Are millennials all quiet-quitting lazy girls?

There is a certain narrative doing the rounds currently - on social media and the mainstream press - that my generation just can’t be arsed to work. Hashtags such as “quiet quitting” and “lazy girl jobs” are bandied around on TikTok, and I can’t skim a newspaper without discovering another article, written by a 20- or 30-something, proudly declaring how work-shy they are.

Reader, it is driving me wild.

I’ve often thought about writing a riposte, except I struggle to find the time after waking up at the crack of dawn to make myself presentable for work, before wrangling a strong-minded three-year-old through the breakfast/brush teeth/get dressed/run out of the door routine. Then there is the nursery commute followed by three-line tube commute, at which point I arrive at my desk feeling like I’ve done a full day’s work, and ready to do a full day’s work. After I’ve edited my eighth article of the day, written my third and replied to about 120 slack messages and emails, I’ll go into a meeting where someone will say “oh, millennials and Gen Z can’t really be bothered to work hard these days”, at which point I silently scream while facing the prospect of slogging home to complete the list of bathtime/bedtime/cook dinner/chores, before falling asleep in front of the TV at 8.30pm (did I mention I am also seven months pregnant?)

To be clear, I’m not complaining about this lifestyle; in many ways it’s been my personal choice. What does drive me nuts is the prevailing notion that I am part of a lazy, entitled generation who can’t be bothered to work, because the evidence all around me suggests that just not true.

Firstly, they are hard workers and slackers in every rank and generation. I’ve worked with senior men in their fifties who basically do f**k all, and 22-year-old bright sparks who are the hardest working people in the company.

Secondly, we really need to do away with the idea that desiring some semblance of work/life balance means you’re not a hard worker. It is perfectly possible to be someone who works 9 to 5 and is extremely productive, just as you can spend 12 hours sitting in front of a laptop and achieve precisely nothing. My personal working style is very much fast and furious – think short, sharp bursts of activity in which I get a lot of stuff done quickly – so I know that it’s possible to live in a world where you have time to go to spin classes and be a very industrious member of the team.

The most recent noise around millennials’ aversion to work comes from a King’s College London study, in which participants were asked how they felt about the statement: ‘Work should always come first, even if it means less spare time.’ Back in 2009, 41% of millennials agreed with this statement, whereas now only 14% do. If you read the press coverage, you’ll be told this is because millennials are all busy dossing around in front of Netflix, or going on yoga retreats, or drinking oat lattes (the reason we can’t afford proper houses). The more plausible, but less frequently mentioned, suggestion. I’ve read is that millennials have become disillusioned with hard work after discovering that it doesn’t necessarily lead to the rewards and comfortable life they had imagined.

Let me suggest instead, however, a third hypothesis. Perhaps millennials – who are now aged 27 to 42 – no longer rank work as their number one priority is because lots of them have taken on a second full-time job, that of rearing kids. I believe wholeheartedly that no matter how much you adore your children, caring for them constitutes work – even if, as outlined in Steph Douglas’s brilliant podcast on Overwhelm, male researchers once categorised women looking after children as ‘leisure time’. To use that millennial old favourite: LOL.

I have many more thoughts on this topic – about the fact that wanting a modern approach to work doesn’t necessarily mean you want to do less work, on how unhelpful it is that we constantly encourage generations to resent each other rather than work together, about the fact that in many workplaces you still have to pretend you basically don’t have kids in order to get by, even as the government is scratching its head over how to stop the plummeting birth rate. But I don’t have time to write about it, because my train has just arrived at the office. Make of that what you will.