My oldest
daughter, who just finished her freshman year in college, wants to be a
nurse. Not sure where that calling came
from, since her mother has always been weak-kneed at the sight of blood. But I love that she wants to make her living
as a healer and nurturer. She will be a natural at it, too, as she has always
been balm for my spirit.
While I think
she has chosen the perfect profession at a time when the world needs more
healing, I worry about her, too. CBS News
reports that half of recent college graduates can't find full-time jobs. What must the parents of these graduates be
thinking right now? I would imagine they feel cheated out of a rite of
passage: The right for them to pass on
self-sufficiency to their children.
And do these
grads who can’t find jobs feel hoodwinked? Think about it. From the time our children are old enough to
read a book, we impress upon them the importance of learning and getting
educated. “Without a good education, it
will be hard for you to find a good job someday.” Haven’t we all recited some variation of this
mantra through the years?
Now, record
numbers of young adults are moving back in with their parents, crippled by grim
job prospects and insurmountable student-loan debt. There's even a name for them: Boomerang kids. In fact, the Census Bureau reports
the number of shared households increased 11.4 percent to 22 million, between
2007 and 2010.
What kind of
America are we passing on to our children – the new generation of dependents? The last four years of an ineffective presidency -- more focused on dragging down the country with a stratospheric
deficit than trying to create jobs -- has placed every parent in the
uncomfortable position of having to tell our children the truth: “It doesn’t matter how hard you work in
school to get good grades, Sweetie, you’re pretty much screwed once you
graduate.”
So, as my
18-year-old transitions into adulthood and takes a giant leap of faith into her
vastly uncertain future, I am hovering over her as a helicopter mom one last
time to encourage her to do something that will greatly improve her job
prospects one day:
