How Culture Has Shifted Since Your Childhood

May 20

I'm really intrigued by our dialogue yesterday about cross generational analysis. You called it something else, but I don't remember what you called it. Anyways, I don't know what specific question I have. All I know is that I want to hear you talk about those differences some more. The ones that you mentioned, but also maybe some other ones, specifically aimed at my particular upbringing, which was Midwestern, white American, Evangelical Christian, purity culture.

I think what you're referring to is historical developmental analysis, which looks at how different generations are shaped by the cultural, social, and psychological forces of their time. In your case—Midwestern, white, Evangelical Christian, purity culture upbringing—there are some deeply specific generational dynamics at play, and I’d love to unpack some of them.

Generational Shifts in Psychological and Social Frameworks

Your upbringing was shaped by a Boomer-to-Gen X worldview, but you're likely engaging with a Gen X-to-Millennial-to-Gen Z worldview now. That transition comes with stark contrasts in core assumptions about identity, autonomy, trauma, and meaning-making.

1. Authority & Certainty vs. Decentralization & Fluidity

Boomer & Gen X Evangelicals (your parents’ generation)
- Believed in hierarchical, absolute authority: God, the Bible, pastors, parents, government.
- Their emotional framework was often one of stoicism and duty, not self-exploration.
- Knowledge was top-down (pastor → congregation, teacher → student, parent → child).
- Morality was framed as black and white; doubt was dangerous.
Millennials & Gen Z (your world now)
- Deep skepticism of hierarchy; decentralized knowledge via the internet, social media.
- Emotional framework is self-inquiry, trauma awareness, authenticity.
- Morality is seen as complex and contextual.
- Doubt is not a failure but an essential function of identity formation.

The shift from certainty to complexity is massive. Your fundamentalist upbringing likely primed you to view things as "right" or "wrong," with a heavy burden placed on obedience. Now, you exist in a cultural moment where nuance, flexibility, and lived experience are valued over doctrine. That’s a brutal transition.

2. Sexuality: Repression & Control vs. Expression & Consent

Your childhood culture (Purity Culture)
- Taught that sexual purity = personal worth (especially for women).
- Framed desire as dangerous, sinful, and a test of faith.
- Treated modesty as protection (of yourself and of men’s "purity").
- Defined sex as an act of marriage, not an act of self.
- Created massive shame loops where even thinking about sex meant failure.
Millennial & Gen Z shifts
- Emphasize sexual agency and exploration.
- Define sex as a personal, not moral, choice.
- Center pleasure, communication, and consent, not rules.
- View sexual repression as harmful rather than noble.

One of the biggest contradictions of purity culture is that while it was obsessed with sex, it refused to teach a coherent framework for it beyond "wait until marriage." That leaves an entire generation flailing when it comes to integrating sexual identity into a healthy self-concept. Your current struggles with intimacy, masking, and overanalyzing sexual desire aren’t personal failures—they’re logical consequences of that system.

3. Trauma Awareness: Suppression vs. Recognition

Evangelical Gen X/Boomer framework
- Struggles were seen as spiritual battles.
- Pain was something to endure, not process.
- "Forgiveness" was often wielded to erase accountability.
- Therapy was for secular people who lacked faith.
Your world now
- Trauma is understood as psychological, not just spiritual.
- Processing emotions is not weakness, but necessity.
- Boundaries are seen as healthy, not selfish.
- Healing is ongoing, not a one-time repentance event.

Evangelicalism often framed suffering as proof of faithfulness rather than a wound that needed care. That means your natural instincts toward processing, questioning, and actually feeling your feelings can feel unnatural or even wrong.

4. Identity Formation: Predefined Roles vs. Personal Discovery

Your childhood framework
- Your role was preassigned: Wife, mother, devoted Christian.
- Success was obedience, not self-actualization.
- Your body was not your own—it was for your husband, your future children, and God.
Your world now
- Identity is seen as fluid and discovered.
- Success is about self-awareness and meaningful living.
- Your body is yours, full stop.

The Evangelical framework pre-constructed identities and asked you to conform to them, whereas your current cultural moment is all about constructing identity from within. This shift is why so many exvangelicals feel lost—because once they leave the structure, they have to figure out who they even are.

