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Book Review
| Rebecca Huntley, The World According to Y: Inside the New Adult Generation, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2006. pp. viii + 218. $24.95 paper.
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| It is not particularly surprising (or creative) that the successors to Generation X are to be known as Generation Y. What is surprising, especially for someone (like me) caught on the cusp of these two cohorts, is how far apart these two generations' outlooks on life are. Marketing and management hype surrounding Generation Y (those born in or after 1982) has been around a few years. What Rebecca Huntley sought to do was uncover the complexities, contradictions and quarrels of the young people behind the label. The result is The World According to Y. |
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As any Bold and the Beautiful fan knows, the clash between the generations can make for great entertainment. In The World According to Y, the clash is personalised as Gen Xer Huntley gets to know more about our newest adult generation, confessing that her feelings about them 'swung back and forth, from admiration to envy, from sympathy to suspicion' (p. 186). |
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Her vacillating views arise from her discovery that Gen Y members are an audacious bunch, albeit also displaying extreme naiveté at times. All this is new to Huntley, steeped in the cynical Zeitgeist of Gen X. In the workplace, Huntley finds that young people are ambitious, confident, uncommitted to their employer, and unfazed by job insecurity. They expect and demand flexibility, especially as it concerns balancing work and family. Generation Y are not politically apathetic, but their political engagement with politics is premised on a distrust of political institutions, especially politicians and the media, and a preference for the global over the national. |
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Undoubtedly, the main strength of the book is that it brings together a discussion of Generation Y's approach to friendships, relationships, feminism, work, politics, body image, and consumption. The book avoids becoming a collection of disparate topics because Huntley presents a clear argument that the attitudes of Generation Y have been shaped by the prevailing conditions of their childhood and adolescence. For example, the optimism of Generation Y can be attributed to the current economic good times, but Huntley shows that this is tempered by the sharp recollection of their parents' retrenchments in the 1980s and 1990s and the rising cost of education. Socially, Generation Y is the first generation where dual-income households became the norm and where divorce also became commonplace. Huntley argues that this has moulded their determination to better balance work and family, but also shaped their ideas about friendship and marriage and their socialisation as consumers. |
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As the basis of her claims, Huntley has added interviews with over 50 Generation Y members to a conglomeration of academic studies, marketing surveys, reports, ABS data, and newspaper reports. There are good sections that challenge the popular stereotypes of Generation Y, and which show the diversity of attitudes within it. Under particular scrutiny is the gap between female Generation Y members' high expectations of balancing work and family and of sharing family responsibilities, and the more traditional attitudes of their male partners. |
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One weakness of the book is its uncertain position on one of the most contested debates in youth studies: has the transition to adulthood (in particular full-time employment) been transformed or merely delayed? In relation to work and careers, the book does not untangle young people's experiences in the youth labour market, where they are content to switch jobs in the tight labour market rather than challenge their poor conditions, with their expectations and aspirations in their 'adult' career. Huntley's analysis leans to the 'transformed' side, in spite of evidence in the World According to Y and elsewhere shows that once young people begin their 'real job', they are committed to their work (if not their employer per se) and do worry about job security and unemployment. Young people's acceptance of irregular work has more to do with the lengthening of the pre-career phase, than any fundamental shift in values, which Huntley seems to implicitly accept. |
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Although the book has attempted to cast a wide net, avoiding a preoccupation with generational elites, the stories of the tertiary-educated crowd out the experiences of other young people, distorting the descriptions of how young people work and consume. University participation rates may have climbed dramatically, but still less than half of all young people complete a university degree. There was scope to give greater prominence to how young people with TAFE qualifications, or no post-school qualifications, are confronting their futures. |
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Huntley's considered contribution takes the debate on Generation Y beyond the 'Look at me, I'm successful' offerings that have so far defined the field. The World According to Y provides an enjoyable, revealing and balanced insight into the attitudes and motivations of the youngest generation of citizens, workers and consumers. |
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| Griffith University |
DAMIAN OLIVER | |
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