We are, I think, a new silent minority: parents of millennials, those born roughly from 1980 to the mid-1990s. Much has been written about their problems; little has been written about ours. I have three 20-somethings, and although all are now gainfully occupied in jobs or school, I am awash in anxiety about their future. Will jobs be there? Will they be stable? Will they pay enough? Will they encourage our children to start families of their own?

Everywhere I go, I meet parents — the man referenced above is typical — with similar doubts. Some of this is normal parental worry, but much is the product of this economic cycle, whose destructive effects have fallen disproportionately on the young. As parents, our sense of self-worth depends heavily on the success and happiness of our children. These seem increasingly imperiled…

What has emerged is a large class of people — mainly parents of millennials — who increasingly judge the economy not by how well they’re doing (because many are doing okay) but by how well their kids are doing. The unwritten social contract of their era presumed that the economy would be strong enough so that when children reached a certain age, they could be “launched” into the adult world and would not crash. It’s this contract that has now broken down. Many launchings are aborted.