@basket4: 
1) All of that sounds very hard, no question.
2) In terms of real estate, young people today would gladly trade today's high prices/low rate environment for the high rates/lower multiple of income pricing of the 1980s. Why? Because if you scrimped and saved back then, you slowly got a bigger % of a down payment. Today the opposite is true - each year you sacrifice, you fall further behind. The math is shocking.

We too have moved. A full year of mat leave, while available, is simply not an option in some fast-moving professions. And given that a far larger % of employment is contract or temporary, this benefit doesn't exist. Salaries have continued to go nowhere for decades compared to a skyrocketing cost of living, so that problem you faced has only grown more pronounced.

None of this is to minimize the big challenges you faced. But it is possible that things are systematically harder today. It's all relative.