Corruption in youth

In My Humble Opinion
1

In my opinion, America’s kids are being corrupted. Being 14, I can observe a lot of this.

I don’t like kids (the younger ones) in the first place, always running around, yelling, screaming, crying, making noise, getting into trouble, doing things they shouldn’t and getting away with it (they don’t know any better), etc…but really, what the hell is wrong with them these days?

One day I went outside to get my little brother from my friend’s house. The boy (my little brother’s friend) was maybe 6 or 7, and he got pissed off at me when I took my brother away, calling me a “boobsucker” as I rode away. His mom happened to be at the door of his house and screamed at him, but still, WTF?!?!?!?!?! Where do kids get this garbage, at THAT age? My little brother too (9 years old), says stuff he shouldn’t, but not to the severity of the more vulgar words.

Another time I went to a summer camp at the YMCA, but I wasn’t supposed to be there because I went to the wrong place (I was supposed to be at some sort of science thing, this was some sort of peer-leader training). I went along with it, and there was this flock of kids that a bunch of people my age were to take care of in a hike. They could have been what, 5 or 6 each? You wouldn’t believe the crap that came out of their mouths, all of it sexually explicit. Several of them jumped on a girl (peer leader) and did things that a normal person would be given a restraining order for. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?! Luckily I didn’t stay long.

It isn’t just the younger kids, its the older kids too (people my age). At this stage, the language problem is much less of a problem, but there are different things. Experimentation with drugs, sex, etc. wouldn’t be something new (although its much more common that a normal person would expect), but how do teenagers get away with openly having cigs in their mouths in the hallways at school? Some of this stuff is caused by parents, this I KNOW. One guy I’ve had the displeasure of meeting possessed three shotguns, numerous knives, and a variety of other weapons on his room; unsurprisingly, he also stole cars (he was a freshman too). Other straight-F students are showered with money and crap they don’t deserve, such as quads and other expensive nonsense.

I live in a suburban neighboorhood in New Jersey where nothing big happens. I’d love to see how major cities get by.

What does everyone else think of my generation? The opinions of parents are especially important.

2

“Kids these days…”
– Socrates

3

Since the beginning of time, every generation has bemoaned the fact that the next is going to hell in a handbasket. The methods of misbehaving and rebellion may change, but it’s been going on for thousands of years.

Mothers after the Civil War were shocked that their daughters kissed men before they were married. The 1920’s was a time of hard-drinking, out-of-control young people, who danced wildly, the girls in shockingly short dresses. In the Sixties, rebellion became an art form, punctuated by anti-war slogans, sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.

Civilization will survive this newest round of young people. They, in turn, will be shocked and appalled by their children’s antics, and talk about the “old days” in which these things didn’t happen.

4

:: :smack: self for being born in this generation ::

Although…that isn’t too different from today, anyhow.

5

Don’t you think the magnitude of those misbehaviors has increased dramatically? If at one point in time the ankles of an exposed woman would lead to her arrest, how do you think those authorities would feel about us now?

6

I agree with you and, as wildly unpopular as I am sure this will be, I believe that it’s because parents don’t spank kids anymore. There are no real, meaningful repercussions for bad activity and, so, it ramps up to what you’re describing.

Losing a Playstation for the weekend pales in comparison to getting a smack on the ass and it shows. I am certainly not advocating abuse, but I sure remembered those spankings before doing the same stupid things again.

7

That explains it.

8

i agree! and i’m a member of this “spoilt” generation!

i used to get spanked for bad behaviour, and it hasn’t done me any harm whatsoever. i’m a well-adjusted, sensible individual (if i do say so myself :rolleyes:). my parents always showed me love, and ensured that when i was good, i was rewarded.

sometimes, i really feel these “spare the rod” tenets of modern child psychology are baloney. of course, i’m not saying that all the kids who weren’t spanked have turned out bad, but when a kid deserves it, he should get it. that’s all.

there’s a whole bunch of people i know whom a spanking would have done a world of good, if only it had been administered a long time ago. freedom and independence and ‘space to grow’ are one thing, hooliganism and plain bad behaviour are another.

9

Nah, beating youths just teaches them to be violent.

