The above rings true for me. Due to my work I know a lot of teenagers, and I just don’t see the same conflict between parents and kids that I grew up with. For me (typical middle class American kid) and my friends, it was definitely us against them when it came to parents and adults in general. My son, and my girlfriend’s kids, seem more relaxed around adults and frankly more mature than I was as a teenager. I cannot imagine my parents talking to me about drugs and sex. Their line was DON’T DO IT!!! end of discussion. Our kids know they can talk to us about anything and not have it result in a moralizing sermon or threats of punishment. YMMV, of course, as I’m seeing responses all over the spectrum in this thread.
Come to think of it, and reading my own post, maybe it’s the adults who have changed.
I don’t think he was being serious.
Times a zillion. Our 3 kids are grown. But all of my siblings and my wifes siblings still have some teens in the house, and one of my sons has a 15 year old step-daughter.
They are all Teenage Mutant Ninja Knowitall Turds! Every-single-one-of-them.
When my daughter turned 21 we met her and her beau at The Melting Pot for dinner. We were a few minutes early and had already started on a bottle of wine.
When my daughter arrived I asked the waitress to bring her a wineglass, but she declined, saying, “I can’t, I’m driving”. A mild rebuke at me and my gf who were also driving.
Kids.
Mrs. Homie and I are “couple friends” with a high school teacher and her husband. Now, we live in a poor, rural community, a hundred miles from nowhere, and nine out of ten kids here, if asked, would proudly self-identify as “rednecks,” so take what I’m about to say with a few grains of salt.
“Barb” describes the kids she teaches as polite, inquisitive, decent, and helpful to a fault. Rarely in her career has she had to discipline a student for misbehavior. The only real complaint she has about them is that they’re “culturally insensitive,” which is not surprising considering this part of the country.
Being only 25… My younger brothers are teens and very mature but I can only compare them to movies about teens from the '90s so… Less eye rolling and fornicating with pies… more susceptible to special snowflake syndrome and liberal media influence…
One other thing is that parents used to play the role of thought-police a lot more than they do now, especially in the 1980s. Half the other kids I knew had these “strict” parents who would carefully comb through their kids’ album covers, song lyrics, etc, and would overreact like crazy if a kid liked Friday the 13th or Ozzy Osbourne, or even Prince for god’s sake (Tipper Gore anyone?) I remember hearing lots of lectures from teachers on how that kind of stuff was a pile of talentless garbage.
Nowadays that type of generational conflict has pretty much disappeared… everyone has access to much worse stuff at their fingertips, but nobody could care less.
I think it’s also because kids are so indoctrinated into organized activities that they don’t HAVE any time to get into trouble. I have several nieces/nephews in the middle-high school age range, and other than the usual hormonally-charged spats with their parents, they’re very well-behaved. They don’t hang out at malls, they don’t cruise their neighborhoods like we used to do, they don’t sneak cigarettes behind the shed or get somebody to buy alcohol for them so they can get drunk down at the park after dark. None of this ever occurs to them.
We had much more free time when we were their age.
Teens are about as unpleasant as ever. Don’t be fooled by the phone-induced sedation.
Phone induced sedation occurs because parent don’t let their kids out of the house anymore without adults accompanying them. Let kids out the way they were in the 90s and before that, and their phones will become a lot less interesting to them. Add that to the fact that a modern parent wouldn’t be caught dead letting their kid out without a tether(which is what phones actually are to parents). So if they’ve got the phone, they are going to use it. If the phone was merely an option, kids would do what kids did in my day: find very creative ways to get into trouble, which if they’ve been raised right means fairly harmless stuff that helps them learn about actions and consequences in ways that don’t leave lasting scars or a criminal record.
But yes, constantly being under adults’ thumb until they are near legal age to go to college is going to make kids more docile. Having the tether also limits their ability to explore places their parents wouldn’t want them to go. Rebellion is part of growing up, and without it you get docile little sheep. Of course, the advantage of that is less crime and fewer rude teens.
nm
I can see that, and not just with lead.
Well, I do think that the standard of parenting has risen quite a bit from my father’s generation (Korean war vet) especially for men, which can’t help but make for better-adjusted kids. My father was a good father, but in terms of involvement with daughters (I have no sons) there is no comparison: I am just far more in tune with Sophia than he was ever with my sisters. Generation gap was part of it, cultural expectations another.
My kids are too busy trying to be better than us - and we encourage that, so they don’t have time to rebel. My son thinks he’s Lebron James and he says when he makes it big he will buy us a house and a Lamborghini for himself. I tell him I hope he is successful enough in life to do those things, but he will have to work really hard now in order to make that happen. He’s 14, so all he probably hears from me is the Charlie Brown adult voice (wha-wha-wha…)
My daughter really does work hard and has her own ambitious definition of success, and it is most certainly not what path either my wife or me took. She’s already her own person, and we get along well with her. She literally has no time to get into trouble, between school and crew. She does not date, but does go to the movies and dances with her friends as a group (male and female), and parties she attends have all been clean (and she does come home when we ask). We have trust between us and she is a great young woman. She’s 17.
I guess we went from guardians to guides-to-life at some point, and were always transparent with them about our lives and our experiences, as well as our expectations. We set us a few reasonable guardrails and they respected them - respect gets respect. Sure, once in a while a correction is needed, but so far no drugs, alcohol, or crime with these two. I agree the phones and video games do keep them docile and occupied during down time.