Risk-Averse Generation?

Yes, I am a baby-boomer. In my young and middle adult years, all I heard was how mobile Americans had become. We gain our identity as we leave home and explore. This is a large country, and we take advantage of it. We move away from home. “Go West, young man,” was the mantra. That was true for the history of the Plasterer family, as we moved from Lancaster County, PA, to Huntington, IN, to northern IA, to southern MN, and eventually some moved to CA. In my immediate family, the five of us children, born in MN, now live in MO, WI, IN, SD, and VA.
 

However, now I learn that Americans are not as mobile as in generations past. According to one study in 2012, "the likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped over 40 percent since the 1980s, and the proportion of young adults living at home doubled between 1980 and 2008."

Given the economic stresses that many young adults must face, one can understand this. I have known people for whom the Great Depression was formative in their teen years, and they tended to be risk-averse. My interest in this article is quite narrow, however. My interest is not so much about a new generation coming into adulthood. For me, it raises the general question of risk. Have we as a people become risk averse?

From Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring comes this commentary on following the road:

Frodo was silent. He too was gazing eastward along the road, as if he had never seen it before. Suddenly he spoke, aloud but as if to himself, saying slowly:

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

"That sounds like a bit of old Bilbo's rhyming," said Pippin. "Or is it one of your imitations? It doesn't sound at all encouraging."

"I don't know," said Frodo.

"It came to me then, as if I was making it up, but I may have heard it long ago. Certainly it reminds me very much of Bilbo, in the last years, before he went away. He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door,' he used to say. 'You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to.'"

"Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles." Horace Greeley gave this advice in 1833. It has summarized the idea of westward expansion and the ideal of taking the risk of getting up and moving ever since.

For generations, people did this. However, today, people are staying put.

"Sometime in the past 30 years, someone has hit the brakes," write Todd and Victoria Buchholz in The New York Times (March 11, 2012). "Americans -- particularly young Americans -- have become risk-averse and sedentary." To support their case, the Buchholzes point out that the likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped over 40 percent since the 1980s.

"We are a nation of movers and shakers," insist the Buchholzes. They recall that the Pilgrims climbed into boats to cross the Atlantic, the Greatest Generation shipped out to fight in Europe and the Pacific, and the children of the 60s joined the Peace Corps.

"But Generation Y has become Generation Why Bother," they conclude. Why bother to move out of the family home? Why bother to cross the country in search of work? Why bother to journey into an unknown future? I have noticed that some think of this as a new style of parenting, in which parents hover over their children, not wanting them to experience anything negative. Thus, everyone makes the team, you do not keep score at games, and everyone gets a trophy for participating.

I am not sure if this generational shift is true – yet. However, if I go by my family, both of my boys are still close to parents. I know that is anecdotal, but it is consistent with what some think is a trend.

My larger concern is that of risk. Are we as a nation becoming risk-averse? Are we becoming sedentary? Something in me thinks this is not good.