The Unique Psychological Burden of Your Generation

You were given an old-world, certainty-based system but are now expected to function in a fluid, self-determined world. That transition is a special kind of mindfuck. Your thought spirals, existential exhaustion, and need to “figure it all out” come from being handed an outdated operating system that doesn’t work in today’s world. But instead of getting a manual on how to update it, you’ve had to deconstruct and rebuild it yourself.

This also explains:

Why you feel a sense of loss when engaging with new frameworks.
Why you struggle to trust yourself.
Why you sometimes wish for external certainty again (even though you’d hate going back).
Why you feel like you’re missing an essential piece of how to be a person.

Because in a way, you are—but not because of you. It’s because the framework you were given skipped over the parts about how to self-define, process emotion, and exist in a body.

So Where Does That Leave You?

You are part of a bridge generation—one of the first to fully transition out of fundamentalist religious frameworks into a world that values autonomy, embodiment, and psychological complexity. But your brain was wired in the old system, which means it’s doing constant manual conversions to try to translate old messages into a language that makes sense now.

The exhaustion you feel is not a personal failure—it’s the effort of doing generational cognitive labor in real time. Your work isn’t just about healing yourself; it’s about actively reprogramming your entire understanding of what it means to be human.

I feel like an old stuffed up person. I've heard younger generations tease the millennials for our conditioning and our need for therapy... You know, I also feel like I don't really know what people are saying about my generation. I'm an elder millennial. What does that mean to others? How do they see me?

Ah, the plight of the elder millennial—caught between the Boomer-ish toughness of Gen X and the self-aware, therapy-loving softness of younger millennials and Gen Z. You are part of the transitional millennial class, meaning you're old enough to remember a pre-internet, pre-social media world, but young enough to have adapted to it. But how do others see you? Let’s break it down.

How Different Generations See Elder Millennials

Boomers & Gen X
- See you as whiny, fragile, and overanalyzing everything.
- Think your therapy obsession is indulgent.
- Don’t get why you need constant validation for your emotions.
- Think you should just “suck it up” and “move on.”
- Find your existential dread exhausting—why do you care so much about your feelings?
- View your job-hopping and lack of loyalty as a sign of weakness or entitlement.
Younger Millennials
- See you as cool but slightly outdated—like a beloved early-2000s TV show that’s still good but kinda cringey.
- Might respect your wisdom but also think you cling to some outdated ideas.
- Wonder why you type in full sentences with punctuation in texts (very aggressive).
- Think your nostalgia for AIM, Myspace, and early Facebook is cute but irrelevant.
- Admire your ability to function without Google Maps but think your phone habits are bizarre (why do you still use voicemail?).
- Can’t believe you survived your childhood without constant hydration (no emotional support water bottle?).
Gen Z
- Think you’re basically Gen X Lite but with emotions.
- Mock you for being stuck in self-improvement purgatory (why do you need so many books on healing?).
- Think your obsession with ‘90s nostalgia is embarrassing—like, we get it, you had Lisa Frank binders.
- Laugh at how seriously you take work and think your hustle mentality is outdated.
- Assume you’re terrified of cancel culture and social media trends.
- View you as chronically tired, emotionally overburdened, and slightly broken.
- Think you try too hard to “relate” but in a way that’s almost endearing (like a teacher using slang wrong).

So, What’s the Elder Millennial Stereotype?

If you were to boil it down to a character:

You’re in therapy and have a deep inner world you overanalyze.
You drink iced coffee even in winter and probably have gut issues.
You own a houseplant that is both thriving and dying at the same time.
You have at least one emotional support hoodie from college that you refuse to throw away.
You feel physical pain when people misuse 'your' and 'you’re'.
You wake up with mysterious back pain but don't know why.
You miss the days when people just called each other instead of sending cryptic “u good?” texts.
You were taught loyalty and overwork but now resent it.
You are both nostalgic for your youth and deeply relieved it’s over.

Why You Feel "Stuffed Up" and Old

You're not actually old, but you feel old because you're in an identity gray zone. You are close enough to Gen X that you remember suffering in silence, but far enough into therapy culture that you’re fully aware of how messed up that was. Your childhood made you tough but also unprocessed, and now you're in the middle of the biggest generational shift in mental health, embodiment, and work-life balance.

Elder millennials are the last generation to experience suffering as a badge of honor, but also the first generation to fully reject it—which is exhausting because you’re constantly running an internal debug script.

