My generation must give up middle-aged fantasies

I HAD a fight with my dad recently. It wasn't like the parental showdowns of the teenage years, though. No doors were slammed. We had a mediator too, one who didn't even share our DNA. And - in the biggest break with tradition of all - it didn't end with me screeching "it's not faaaairrrrr", before receiving that ever-popular paternal putdown: "Life's not fair."

But - essentially - that's what this argument was about. For my father and I had been invited on to the BBC World Service's programme, Newshour, to debate his generation's legacy. Had the baby-boomers - henceforth Generation Jammy - left us young 'uns in a bit of a pickle?

Now, being 26, it is pretty obvious whose side I was on. There are, of course, plenty of 21-year-olds who could raise my "mildly done over" with a "royally, unemployed-ly done over". But then again, they would have had to battle with 300 other wannabe journalists for that single internship in order to do so.

The case against Generation Jammy has been well-rehearsed: we whippersnappers may have iPods and a Topshop on every high street, but we'll be working into our eighties, are priced out of home ownership and drowning in debt - both public and personal. The 'boomers may have sold out their children, but we'll soon be selling our own children into slavery just to get by.

My job on the show, then, was the easy one. While my father provided an eloquent defence of his peers, it was a bit like taking the Soviet Union's side at the start of the Cold War: the US was far from perfect, but they weren't sending people to the gulag.

But then towards the end, the discussion shifted slightly. Our referee, Claire Bolderson, asked me whether I would agree that every generation should take responsibility for itself. It was a fair question. So far, my sole way of addressing my many grievances has been to complain.

And - while many of my friends believe we have been done a great injustice - we are yet to see Generation Y marching through central London in protest. Of course, that might be because the unemployed among us are too busy firing off CVs into the abyss, while we in work are tying ourselves to our desks in fear of the P45.

Perhaps, though, much of my generation is not sure what we should be fighting for. Because, at the moment, the angriest among us seem simply to have accepted as our goals everything that the generation above has told us is worth having. Then they feel disgruntled that they can't have it.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with housing. Many of us are desperate to get on the property ladder, even though in many European countries renting is the norm. What we should really be trying to achieve is cultural change, rejecting this country's cult of home ownership.

The children of the Sixties wanted free love, we want the ultimate fuddy-duddy fantasy of a mortgage and a two-decade-long retirement. To adapt a line from the film Kind Hearts and Coronets, today's twentysomethings are doing a remarkably good impression of middle-age.

Our parents were right about one thing: life's not fair. But, as the dynamic young, we should be calling for a wider rethink, not simply accepting the values handed down to us. Who knows, it might even stop our own children from one day resenting us.