Growing up in Australia, as a member of Generation Y, son of two Baby Boomers, and grandson of post World War Two grandparents, it is apparent that there are hugely differing attitudes, social norms and beliefs towards work, as well as almost all aspects of life, between generations. For this essay, I interviewed my Pop with regard to his working life, compared it to my own, and then examined the relevant social conditions that framed these disparities. My Pop, named Colin Smith, was born in suburban Sydney in 1933, which makes him eighty-two this year. He did not complete high school and worked as a general labourer for the entirety of his working life. I am a twenty seven year old male, and grew up in the coastal city of Newcastle, the same city where I completed primary school, high school, and studied primary education at university, the field where I now work fulltime.

There are significant and numerous differences between my own, current work life, and my Pop’s when he was the same age. Firstly, at the same age, being twenty-seven, I have merely completed five years of full time work as I only commenced my job as a primary school teacher at age twenty-two, upon completion of high school and then university. It feels as if I am in the infancy of my work life. In contrast, my Pop was in the twilight of his work life, as he retired at age thirty due to the physical strain of hard labour and working full time since the age of twelve, meaning that he commenced his work career a full decade earlier than I did. When I asked him why it was that he started work at such an early age, he replied that his “parents did not really see the merit in education. I could read and write okay and that was enough for them. They thought that I was physically capable enough to work and contribute to the household, just like my older brothers, who were fourteen and sixteen at the time, so that’s what I did. Education just wasn’t as important as putting food on the table and having a roof over our heads.”

The second major difference I noted was the lack of multiculturalism in the workforce when my Pop was working, and his lack of tolerance toward foreigners and their cultures, when compared to the high levels of multiculturalism in my own workplace, and the high tolerance I have for my foreign counterparts and their cultures. Working and cooperating with people from foreign countries is so commonplace and instilled so heavily in present day Australian society that it is not something that I have ever questioned or queried. It is just something that has been a part of every aspect of my life from as early as I can remember. Conversely, my Pop only met somebody from another country at age sixteen “when a few Dutch families moved into my neighbourhood after the war. (He) didn’t mind them, but didn’t like working with them because they could barely speak English and made (him) feel uncomfortable and awkward. Even the food they ate at smoko annoyed (him)! It was all just so odd.”

The third fundamental difference towards work that I distinguished was my Pops “take what you can get, when you can get it” attitude towards jobs when in comparison to my extremely more selective and tentative approach to careers. He was “over the moon when (he) got a job as a trench digger at age twenty, which involved about twelve hours of work a day of hard labour for not a great deal of pay, because (he) just felt lucky to have a job and to be able to feed (his) wife and kids and pay the bills.” Obviously he was not focused on finding a job that would be personally fulfilling or enjoyable, which are two factors that I endeavour to achieve when looking for a job. In fact, the prospect of digging trenches is so nauseating to me that I would likely move back in with my parents until I found employment more to my liking. I cannot justify doing something that would make me miserable everyday unless absolutely necessary, which appears to be the situation with regard to my Pop in his early twenties. In comparison, the fact that I had ample time and no real pressure to find fulltime employment immediately was a real luxury that I was afforded through a combination of my parents financial support, as well as the governments. I find the financial support of the government towards youths looking for employment to be beneficial and accept it without reservation or anguish, where as my Pop felt that government “handouts” and financial support were “shameful, and undermined (his) ability to provide for his family.” He even described having to go on a disability pension at age thirty due to rheumatoid arthritis and an ailing body from prolonged periods of extremely intense physical labour as “distressing”, and his former workmates used to “torment (him) down at the pub for receiving government benefits, even though there was nothing (he) could do about it and so badly wanted to still be working.”

Furthermore, upon comparison of my own and my Pops work life it became apparent to me that being considered a “hard worker” was something to be extremely proud of for my Pop and his colleagues, and was definitely something what they all aspired to be. He said that he used to take great pride when the other workers would say- “Gee, Colin is a bloody hard worker, he’s strong as an ox.” Being a hard worker was so revered amongst he and his friends that even if a person they knew was a “bit of an idiot” and was being gossiped about, it would not be uncommon for somebody to interject and say “he might be a halfwit, but my gosh- the guy can work!” Personally, having the ability to blindly follow orders and work hard at something such as a labouring job holds little merit and fails to excite my, as it did my Pop and his friends. This is not to say that I think that I am above these kinds of work, or do not value hard work, I only feel that hard work should be directed at something a person is passionate about, or sees great importance in. Moreover, I get the sense that my Pops work colleagues were a very tight team, whose relationships often always extended into the social aspects of their lives. He said that they “always looked out for each other and made sure that they stuck together at work, and were often around at each others place for barbeques and dinner.” This kind of comradeship seems almost non-existent in my workplace as I barely even communicate with some of my colleagues, and rarely socialize with any of them outside of the work place.

The immense disparities with regard to work attitudes and practises amongst my own and my Pop’s generation, which there are two differentiations of, being- familial, comprising of generational relationships between family members (Blatterer 2014, p.4), and historical, which refer to the historical generations consisting of members who are “united by momentous historical events” (Blatterer 2014, p.4), can be explained due to the relevant social conditions of the time. I belong to Generation Y, consisting of people born in or after 1982 (Huntley 2006, p.13). Generation Y, or “Gen Yers”, are defined by the technological evolution of smartphones and tablets that have so heavily influenced their lives, by a philosophical sense of freedom, a belief that almost anything is possible, a strong emphasis on education, and a financial reliance on parents that will “stretch well beyond the end of high school and university” (Huntley 2006, p.16). These attitudes, which extend to the workforce, reflect my generation’s life course, which Shanahan and Macmillan (Blatterer 2006, p.2) describe as the social circumstances that we were born into and form the basis of our sense of self throughout our lives. With this in mind, it is evident why my Pop’s sense of sense of self and his place within society differed so greatly, as a considerable amount of his formative years were directly after the end of World War Two, when there was significant tension and a sense of fear that communism was going to take over the world and that the likelihood of another war was high. Locally, there was a mass influx of immigrants, which changed the identity of Australia forever, and there was great uncertainty and security with regard to work and the economy, which clearly reflects my Pop’s attitudes towards it.

In conclusion, it is obvious that generational core beliefs and attitudes toward any range of topics is heavily influenced by the situation they were born into. The country they resided in as a child, the number of siblings they had, the economy, the politics, and the major events that occurred socially, all significantly impact the social norms and views of education, work, gender, and family, which is why views on these topics differ so vastly from generation to generation. It seems impossible that the people that grew up during the terror of either of the world wars, and the consequent social implications of them, could share the same nonchalant attitudes towards life as those who grew up in a mostly peaceful world, and this echoes in the stark differences of my own and my Pops working life, despite being of familial lineage.

Blatterer, H 2014, What is sociology?, lecture notes distributed in the course, SGY290 Generations: Childhood, adulthood, old age, Macquarie University, Sydney, 01 December.

Blatterer, H 2014, The life course and sociology, lecture notes distributed in the course, SGY290 Generations: Childhood, adulthood, old age, Macquarie University, Sydney, 08 December.

Blatter, H 2014, Generations and sociology, lecture notes distributed in the course, SGY290 Generations: Childhood, adulthood, old age, Macquarie University, Sydney, 08 December.

Edmunds, June and Turner, Bryan S. 2002, ‘Introduction: Generations, War and Intellectuals’, Generations, Culture and Society, Buckingham, Open University Press, pp. 1-23.

Huntley, R. 2006, ‘From X to Y’, The World According to Y: Inside the New Adult Generation, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, pp. 1-23.

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