Thatcher’s children bite back
As a ‘child of Thatcher’ who came of age in the 1980s, I must respond to Agnes Frimston’s reflections (‘I blame the parents’) on how Baby Boomer parents are blocking prospects for the generation of 1980s-born ‘Millennials’.
There was no easy life for graduates in the 1980s. Youth unemployment rose to 18 per cent in 1986 and the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ provoked more social unrest and rioting than now.
As for the obsession with property ownership, the majority of London-based graduates in the 80s neither expected nor wanted to own property in their twenties or early thirties; our universe was the multiple flat-share. Unlike the Millennials, we were not going back home after graduating. Our main aim was to assert our independence from our parents at every turn.
