Always thought I was a Gen X'er until recently someone told me to look up the age-range for millenials. Guess being born in 83' makes me a millenial by most accounts (just barely).
My parents taught me absolutely nothing. My mom regretted even having me and gave up custody of me when I was a kid, forcing me to live with my grandmother because she just wanted to do drugs and be a child forever. My dad divorced my mom right after I was born so I never knew him. My grandmother was a full-time teacher and also too old-fashioned and out-of-touch with the world to really know what to tell me. Also she was a dainty Marry Poppins style christian who wouldn't touch any controversial topics with a mile-long pole. She had no idea how to relate to me or anything I was going through. I had to learn from my friends, only, my friends were just as clueless half-the-time being introverted as all hell and coming from fucked up households themselves.
The most important lessons of my life I learned the hard way: from the police, from employers, and from my ex's.
Honestly, I don't know if this is something specific to my generation, but it really sucks. And then compound this with the fact that my generation has to inherit all the economic fallout of the recent 2009 collapse, and things start to look really bleak for the future of America. Sure, I can imagine solutions, but I do not foresee any of them happening. Frankly, I think we're just fucked at this point, so for the past several years I've just been focused on improving my portfolio of job skills by going back to school and getting a STEM degree in case things get really ugly in this country and I need to abandon ship.