I'VE been thinking about my generation.

Namely, how we just won't grow up.

Alan Milburn, who chairs the government's Commission on Social Mobility, says my generation risks becoming a tribe of have-nots, in contrast to our parents, who are the tribe of haves.

We, Generation X, have come of age in a once-in-a-lifetime financial crisis that has sent us boomeranging home to our parents, squeezed our career prospects and left us dreaming of homes we'll struggle to own.

We resent our parents' generation for its pensions and property, we feel entitled to their money and so we feel no qualms in taking it. Apparently parents give their adult children, from 18 to 30, tens of thousands of pounds - daughters cost £35,920 and sons £30,251.

Parents pay for university fees, rent, flat deposits, weddings and - I just don't want to believe this although I know it's true - 70 per cent give their adult children an allowance, which is pocket money translated to sound less embarrassing.

My generation is the confused generation. We want our independence but we still expect hand-outs from our parents. We want options, we want - and are told - we can do anything. But then we don't know what we want to do.

We were the first generation to be told we are all uniquely special. You are a snowflake, just like all the other snowflakes. But when you're told you're special and capable and sure to do anything you please, what happens when you graduate, are unemployed and still live at home?

We are a generation marked by our introspection. We display our whole lives online, crafting them just so. We invented the selfie.

We are the first generation of adultescents. More of us go on to university, think about travel, think about who we are and what we want. Google's Ngram viewer, a programme showing how prominently a phrase appears in English print over a chosen time frame, shows the phrase "a secure career" has all but vanished, to be replaced with "a fulfilling career".

Our family lives are put on pause. Who gets married at 22 and has a baby at 23 these days? Not anyone you'd want to invite to a party. But if you're still single at 30, well, what happened to you? It's a fine balance to strike but we still strike it later than our parents.

But our careers are on hyperdrive. Get out of university and find a job. Secure an internship (expect your parents to sub you) and work your way up. You'll never earn what those above you are earning: you've been hired because you're cheap and you'll never recoup the deficit.

Buy a house (expect your parents to pay the deposit). Go to university and run up debt. The interest is hardly anything at all - you'll never notice it. Not until you're working for a pitiful salary and you can't afford to pay it back and also have a pension.

We look at our parents and want what they have, can't afford it and expect them to subsidise us.

Our parents worked for what they had. They started small - a one-bed flat and a modest salary-- but they had somewhere to aim for. We aim to simply stay employed, while the phrase "I'm skint" is something of a badge of honour.

Generation X parents pamper us. Perhaps they feel guilty. Perhaps the squeeze of being raised by ration-scarred parents inclined them to generosity. We stay younger for longer and so the financial dependence lasts; we allow ourselves to be infantalised. The phrase for it is kippers - kids in parents' pockets.

Hard-working but spoiled, we are the generation who needs our hand held while the apron strings are cut.

We will maybe be the tribe of Have Eventually, but we're going to have to grow up first.