Working at 10: The generational clash over pensions and youth precarity in Spain

Working at 10: The narrative dividing two generations

There was a time when childhood ended prematurely. "When I was a boy, at 10 or 12, I had to work at whatever came to hand." This phrase, repeated by retirees over 80, has peine an unhealed gap: that separating those who earned their bread before adolescence from those today chaining together master's degrees to earn meager wages. The most repeated testimony is not an exception: a deceased father-in-law who at six years old herded the master's mules in exchange for food, stealing oats from the animals so the family could grind flour and make bread or porridge.

The discussion is not about nostalgia. It is about whether that sacrifice translated into privilege or condemnation, and who pays the bill today.

What it meant to start working at 10 or 12

The pattern repeats in dozens of accounts: early entry into work, learning a trade, and, hopefully, stable employment before 22. One participant summarizes plainly: at 15, it was normal to start working "somewhere and hopefully end up learning a profession to live on." Another adds that his father, at 10, already fed the animals and milked goats before school, and after school helped his grandfather as a shepherd.

The contrast with the current situation is the core of the discontent. Today, you cannot send a child to work before 16, and even if you could, there is often nowhere to go. The underlying complaint is not that young people do not want to row, but that the labor market no longer offers the ladder those kids climbed: apprentice, journeyman, house, family. Another thing is whether that ladder existed for everyone.

The calculation debunking nostalgia: Did they live better or just work earlier?

Here, consensus breaks. One block argues that those workers accessed housing, cars, and vacations with an unskilled salary, which is unthinkable today. The circulating calculation is devastating: any worker without education could support a family of five children and buy a house and car. In contrast, the current scenario is described as a succession of precarious contracts and rents that devour the salary.

The counterargument comes from the other flank: it was not well-being, it was misery. "Your grandfather was at the very bottom," responds one participant, comparing the situation to a seasonal worker in greenhouses sleeping in a barracks. The wretched, he states, exist with socialism and without it. The discussion shifts to whether the penury of then was the norm or the exception, and whether material pogre in subsequent decades was shared or remained in the hands of those who already had something.

Pensions: The point where the narrative becomes accusation

The hardest turn comes when the conversation jumps to the pay-as-you-go system. Some argue that current retirees receive on average 64% more than they contributed with their social security contributions, and also enjoy subsidized public transport, medicines, and vacation trips. The uncomfortable conclusion they draw is: today's young people support their elders via taxes, but will live worse than them.

The defense of the older generation does not lag behind. A 71-year-old participant details that, except for military service and eight months of unemployment, he contributed throughout his life, first as an employee and three years as a self-employed worker, and that with compound interest, he would have been richer choosing something else. Another recalls that many of those children never set foot in school: they entered as apprentices in foundries, print shops, or workshops, and learned the trade through blows. The discussion on whether that was sacrifice or privilege remains without an arbiter.

The unclosed gap: housing, wages, and expectations

The knot of the disagreement lies in housing. Those defending the older generation point out that they bought houses, garages, and storage units "for peanuts," and today those same properties are sold to their grandchildren at prices multiplied by the bubble. Those defending the young people respond that the problem is not age, but the model: a deindustrialized economy where the only safe destination is unemployment or emigration.

There is one undisputed fact: late entry into the labor market delays retirement. If you start working at 30, your working life shortens, and future pensions shrink. The question hovering over the exchange is not who worked more, but who has rights to what when the system that promised to pay no longer adds up.

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The discussion ends, as it began, in a crossfire of reproaches. Some accuse young people of not enduring what their grandparents endured. Others respond that those grandparents had no choice. And in between, a generation working 50 hours for 1,000 euros watches as they are asked for gratitude for a past they did not live. How much of that sacrifice was virtue and how much was simply a lack of alternatives?