Generation Confidence

Generation Y is often mocked for its narcissism and supreme self confidence, but Judith Warner writes that pumped-up egos may be just the thing for weathering our economic storm. “A consensus has emerged that, psychologically, they’re a generation of basket cases: profoundly narcissistic and deprived of a sense of agency by their anxiously overinvolved parents — in short, a ‘nation of wimps,’ as Hara Estroff Marano, the Psychology Today editor at large, has put it.” But, concludes Warner, “Maybe chronic unease has simply raised this generation’s tolerance level for stress, leaving it uniquely well equipped to deal with uncertainty.”