Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

by Anne Helen Petersen

As Michael Kimmel, author of Manhood in America, described to Lockman, men find all manner of ways to “opt out” of equal labor. “Men often tell me, ‘My wife gets on me all the time because I don’t vacuum, and I’m watching a baseball game, and she comes in and says, “At least you could vacuum.” So I do, and then she comes back and tells me I didn’t do it very thoroughly. So I just figure I won’t do it anymore.’ I say to them, ‘Well, that’s an interesting response! If I were your supervisor at work and I assigned you a report, and I wasn’t happy with what you turned in, and I told you so, would your reply be, “Well, then, I’ll never do that again!” ’ ?” When I’ve recounted that story, in person or online, some respond that the problem lies in viewing one partner (the mother) as the boss, and the other (the father) as an employee. It’s true: This is not an ideal scenario. But it’s what happens when one partner is reluctant, or actively refuses, to perform equal labor in the home. “Men find ways of being so difficult that it’s not worth it,” the sociologist Lisa Wade explains.

You can’t fix it with “self-care,” a concept originated by Audre Lorde to describe how to give oneself space to recover from the exhausting battle of fighting systemic oppression, then co-opted by privileged white women to grant permission to escape many of the standards and schedules they’ve (wittingly or not) helped perpetuate. You can make yourself (temporarily) feel better, but the world will still feel broken.

Think not just about how to reduce your own, but how your own actions are sparking and fanning burnout in others.

Millennials have been denigrated and mischaracterized, blamed for struggling in situations that set us up to fail. But if we have the endurance and aptitude and wherewithal to work ourselves this deeply into the ground, we also have the strength to fight. We have little savings and less stability. Our anger is barely contained. We’re a pile of ashes smoldering, a bad memory of our best selves. Underestimate us at your peril: We have so little left to lose.