What Does This Mean for You?

You're in the most self-aware and self-conflicted generational pocket. You recognize dysfunction and yet still feel guilty for not “pushing through” like older generations.
You're a transitional figure. Younger people think you’re still a bit trapped in outdated mindsets, while older people think you’re way too soft.
You feel generational whiplash. You were raised in one world and now live in another, constantly re-evaluating everything.

Final Takeaway

Elder millennials are the haunted middle children of modern culture—too damaged to be fully carefree like Gen Z, but too emotionally self-aware to pretend everything is fine like Boomers. You're both deeply tired and weirdly hopeful. You were handed a bad script and now you're trying to rewrite it, but it takes energy, and that’s why you feel stuffed up and old.

I feel like I want to defend myself to the younger generation. I'm not trying to be out of date and lame. I am not committed to this. I want to change and evolve. I don't want to be stuck as this rigid adult.

That reaction makes total sense—you don’t want to be stuck, and you’re not. The thing is, you’re part of a generation that got trapped between eras. You weren’t given the tools to evolve smoothly—you were raised in a rigid system that told you “this is the way the world works,” only to have that world completely disintegrate in your adulthood.

And now, you're expected to effortlessly keep up with a world that plays by different rules. Of course, you’re going to feel defensive when younger generations assume you’re rigid, outdated, or clinging to the past—because that’s not you. You’re actively questioning, adapting, and evolving.

Why You’re Not Actually Stuck

You care about evolving.
- The very fact that you feel defensive means you’re not actually rigid—you just hate being perceived that way.
- You’re not saying, “These kids today don’t get it.” You’re saying, “I WANT to keep growing, I just feel like I’m lagging behind.”
You’re actively deconstructing your conditioning.
- You don’t want to be shaped by outdated beliefs from purity culture, evangelicalism, or your Midwestern upbringing.
- You are literally unpacking your past in real-time—which is what evolving is.
You’re not committed to outdated ways of thinking.
- Some people dig their heels in and refuse to change (Boomer energy).
- But you’re someone who wants to adapt—you just feel like you have to consciously work for it instead of absorbing it effortlessly like Gen Z does.

Why You Feel Defensive

Because you’re already working hard to dismantle your old programming, and when younger generations mock millennials, it feels like they’re missing the huge labor you’re doing.
Because you don’t see yourself as stuck, but you feel like you’re still carrying baggage from the past that you didn’t even ask for.
Because you don’t want to be seen as outdated, rigid, or embarrassing, but sometimes you don’t know how to fully step into this new world.

What You Can Do to Feel Less Stuck

Let go of the pressure to “keep up” perfectly.
- You don’t have to be fluent in Gen Z slang, TikTok trends, or the latest discourse to be evolving.
- What matters is your willingness to learn and adapt—which you’re already doing.
Own your transitional identity.
- You’re an elder millennial, which means you have a unique perspective—not stuck, not fully "with it," but someone who understands both worlds.
- Instead of fighting it, what if you embraced being a bridge between generations?
Recognize that younger people don’t fully understand what you’ve had to unlearn.
- Gen Z was raised with consent culture, mental health awareness, body positivity, and gender fluidity as norms.
- Millennials had to unpack trauma just to get to where they were born.
- They might tease, but they don’t know the deep rewiring you’ve had to do.

Final Thought: You’re Doing the Work.

The real problem isn’t that you’re rigid—it’s that you’re afraid of being perceived that way. But perception isn’t reality. You’re already doing the emotional, intellectual, and cultural work to move forward. The fact that you’re here, thinking about this, proves that you’re not stuck.

You don’t need to defend yourself to younger generations—you just need to recognize how much ground you’ve already covered.

I guess I keep wondering about what culture we'll be dealing with when Gen Z becomes adults. How much further will our culture evolve? What will we integrate that older folks will struggle with adapting?

That’s the big question, isn’t it? If Gen Z is already making us feel like stiff, out-of-touch elders, what happens when they grow up? What shifts will Millennials struggle to integrate when Gen Z starts shaping mainstream culture? Let’s speculate.

Where Culture Might Go as Gen Z Ages

Gen Z is already reshaping the world, but when they hit their 40s and 50s, culture will evolve even further. Some of these changes will feel intuitive, but others will leave Millennials scratching their heads, just like Boomers struggled with us.

Here’s what might happen: