The difficult life choices facing young men and women today are unlike any we’ve seen in American history. Those of us who are older and have weathered our own life-storms may be inclined to dismiss the challenges facing our offspring as being no worse than those of our own, or previous, generations. But when we suggest to our children that they should proceed into adulthood relying on the same social and cultural umbrella that kept us safely out of the rain, we do them no favor. Instead, when we offer them our loving but tone-deaf advice, we only prove our own unfitness to be of any true assistance.

No, I am not discounting the basic moral rules of kindness, hard work, faith, patriotism and devotion to the necessary cause of building new families to ensure a future for us all. Those foundational societal building blocks will always endure. But we can no longer ignore — though God knows we’ve tried — the radically shifting structure of the American workforce and the ripening social impact of our emerging rich versus poor economic realignment. And when we, the grownups, seem unable to do any more than tell the rising generation to stay the course, young adults will instantly and correctly perceive our simplistic advice as an admission that we are clueless in the face of change.

Because the course has changed, drastically, whether we admit it or not. Those full-time jobs offering middle-class salaries with affordable, high-quality health coverage are withering under the economic nuclear war of maximized corporate profits to enhance the weekly stock price. Forecasters predict that by 2030, a mere decade away, one half of the American workforce will be gig-workers, spending their bread-winning lives drifting through an ever-shifting smorgasbord of insecure part-time jobs, with the only constant being no access to affordable quality health insurance.

That alone is a staggering statistic.

Higher education remains one of the last reliable predictors of reasonable future success, but the steadily climbing costs ensure that only the already-elite can benefit. Today’s average college graduate walks off the stage with a diploma and $30,000 in student debt. Married grads mean misery times two.

But we’re just getting started. With a two-income family being a modern near-necessity, women in their prime childbearing years are increasingly choosing to just say no. Our current crop of millennial moms grew up during the Great Recession. Combine those early life lessons with our Brave New World economy, and it’s no surprise that the average age for a first child among American women has risen from 24 years old in 1970 to 30 years old in 2020.

And working moms have more to juggle than just a baby on their lap. A Princeton study shows that having a child reduces a woman’s earning power by 20 percent over her lifetime, with each additional child bringing an extra 4 percent reduction in lifetime earnings. The same study found no economic penalty for dads.

And then there’s accelerating climate change. And our insane national debt. And our rising levels of drug abuse. And our growingly unstable, volatile, secularized and polarized society.

And then there’s the fact that none of these challenges — each one gargantuan in its own right — are being meaningfully addressed by us, the alleged grownups in the room. Instead, we close our eyes and stop our ears to ignore anyone pointing out to us our utter generational failure to even try and leave things better for our children than we found them.

And so we behold our little ones, the teens and young adults reaching toward maturity. Is it any wonder they look at the world around them and feel panic instead of opportunity? Is it a surprise that in the absence of both economic and social stability they’re pulling back, hunkering down and doing everything they can to avoid the entrapment of the very things we know will give their lives meaning?

Because the sad reality is that the things that bring happiness — home, family, faith and honest work — are being turned by us into pitfalls and traps that will weigh them down as no generation has ever been weighed down before. And so where does that leave them? And what does it say about us?

Chris Huston is an author and award-winning columnist living in southern Idaho. Connect with Chris on both Facebook and Instagram at Chris Huston-Finding My Way and at chrishustonauthor.com.