The American Dream: Dead or Alive

Last week, back home, over kitchen talk (conversation that happens while scavenging through the kitchen for something edible) my sister was talking about her friend. This friend had been fighting with her parents because she wanted to go away for college and her parents want her to stay home and go to community college or the local university. I too have had quite a few friends that had that same conflict with their parents, some of which did end up staying home.

I say, "I don't know why people wouldn't want to send their kids to college. That's part of the 'American Dream' isn't it? Two kids, a house in the suburbs, family vacations, sending your kids to college..."
And my Dad says, "Well the American Dream has changed." What he was saying is that people can't afford it anymore and that there is a new, lower, standard (I could argue for different reasons that parents don't want their kids to leave, but I won't, because for the most part money is it).

But is that really what's going on here? Do people really not want those things anymore? Or are they just no longer attainable? If you ask me the American Dream is alive and kickin'...and it is, for all intents and purposes, just a dream. We aren't living it. And many of us will never live it.

It is predicted that the majority of my generation will take years, maybe even decades longer to become homeowners (if we become home owners at all) than our parents. (I won't get into the details of why this is so, it's complicated. I encourage you to do the research).

I think maybe what my Dad meant was not that the American Dream has actually changed, but that people have settled. People have settled for paying rent instead of mortgages, food on the table instead of groceries in the fridge, jobs instead of careers.

I think I'd rather the American Dream be dead, or even changed, than alive and taunting us.
What do you think?