"We didn't merely expect things to get better. We expected all social problems to be solved."---Robert J. Samuelson

What our parents did tell us was how lucky we were.

Parents should have concluded their talks with us with admonitions to develop both gratefulness and toughness. The first we would need to enjoy life; the second, to survive it.

 "The paradox of our time is that we are feeling bad about doing well," writes Newsweek's Robert J. Samuelson. Samuelson says that this "free floating gloom" of the '90s is caused by the unrealistic expectations of those raised in an age of entitlement.

He has struck a familiar theme for today's midlifers, especially those born in the American baby boom years between 1946 and 1964. Raised in the unparalleled optimism of the '50s and '60s we embraced what Samuelson calls a "grand vision." "We didn't merely expect things to get better. We expected all social problems to be solved," says Samuelson. "In our new society most workers would have rising incomes and stable jobs. . . Poverty, racism and crime would disappear. . . We expected almost limitless personal freedom and self-fulfillment. After a while we thought we were entitled to them as a matter of right."

Samuelson goes on to explain that this version of the American dream turned out to be fantasy. "It was too perfect to happen, and the belief in its practicality has created the social equivalent of the mechanical bunny--something constantly chased and never caught." How can we combat the disappointment and cynicism brought on by the dashed dreams of the post-entitlement era? I have a suggestion. Perhaps we need to hear what our parents never told us.

In my 1988 book, Baby Boom Believers, I point out that one of the causes for our high childhood expectations was something our parents told us, or more accurately, failed to tell us.

What our parents did tell us was how lucky we were. Spared the pain of both the Great Depression and the Great War, we were born in an era of unparalleled affluence (our parents saw their real income double in the 25 years following World War II). Parents would often remind us of a harsher time when money, food and opportunity were scarce. You remember the stories--trudging barefoot in the snow to school, returning to a plate of beans cooked over a coal stove, and glad to have them.

Of course, what parents wanted to create in us was a sense of gratefulness, but what they often got instead was a sense of entitlement. Why? Because of what they didn't say. What our parents failed to tell us is that conflict and want are part of humankind's future as well as its past. There have been no utopias in history, and as long as the human condition remains the same (imperfect people living in an imperfect world), there will be no utopian tomorrows either.

Parents should have concluded their talks with us with admonitions to develop both gratefulness and toughness. The first we would need to enjoy life; the second, to survive it. Hope is a virtue and always has been part of the American psyche. As historian Richard Hofstadter has said, "Americans do not abide very quietly the evils of life." Nor should we; it is noble to fight against the problems of the day, personal and national ones. Yet our expectation always must be progress, not perfection. As Samuelson says to Americans in the '90s, "Either we will revise our expectations or condemn ourselves to constant disappointment." In other words, it's time we listen to what our parents never told us.