Aging Millennials proudly admit their Boomer parents were right about 15 things

One of a young person’s greatest fears is becoming their parents. Then, as you get older, take on more responsibility, and start a family, small things begin to happen. You spend Saturday mornings at Home Depot. You start feeling nostalgic for the music and trends of your teens. You realize the importance of cooking at home. It happens to just about everyone.

A few years back, a lot of ink was spilled on the generational fights between idealistic, sensitive, and possibly a bit entitled young people and their Baby Boomer parents, who, as stereotypes go, went from being idealistic flower children to selfish, grumpy conservatives in the 2000s. The Baby Boomers blamed the Millennials for being entitled because they all received participation trophies as kids (which their parents gave them). In contrast, the Millennials blamed their parents for creating an untenable future.

Gen X was nowhere to be found in the great generational debate.

It’s 2025, and Millennials are getting a bit older, with the oldest now hitting 45 and the youngest at 29. Now, with all this experience under their belts, and possibly kids of their own, have they learned to appreciate the life lessons their Boomer parents tried to impart?

A Redditor asked the Millennials subforum: “What things were the older generations accidentally right about?” and a lot of Millennials agreed that their parents and grandparents weren’t totally wrong about a lot of the old-school advice they shared when they were growing up.

Here are 15 things Millennials say that their Boomer parents were right about.

1. Don't waste money eating out

"We do, in fact, have that food at home."

"Won't stop me from getting takeout on my way home from grocery shopping!"

2. Appreciate your youth

"Enjoy being young. Stop being in a rush. 'One minute you're 15 and the next minute you're 50.'— My dad all the time when I was young. He was right."

"I’ve said it many times, I thought they were exaggerating. Those first 20 years felt like centuries. The second 20 years? 2003 is 20 years ago!! That feels scarily recent. 1983 may as well have been a century ago in 2003. It’s so strange how our brains process time."

3. Gardening is rad

"Gardening is fun, and the reward of eating tomatoes that I grew is amazing."

"Only two things that money can’t buy, that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes."

4. Social media

"They were right about social media. But then they all joined it anyway and contributed to it becoming lame."

"I agree. I noticed a direct correlation between when the boomers started joining Facebook in droves, and when social media suddenly became a festering swamp of fake info and unfunny 'I'm a Taurus born in Alabama who drives a Jeep! Don't Mess With Me!' memes."

5. Life is hard

"I spent a lot of time with my grandma. Lived with her during college. I came to her on numerous occasions bitching about my troubles, and I remember her saying, on more than one occasion, "Life is hard." I still hear her saying that all the time."

"I think a lot of us view the post-war boom as some kind of magical egalitarian utopia, but their lives were so much more uncomfortable and harder on average than ours. My dad told me about being terrified of getting polio as a kid, he and tons of other men in that generation got drafted to Vietnam, some people had stable jobs but god I think I’d be bored to tears putting a bumper on Fords for 30 years. No air conditioning. Much harder to have a niche hobby without the internet. Even just the difference in the variety of entertainment we can consume is massive. I simultaneously understand why a lot of millennials are nihilistic and want more out of life while also seeing how someone who grew up in an objectively harsher world would want to hammer home the “life is hard” message."

6. Pain comes out of nowhere

"Your body hurts at 30? Wait until 40. Boy, were they right."

"At 50, you get all the pains you had at 40, but now add in arthritis."

7. The importance of working hard

"The importance of a solid work ethic. But... Not the way they meant it. Work ethic for yourself. Stop seeing yourself as an employee and start seeing yourself as a small business owner selling your services to the companies you work for. Know your value and leverage it often. Bust your ass for yourself and yourself alone."

8. Don't trust anyone over 30

"Baby Boomer Hippies were right to not trust authority or the government."

"They became everything they hated. And more."

9. Turn off the A/C

"I learned the hard way that running air conditioning really is fucking expensive. ONE week of running it at night cause it’s too damn hot to sleep and it increased electricity bill by $50😐. So yes dad I will in fact turn off the air conditioning."

"And close the door. 'We aren't trying to air condition the whole outdoors.' Same with the fridge lol."

10. Things used to be of better quality

"Things made in the 'old days' are a lot more durable than the stuff manufactured now. 1950s fridge still runs, yet my 2 year old Samsung fridge crapped out on me."

11. Don't let him waste your time

"Tbh and this is a gross one and I’m a feminist but damn, marry in your 20s or 30s and don’t wait for the guy to 'be ready' after 5+ years. I thought we were going to be together forever and we were just artists who didn’t believe in marriage. LOL. Dumps me and marries someone and has a kid within a year. Single at 40 after a decade of loyal commitment without marriage = zero assets."

"I don't think it's gross. A person who refuses to marry you is often wasting your time."

12. Take pride in your work

"Taking pride in your work. Even if your job sucks, half-assing it sets the precedent for half-assing everything."

"Hard work gets you places, being lazy and complaining does not."

13. No one keeps a secret

"Mine said if you don’t want someone to know something, don’t talk about it or write about it, and I would add don’t text it either."

14. Be careful what you ask of your partner

"The biggest one I'm realizing is the lack of the whole soulmate thing. That quest to find the perfect (IE unattainable) person that you do everything with, know everything about, and put before everything else seems to me why so many people are getting divorced or are just single these days. Its too much to ask of another person or of yourself. My grandparents were married for sixty years. They had separate interests, separate groups of friends, and sometimes even took vacations separately from each other. They very much loved each other, but only because they spent an appropriate amount of time with each other, IE, not the whole time. The joke from that generation goes 'How did we stay together so long? We go out every Friday and Saturday. She goes out Friday, I go out Saturday.'"

15. Beware of Yancy

"In 1955, almost 70 years ago now, Phillip K Dick wrote a story called The Mold of Yancy. In it, a future space colony hires an investigator to figure out why their colony is stagnant. Upon visiting, he discovers a single TV channel available to all citizens. On it, an artificial persona named Yancy delivers advice and opinions on every part of daily living, with a charming Mr. Rogers type of kindness.

It's explained that the colony has a secret studio that writes and designs Yancy's content and persona. They always write the most acceptable, status-quo opinions, viewing themselves as simply feeding the colony's values back to itself. But there is never any contradiction. So in the society, anyone who behaves in a way that Yancy has spoken against is shunned and reviled. People measure their own morality and success through the eyes of Yancy.

The investigator identifies the issue, that the people have not been exposed to the idea of questioning the message or thinking for themselves. It wasn't that Yancy's positions were particularly terrible, it was that his opinions were the only ones allowed to be expressed. So he worked with the team to introduce a new character who would kindly but clearly disagree with Yancy, and the two characters would respect each other's individuality.

Because this was early in his career, the ending is notably much happier than a lot of PKD's work, but it shows a very clear understanding of the danger of propaganda media. While our society today doesn't have a singular Yancy, it's very easy to get sucked into a Yancy's bubble, where you're trained to distrust any amount of contradiction."