Being in your twenties is both exhilarating and stressful. We finish our studies, we start our career, we look for a roof and we think about the future… But it’s not easy when the cost of living explodes, the price of houses flies away and the climate is unsettled. , like right now. Was it easier to be the same age in the early 1980s? Viewpoints of today’s young people and those of yesterday on the torments of early adulthood, when economic gloom strikes. Last text of a series of five.
To be young is to have the future ahead of you. But the latter can be uncertain and even worrying.
Originally, Odile Diotte, 21, thought of moving from Sherbrooke to Montreal to undertake university studies in sociology. But faced with the desperate slowness of the world to rise to the existential challenge posed by global warming, she changed her mind. She came to settle in the metropolis this summer, but to follow a one-year technical training in urban horticulture. We’ll see after.
“Since we don’t really know when the system will ‘crash’, I told myself that rather than locking myself up in a university for all these years, I was going to learn, for a year, to reconnect with the earth, then live the experiences that I have to live, she explains. I felt an urgency to get a diploma as soon as possible to start my professional life as soon as possible, while there is still time. »
Odile Diotte defends herself well from giving in to irrational panic. “It may sound a little alarmist, but I know a lot of people who feel like that. People of my parents’ generation made long-term plans. They took the time to study and take care of their careers, telling themselves that at worst, they would retire. But we don’t know what will happen. »
Apart from the economic context, which was very difficult in the 1980s, Ann-Marie Gagné does not remember having been inhabited, at the same age, by the same type of anxiety about the future as the young people of ‘today. “I would say that we were still rather carefree. There was the debate on the independence of Quebec… But we were not so aware of everything that was happening in the world, ”says the woman, who was 22 years old during the first referendum on sovereignty, in 1980.
The presence of inheritances will, in the years to come, contribute to the increase in inequalities
“Today, with the means of communication and social networks, young people are much more open to the world. I think they are also more socially involved,” she says.
Another kind of end of the world
While there was no talk of climate change or eco-anxiety in the 1980s, the world was nonetheless grappling with existential threats, including that of nuclear war. The escalation of tension between the Western and Soviet blocs and the resumption of their arms race will even lead, at the beginning of the decade, the scientists behind the “doomsday clock” to move its hands further closer to the end of the world than we have seen since the invention of the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s.
The anxiety-provoking climate is imprinted in popular culture. The National Film Board won an Oscar in 1982 for a documentary that depicted the scale of the threat (If this planet is close to your heart). The TV movie The day after (The Day After), which recounts the consequences of a nuclear war, exploded the ratings of American television the following year. In his song Russians, Britain’s Sting says he hopes that “Russians also love their children”. His compatriot Kate Bush imagines herself breathing in radioactive fallout (breathing). The Pink Floyd bands (Two Suns in the Sunset), Nena (99 Luftballoons) and Alphaville (forever Young) are also part of the lot, to name a few. Even the singer Daniel Lavoie speaks of the “children of the bomb” (They love each other).
This fear leaves traces, especially on young people. Psychologists are then looking into the effects of “nuclear anxiety” on the development and personality of some. All of this will happily subside with the end of the Cold War.
not all equal
Today, there is the climate crisis which is worrying, but not only, underlines Sol’Abraham Castenada Ouellet, 23 years old. The inequality of opportunity is also worrying, believes the one who has to deal with student debt. “In my class at university, the vast majority of people went to private schools. We are only two or three to have gone to the public. I see that I don’t come from the same background and that I haven’t benefited from the same support as others, ”says the neuroscience student.
Some have to pedal twice as hard as others to reach the same stage, he observes, even if Quebec is one of the least unequal societies, thanks to a strong welfare state.
These inequalities are expressed, for example, in access to property. “Parents and grandparents are, nowadays, for some of them at least, able to help young people increase their initial down payment when buying a property” , points out Simon Langlois, professor emeritus in sociology at Laval University.
“The presence of inheritances will, in the years to come, contribute to the increase in inequalities, because heritage is very unequally distributed, adds the expert. Some of the young people will be able to benefit from financial aid when this heritage goes down to the younger generations. [Or]this situation was exceptional in the 1980s.”
Young people today will also have to come to terms with an aging Quebec society, recalls María Eugenia Longo, professor at the National Institute for Scientific Research and director of the Youth and Society Observatory. “In the early 1980s, young people represented more than a third of the population in Quebec. Today, they are less than a quarter. Not only do they take up less space in numbers, but they also have a greater intergenerational burden to bear. »
Indeed, in 1981, there were about eight Quebecers of working age (15 to 64) for every senior (65 and over). In 2022, there were only three left. And this number is expected to drop further in the coming years, according to projections.
Odile Diotte ensures that she is not overly concerned with all these challenges that await her generation. “I am not pessimistic. There are still some great things happening in Quebec. »
She pauses when asked to give an example. Then she replies: “It snowed yesterday and it’s white everywhere. It’s nice. »