Younger people can only watch in envy as older generations are tempted into golden early retirement
The marshmallow test was invented when the boomer generation was young. It tested the ability to delay gratification. Children who could hold off eating a marshmallow placed in front of them would get two, proving they had the self-control requisite to become concert cellists, scientific geniuses or presidents of the US.
But over the years, psychologists have come to doubt the marshmallow test and what it was really measuring. They found that children who had grown up around unpredictable adults – or who were primed with a broken promise ahead of the test – were most likely to grab the first sweet that came their way. This wasn’t always impulse failure, as once assumed, so much as a rational reaction to circumstance. In an uncertain world, it is much smarter not to trust in romantic promises of marshmallows tomorrow. You might end up with none at all. The first lesson – sacrifice pays off – has been drummed into boomers, and the following generation X, all their lives, but life is repeatedly teaching their children the second. We can do everything right and still not get our second marshmallow. Sometimes, even our first is whipped away right in front of us, as we are asked to please stop whining; we shouldn’t have expected so much in the first place.
