Does Gen Y Lack Grit?

Survey the media on the topic of young people in America and you'll encounter two very different images. On one hand, Gen Y is often described as battered by recession, struggling to start their careers and suffering from rising poverty rates.

Contrast this image of a desperate, demoralized generation struggling with economic forces beyond its control, with the other predominant portrayal of young people -- as coddled, entitled brats, ill prepared for the real world by their doting parents. Business owners complain on BNET about their inability to find a non-spoiled young person to hire and elsewhere commentators point the finger squarely at helicopter parents for Gen Y's lack of work ethic.

So which is it -- is Gen Y sheltered or shell shocked?

Two new voices recently weighed in on this debate. Veteran entrepreneur Elon Musk, for one, recently told an awards ceremony hosted by the Churchill Club, that kids today are too spoiled to be strong in spirit.

"I had a terrible upbringing. I had a lot of adversity growing up. One thing I worry about with my kids is they don't face enough adversity," he said.

And he's not the only one that feels, recession aside, many young people are too sheltered to learn to have strong wills. The New York Times Magazine education edition last weekend featured a lengthy piece on the efforts of Dominic Randolph, headmaster of the exclusive Riverdale Country School in New York City, to teach his charges good character. Referencing his own youth, Randolf explains what exactly they lack:

After two years at Harvard, Randolph left for a year to work in a low-paying manual job, as a carpenter's helper, trying to find himself. After college, he moved for a couple of years to Italy, where he worked odd jobs and studied opera. It was an uncertain and unsettled time in his life, filled with plenty of failed experiments and setbacks and struggles. Looking back on his life, though, Randolph says that the character strengths that enabled him to achieve the success that he has were not built in his years at Harvard or at the boarding schools he attended; they came out of those years of trial and error, of taking chances and living without a safety net. And it is precisely those kinds of experiences that he worries that his students aren't having.

So which of the images of Gen Y do these new voices in the debate support? In a sense, both of them. Musk and Randolf are clearly talking about a relatively privileged subset of kids whose parents can afford to protect them from hard knocks through their childhoods (and often beyond). For those kids without that kind of support, struggles and frustration are much more of a problem than lack of adversity.

But it's not just rich kids and poor kids that are divided between spoiled and struggling, younger and older members of Gen Y are also experiencing radically different things. Many kids grow up in protective (but not necessarily extremely wealthy) families and then face a hard slap of reality when their schooling ends and they face the cold truths of the working world for the first time. In this way, many kids actually manage to embody both Gen Y stereotypes at different points -- shielded from adversity at first and then becoming battered and disillusioned by the difficulties their childhoods never prepared them for.

Do you worry along with Musk and Randolf that young people are too sheltered to develop strong character? Or are you more worried about the under-discussed subset of less privileged kids who face no lack of adversity?

Read More on BNET:

• Why Gen Y's Slow Path to Adulthood Is a Good Thing
• Gen Y's Lowered Expectations: Wise of Misery Inducing?
• Who Gives a Hoot About Gen Y?