I Did Everything I Was “Supposed” To. I Still Can’t Afford The Childhood I Had.

Like many millennials, I grew up comfortably middle-class. First-generation wealthy. My childhood was full of music lessons, sports, and even trips to Disney World. But now, as a parent myself, I’m reckoning with a demoralizing truth: I cannot come close to this for my own kids.

I can’t afford to give them the childhood I had.

I am prone to replaying my own childhood highlight reel and, despite knowing full well that comparison is the thief of joy, comparing the sh*t out of it anyway. It’s getting harder — and bleaker — to say no to the things I never had to think twice about: extracurriculars, family vacations, the idea that college was a given. I want to be the fun mom, not the one scanning the sign-up form for hidden fees or who says “maybe next year” when the summer camp registration email comes through.

Objectively, I know I look better in a flower crown than I do in a coupon-cutting frenzy.

Putting aside the fact that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, millennial parents — when they’re not worrying about their children’s screen time, magnesium intake, and active shooter drills — are also facing the uncomfortable reality that we’re financially falling short. We are hamstrung by our own expectations and depressed by being the first generation of the expanded middle classes to slide backward. We are the Benjamin Buttons of the capitalist machine.

We can’t raise our crotch goblins in the social media-free utopia we enjoyed, and we can’t afford to parent the way our parents did. And I’m not just talking about unlimited quantities of Sunny Delight and hours of having no idea where we were. Even school dress-up days throw into sharp relief who’s crushing it and who’s being crushed by the brutal realities of late-stage capitalism.

For this next part, you may want to cue the tiny violin: Most of my kids’ stuff is secondhand. I’d love to claim this is because I’m financially savvy and deeply committed to sustainability — it’s actually necessity. They don’t need new things, but I couldn’t afford them if they did.

There have been plenty of statistics comparing what two full-time wages could buy in the ‘80s or ‘90s versus today. The math doesn’t lie (even if the memes fudge the figures a bit): Life costs more now, and we want and expect more from it. I went to college three times. My kids don’t even have passports. Not because I don’t want to broaden their minds through travel and adventure, but because they cost $135 apiece — a lot before you’ve even booked your flights and rental car.

For a brief moment, it was fashionable to be embarrassed about your privilege (remember when nepo babies liked to pretend they were just super talented and "lucky"?) We’re now embarrassed by what we no longer have.

There is a brilliant sketch by British comic Ahir Shah where he riffs on the failure of young people to climb the same ladder their parents did. He says, “It’s not hard to see why many young people feel as though the older generation have pulled the ladder up from beneath them, and then set fire to the ladder, and destroyed all ladder manuals, and systematically underfunded every ladder factor, and retrospectively denied the existence of ladders while claiming that, in their day, they were simply ‘better at jumping.’”

Despite the whole walking-to-school-barefoot-uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow mythology, huge swathes of Boomer parents managed to create cushy, middle-class upbringings for their millennial kids — something my generation of parents can only dream of/aspire to/feel sh*tty about.

And no, this isn’t because we’re lazy, financially illiterate, or hemorrhaging paychecks on avocado toast. (I don’t even like avocado toast!) It’s not because we aren’t pursuing better side hustles. My own side hustle is less about plucky entrepreneurialism and more about paycheck panic.

It’s all bullcrap.

Parents aren’t moaning that they can’t splurge on a fortnight in Whistler for a family vacation or spring for a membership to the Country Club. They’re moaning that they can’t make their mortgage. Or pay their rent. Or, bleaker still, buy groceries.

I don’t miss the Disney trips as much as I do the assumption behind them: that if you worked hard, your children would have more than you did. That the ladder would still be there when it was our turn. That the line would always go up. I’ve learned the hard way that it doesn’t... and I hate that my kids might be the ones who feel it most.

Emma Armstrong is the author of ‘I Used to Think Vegans Were Dicks.’ A naturalist and a mouthy writer on the natural world, she used to live in the woods and teach people botany, how to light fires, and kill rabbits (we all have a past). Emma has previously written for The Guardian, Business Insider, The Independent, Metro.co.uk, Bushcraft and Survival Magazine, and more.