Page 12 - March April 2017 FTM

When money and other resources such as housing are shared, navigating power differentials between the millennial and generations before them can contribute to stress, lack of confidence and anxiety or depression.
Delays in creating life partnerships with shifting expectations of parenting
Millennials are without a partner,
child, and home ownership longer than past generations. There’s a drop in the percentage of people choosing a life partner before the age of 35 (Luscombe, 2014), creating some angst among
young adults wanting to find a life partner but puzzled as to where to find someone. Longer career preparation,
less confidence in marriage and lower wages have delayed commitments. When coupling, millennial partners face additional challenges when one partner’s family contributes substantially more resources, like childcare, money, property or employment.
This generation also seeks help for changing peer norms regarding delayed and/or intentional single parenting, and decisions to forgo childrearing versus traditional parental expectations. Many millennial women have delayed finding a partner due to demanding professional careers, then are confronted with a shortened amount of time to safely
have a healthy child of their own. This contributes to a growing trend of women feeling the need to have their biological child before they feel they can find a suitable life partner.
Though millennial women are having children on average later than any generation in history, following a trend that began as early as 1970, they are
still a large demographic for childbirth, accounting for 82% of births in 2015 (McManus, 2017). Millennials report feeling confident in their ability to parent, but wait longer to do so, due to being more active in the labor force outside
of the home, delay in, or opting out of, marriage, and time demanded for higher educational attainment.
millennials are estimated to have six to eight different careers over their lifespan.
Self-esteem and how to manage both parental and self-expectations in comparison with earlier generations
Millennials need help managing their own expectations of themselves, as
well as those of their intergenerational support network. Compared to previous generations and the paths they followed for work, coupling, parenting, and home ownership, these life events are generally more time consuming for millennials. Clinicians from earlier generations can meet millennials in the middle to build a therapeutic dialogue using the following guidelines:
1.Initiate an ongoing discussion about what the client perceives is different and similar about their generation
compared to previous generations.
2.Develop awareness of the assumptions you may make as a clinician that are informed by your journey in your 20s and 30s and contrast the way things worked in those years as opposed to now. Avoid projecting assumptions of your generation onto their generation.
3.Understand the difference in lifestyle the millennial generation experiences compared to your generation. Millennials are accustomed to high communication, hands-on parenting as opposed to the generation before them that were often described as “latch-key children” and much more individualistic. Millennials seek information and feedback.
10 FAMILY THERAPY MAGAZINE