Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Millennial males........is it just me?

Or have others noticed that an unreasonably large percentage of them are completely mechanically inept? Is there a stigma among them against all things that involve threaded fasteners?

I grew up in a world where all the guys I knew could turn a wrench and fix things. Now it seems damn few can figure out how to perform the simplest mechanical operations. Is my perspective skewed?

On the other hand most of them can make computers perform anything up to and including sex acts.


I personally prefer to be able to change a tire or re-haft an axe.

No I believe you are right. A lot of them can not work a can opener.

Most likely because their lazy ass fathers did not teach them!
So everybody born in the 1960-1980s did not teach their children correctly.
Laaazy X´rs and Boomers.



However.. cars these days are better.
Less need to know how cars work, when the Japanese started shipping quality cars over.

FreeMe:

To me it seems like a lot of young men today, specially those who grow up in urban environments, seem to lack some basic mechanical skills. But it doesn't stop there. They also seem to be less physically active and therefore not as fit as those in my generation. I think there are a variety of reasons for this.

They grew up playing with Legos instead of Erector sets.

They spend a lot of time playing video games and watching TV instead of playing sports or spending time under the hood of a car. They don't even seem to play kick-the-can in the street or hide-and-go-seek in the front yard. Rather than playing baseball they are texting each other and they think they are actually doing something.

They grew up solving problems by programming computers and smart phones instead of fixing things with their hands and tools.

KC

Righty tighty, lefty loosey.

Depends on the kids themselves, and the parents. I am quite proud of my 2 Millennials .
One boy, one girl, and both outstanding examples.

It's a combination of learned skills and the cars and other mechanical things. More and more are going to "fix" is swap a circuit board rather than trouble shoot fuel flow, ignition etc. Yes simple maintenance like oil, fluids, rotate tires are still there. But general mechanical skills are replaced with high tech.

in most cases, you can lay the blame for the ineptitude of millennial males at the feet of their baby boomer parents.

Yes, and no. Tinkering/practical experience/critical thinking skills, seem to have suffered. Maybe because of better reliability, you don't have the opportunity to kinda paste stuff together, to make it work a bit longer. Things don't get fixed, they get replaced. As far as computers, there is a fluency in their use, but not in understanding exactly how it works. They know what works, but not why it works. There are many, many hours of playing games and social networking supporting all that. The attitude and approach to other problems, mimics that protocol. Computers have changed how people think.

"It's easier for me to do it myself than to teach him how to do it."

"I keep meaning to have someone show him to do it, I just don't have the time and when I get home I just don't feel like showing him."




I hear these pretty much daily from fathers about simple things they should be showing their kids.

This was exactly my thought. I grew up working on stuff around my dad. It seemed like I was alway tinkering with stuff because most all of what I bought was very used and cheap. I worked on it because I enjoyed it and I had to.

A great deal of why my kids are not as mechanically inclined is my fault. I have a couple of race cars that take up all the mechanical time I can muster. I do show my kids the basics. They can all change a tire and oil if they had to, but I end up doing it to make sure it is done right and logged. Probably the biggest reason that they are nearly as mechanically inclined as me is the necessity isn't there. I helped them get newer cars that were much more reliable so I didn't have to work on them also.

Must be city stuff. I'm friends with 2 'Millennials' locally. One builds floating docks and works on most things motorized as a side kick at his place.

The other one is a pretty good smith.

FreeMe, your perspective in not skewed.

Most of them never had a job until they were in their 20's. They've never built or fixed anything. They had it handed to them their whole lives. They've been pampered and coddled like little babies and their parents never made them lift a finger. The schools did away with auto mechanics and wood shop, they didn't help either.

My son, on the other hand, was forced to work. We did give him a little pick up when he was 16, but that was more for us so he wasn't driving our cars. But if he wanted to drive it, he needed to get a job to pay for his own gas. When that truck was done, he was on his own and had to get an auto loan and buy it himself. I co-signed for him so that he could build his credit up. He learned how operate a Bobcat when he was about 15 and when he got his truck, he was all over it as far as fixing it and taking care of it. When he was 18, he started working for me and was running heavy machinery and became a great stone cutter. If he needs something done or fixed, he doesn't come wining to Mommy and Daddy, he figures it out for himself and makes it happen. He killed his first deer when he was 11. I showed him how to gut it once, after that, he had to do his self with my supervision. He also had to quarter it, bone it and pack it too. How many 14 year old's can do that? Not too many. When he was about 20, he used to laugh at his friends because they were so lame. I'm very proud of him and what he's become. He's now 25 and owns his own home.

I think you're right about it being a city thing. I think that if a kid grows up in the country, they need to help out at least.

When I was young we had to take shop courses in high school. In the summer we got summer jobs in factories. Mostly that was low-grade maintenance but some reasonably tough stuff as well. Nowadays they miss all that.

Reminds me of the old joke about the kid who gets a job at a company and gets assigned to mop the floor. "But I'm a college graduate," he says." "In that case," says the boss, "I'll get someone to show you how to mop the floor."

I had a small conference in a city I wont name, I saw "men" there carrying purses, yes purses, one or two had a bun on the back of their head like my grannies wore up until they day they died, I would purposefully eavesdrop on their conversations if some were close while we were all walking through the city, sidewalks, subways etc, I was really surprised, ashamed, and bewildered at what we have become and what is excepted as normal in many parts of this country, I have NEVER been more glad to board a jet for home!

I have noticed this phenomenon also. Something to consider: I was relating to my stepson just the other day, that I always had a couple of boxes of tools in my vehicle, especially if I were going very far from home. I told him that, numerous times, I had to do roadside repairs to my vehicle or someone else's. I think back to the number of hours I spent in the driveway at home just working on vehicles to make them roadworthy, sometimes just to get them to run right. I never especially enjoyed that work, I would rather have been fishing or hunting. I did it out of necessity (although I took a certain amount of pride in being able to do it.) Vehicles are a lot more reliable today. My last several vehicles have needed nothing other than oil changes to hit 100K miles. The point is, young guys today have never had any need to learn to twist wrenches (unless they really wanted to, as a hobby or whatever.) I think that's a lot of it. Also, we've become a disposable society, a lot of the household stuff we used to take apart and fix is today just thrown out and replaced. In a lot of cases, it's not even fixable.

From my observations here you are partly correct...but an awful lot of it is that parents seem to treat their little dears as mini emperors.