fifteen to twenty-two years old that I asked this question to said they were nowhere
close to that point- in fact they werent sure that they would ever achieve it. Does our
age make us surer of ourselves as we get older or is a certain amount of confidence
installed in us depending on when we were born? (About Education)
The problem with age and generation changes is that we cant say which one
affects your personality more than the other one. In my opinion, our age reflects a stage
in our life with a matching maturity, but how we respond to the responsibilities is our
generation. I feel like our generation is a setting for our story and our age correlates with

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it to create a plot. People my age are stressed and focused on winning competitions
and excelling in school to support a comfortable lifestyle that we would be working
towards for years after high school. People in high school decades ago, on the other
hand, had their eyes on getting straight into their roles- workforce and mothers. People
older seem to be more fulfilled in their lives at such an early age, yet people my age feel
like we will never be fulfilled. Is it because the older generations started their roles
quicker, almost achieving a four to six year head start? Or is it because at our age we
are just focused on trying to survive our battles right now? Either way, you always have
two outs when someone cant grasp the reason you act why you do- you can blame it
on your age or your generation and the times.