13. Do the nieces come to see her? Oh, yes, now and then, out of a spirit of duty. But they dread these visits. They know they will have to sit and listen for hours to halfveiled reproaches. They will be treated to an endless litany of bitter complaints and self-pitying sighs. And when this woman can no longer bludgeon, browbeat, or bully her nieces into coming to see her, she has one of her “spells”. She develops a heart attack.

38.“I'm sitting with the manager,and he asked me how I had gotten interested in insurance. I mentioned Dave's job in reinsurance,and the manager's response was,'Oh,that is about 15 steps above the position you are interviewing for , '"Scottsaid , his eyes widening and his voice emotional.

37. It was in pursuit of a solid job that Scott applied to Hanover International's management training program. Turned down for that,he was called back tointerview for the lesser position in the claims department.

36. He is earning $ 75,000 — a sum beyond Scott's reach today, but not his expectations.“I worked hard through high school to get myself into the college ldid ,"Scott said , " and then I worked hard through college to graduate with thegrades and degree that l did to position myself for a solid job.”( He majored inpolitical science and minored in history. )

35.“I'm fortunate to be at a company where there is some security ," he said,adding that he supports Scott in his determination to hold out for the right job."Once youstart working , you get caught up in the work and you have bills to pay , and you losesight of what you really want ," the brother said.

34. Her oldest,David Jr. , 26 ,did land a good job.Graduating from Middlebury College in 2006,he joined a Boston insurance company,specializing in reinsurance ,nearlythree years ago,before the recession.

33. "No one on either side of the family has ever gone through this," Mrs. Nicholson said, "and I guess I'm impatient. I know he is educated and has a great work ethic and wants to start contributing, and I don't know what to do. "

32. The Nicholsons, whose combined annual income is worth of $ 175, 000 , have lavished attention on their three sons. Currently that attention is directed mainly at sustaining the self-confidence of their middle son.

31. That millennials as a group are optimistic is partly because many are, as Mr. Kohut put it, the children of doting baby boomers —among .them David Nicholson and his wife, Susan, 56 , an executive at a company that owns movie theaters.

30. "As frustrated as I get now, and I never intended to live at home, I'm in a good situation in a lot of ways, " Scott said. "I have very little overhead and no debt , and it is because I have no debt that I have any sort of flexibility to look for work. Otherwise, I would have to have a job, some kind of full-time job. "

29. The jobs are catch as catch can. He and a friend recently put up a white wooden fence for a neighbor, em bedding the posts in cement, a day's work that brought Scott $ 125. He mows lawns and gardens for half a dozen clients in Grafton, some of them family friends. And he is an active volunteer firefighter.