Superficially, we appear to be doing about as well as my parents. Once you dig in deeper, we are much better off. Comparing myself with my father, we're both college educated professionals with good jobs in the oil industry.
We both had two cars. They had an old Cutlas and a Bug with no AC. We have a minivan and a luxury sedan that are much nicer than those cars.
We both had similar sized houses. There house was dark and drafty. Ours is much more open with nicer amenities.
We took similar vacations (3-4 weeks per year). As a kid, we stayed at Motel 6 and Super 8 hotels. Now we stay in nothing worse than a Hampton Inn and often nicer places. We used to always drive on vacations. Now we fly on most of our distant trips.
We both had one wage earner and one homemaker. Not too much has changed there. I work longer hours than my father and spend more time at home checking e-mails and talking business on the phone. On the other hand, my commute is much shorter and my office is much nicer.
When you look at technology and consumer goods, we're much better off today. The gap is enormous. Rotary phones with expensive long distance compared with iPhones and no long distance charges. A 19" B&W TV and a 25" color TV that broken down annually compared with a 50" HD TV and a 100" home theater screen that never miss a beat. 5 channels vs Satellite TV, DVD players, DVRs, Netflix, etc. Home computers, Internet, and video games weren't around when I was a kid. Now everyone has their own computers in the house, one in the car, all sorts of game systems for the TVs and handhelds. Online shopping. Satellite radio (although they pretty much quit making good new songs years ago). It seems like just about every material thing we have today is better than it was when I was a kid.
Our neighborhoods are similar. We still have lots of kids at our house. We still have block parties every year. We had good neighbors then and we do now. It seems like fewer of my friends were in day care (actually none that I remember) compared with my kid's friends, but they still have plenty of company during the day.
A lot fewer people had pools when I was a kid. We all just swam at the neighborhood pool. Now, about 50% of the houses in our neighborhood (including ours) have pools.
So I guess if you just looked at the basics - social standing, house size, neighborhoods, you'd say that I'm about as well off as my father was at my age. If you actually had to choose between the two situations, it would be no contest. I think we're way better off than they imagined possible.
What does the future hold? I'm guessing similar changes. I'm guessing that my kids will face a world with a new set of challenges, but that it will be a better place in the long run than it is today. We'll see.
I think we're the losers in my family - everyone has at least a college degree, and most have masters (as do DH and myself). My sister, and all of my cousins, live in HUGE expensive homes.
They did not go to college.
