Inter-generational warfare?

When I was a child, my father was a chaplain in the USAF and during a scripture study session, he shared a teaching that "the time will come when children will rise up against their parents and parents against their children.” This seemed like a strange thing to me and I asked him what he thought it meant. He replied, “I’m not sure exactly but my best guess is that it will have to do with money. What else divides people more than money?”

Well . . . at the time, I sloughed off the lesson not thinking it particularly relevant to me or my life – but oh! How things have changed!

In my generation, we’re starting to see a tension develop between generations that has never been seen before. Young adults are expressing resentment towards their grandparents' generation for government debt and social entitlement programs that threaten to enslave younger generations for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, the parents of those young people are looking to those very same grandparents – their own parents – with a mixture of love and frustration: gratitude and respect for their own care and upbringing yet frustration and anxiety over the prospect of caring for those parents physically, emotionally, and financially as they age – all while those adults children are trying to support their own children in college and financially prepare for their own dream of retirement.

Can we “do it all at once”? Can we “have it all” as some people say? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, my generation needs to initiate serious conversations with our parents and with our children about the future, what it may bring, and what we'll need to do to be prepared.