Are we on the verge of a generational reckoning? The housing crisis, insecure work, Brexit, Trump and the recent UK election have all been interpreted through the avocado-coloured lens of generational conflict. Last week we heard that this clash of generations could shape the next federal election in Australia.

Throughout the 2000s, millennials were told they were lazy, indulged and narcissistic. Recently the tables have turned. As the average boomer has seen their wealth rise, data has piled up showing the young are treading water in Australia and even going backwards in other countries.

They are often in insecure work, living at home or renting in a share house well into their 20s and even 30s. This evidence is increasingly interpreted for us by the millennials themselves, finding a voice on social media and as journalists. It is now just as likely to be the “selfish” boomer as the narcissistic millennial buying breakfast who is the target of the pundit’s indignation. We can now read that the boomers have “ruined the world”.

Despite the talk of war, within the family the generations may have never got along so well. I’ve spent the past 12 years tracking young Australians through their 20s and 30s. The Life Patterns project has documented struggles to convert credentials into employment, to access quality jobs and get into the housing market. Increasingly these young people are expressing the sense of anger at the barriers they face in generational terms. But they also tend to get along with their parents, who have often been putting a roof over their heads and in many cases paying their bills well into their 20s. This is not just an Australian phenomenon. Intergenerational transfers and support within families are high across many countries.

Intergenerational expectations have changed. Spending part of your early adult life living in the family home is now the norm, and mum and dad increasingly expect it. It’s commonplace for young adults to invite their partner to stay the night in the family home, something that would have been unthinkable for most boomers when they were young. Millennials find it much easier to live in the family home and be treated like an adult, by their parents and others. This cultural change makes a big difference. Yet the primary reason young people are staying at home longer is that education takes longer, entry-level jobs are less secure and housing further out of reach.

Thoughtful commentators wonder if all this generations talk isn’t just harmless pop sociology, but actually politically nefarious. Distracting us from where the real action is, class. Generational stereotypes can shift our attention to the wrong places, the attitudes of young employees instead of the number and quality of jobs, for example. But we do need to understand contemporary economic inequality as having particular generational dimensions. The same changes that are interpreted, rightly, as weakening intergenerational solidarity and increasing inequality within a society, are the changes encouraging, even demanding, greater intergenerational support within the family.

Generational labels become particularly silly when they treat a cohort of people as if they share exactly the same personality traits (usually negative, so the rest of us can mock them) and framing the upheavals of today as a generational conflict will only get us so far. But this is not simply class politics as it has always been. The mix of collective intergenerational antagonisms and high inter-family solidarity did not emerge by accident. A British politician once famously said that “there is no such thing as society, only individuals and families”. Politicians of her ilk have spent the decades that shaped the youth and young adulthood of the cohorts we call Gen X and millennials working to make this true.

The idea of fairness across the generations is now more often invoked to argue for lean budgets, even austerity, in documents like the Intergenerational Report than to buttress a society-wide intergenerational contract. Sometimes it is pensions that are under attack, but perversely it is often support for young people that comes under most pressure, apparently needing to be pared back for their own and future generations’ good.

In contrast, intergenerational transfers within the family unit are not seen as a problem for inequality at all, but actively encouraged. The political rumblings that have been labelled the youthquake, may be evidence that society is ready to fight back against the push for a world of only individuals and families.

Economic policy since the 1980s has been driven by a particularly radical attack on the intergenerational contract and by a vision for the renewed role of the family in managing insecurity that has not been given enough critical attention. The best takes on generations don’t obscure class (or gender or race) inequalities but ask how they are being made anew in changing times.

For getting through school, navigating transitions to work and particularly getting into the housing market, family resources matter more than they did a generation ago. It is great that within families generations seem to be getting along (hi Mum, hi Dad), but we need to decide collectively whether we want a world where family support continues to become far more important for surviving and thriving in your 20s and beyond, and the obvious implications this has for inequality.