10

you think that, do you? come here so i can kick your ass!

:stuck_out_tongue:

11

:eek:

:wink:

12

Magnitude, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. We find shocking what society tells us to find shocking, and over time, our perceptions of deviance changes dramatically. To ask what the past would think of the present is immaterial, much like asking me to judge future generations, or the culture of a native tribe. It’s comparing apples and oranges. Our worlds are completely different. We have been raised differently, and have widly varying experiences.

A hundred and fifty years ago, when the ankle-flasher would have been considered shocking and grossly misbehaved, we wouldn’t have blinked at seeing a child starving in the street, nor would we have thought it very odd for a man who beat his sassy wife.

There never were any “good old days” when everyone was polite and caring. Anxiety about the next generation’s wild ways started back in the days when Thog looked in askance at his son’s insistance on painting the cave walls and using newfangled tools of stone. “Young people have no traditional values!” is a concept older than that of “childhood” itself.

This anxiety is well displayed in the “mental hygeine” films of the 50’s, an era for which everyone sighs over the simple Americana vision of * Leave it to Beaver. * The classroom films seem to have a deep streak of forboding that youth have gone wild, with catastophic results. (You may want to read Ken Smiths wonderful book about the films’ dark paranoia about “delinquency.”) Apparently, even in what we have romanticized as a Neo-Victorian era, older people felt that the young were tearing at society’s very fabric with their wild ways.

No, I don’t think our kids today are any “worse” than those of the past. Kids have always been the bane of the previous generation, and they always will be. Again, times and methods may change, but people never do.

If anything, think of it this way: in our more open society, kids have to go rather far before they’re considered rebellious or shocking today. The best-behaved child of today would have been considered a hellion a hundred years ago, and the most wild kid of this generation will be the dissapproving grandmother of tomorrow. They’ll turn out all right.

13

Umm, I don’t know. Kids have never been all that great…we did shockingly terrible things when I was a kid (I’m 22, by the way) and they do shockingly terrible things now. I don’t think it has anything to do with spanking. I got spanked as a kid and I really don’t think it did anything…I still ended up being a “bad kid” by the time I got to high school! If anything it just makes kids become more violent.
One thing I cannot understand though is the way that children are dressing these days! I live in Southern California where it is warm and 11 years old wear super low rise jeans and tiny Brittany Spears style tank tops that show off their round little tummies all year round. I feel really really old when I am shocked at parents letting their children out like that!

14

I can’t say I agree. My parents didn’t spank me. They didn’t need to. Nor was my husband spanked as a child. All my parents had to do was give me “the look” and a stern lecture.

Now, the issue of sheer parental involvement is something different. But when have parents ever been super-involved in the lives of children?

In early modern history, “childhood” did not exist. From the time a child could walk and talk, he or she was expected to dress, speak, comport themselves and dress as an adult. Wealthy parents barely saw their child, who was cared for by servants. At various points, it was believed that showing children any affection would ruin them, and so children were treated very harshly. The devilish impulses needed to b driven from them, or woe unto the world.

Later, in early American history, childhood has short and harsh for poor children, who worked as soon as they were physically capable if they weren’t of a wealthy family. Mother and Father spent up to 12 hours a day in the factories, and often, the child did as well. “Quality time” didn’t exist.

It wasn’t until what we call the Victorian era that childhood acquired a new identity. Children were now seen as * children, * not miniature adults. Childhood began to be celebrated as a time of carefree innocence, and kids began to be pampered and indulged. (Part of this can be demonstrated in the sudden emergence of the toy market: play was finally noticed to be of importance.) You can imagine, of course, that the “old school” of child-rearing was dismayed by this new permissiveness, and predicted dire consequences.

So, in essence, childhood is still a new concept, from which society is still trying to “work out the bugs.” Have we got it right yet, that balance between indulgence of childhood and discipline? Probably not, and maybe we never will hit on the “right” method. However, thoughout history, no matter what the current vogue for child-rearing methods, the kids have generally turned out okay. Eventually, they discover what society deems as permissable, and adjust their behavior accordingly. Some won’t, but that’s inevitable. To paraphrase the scriptures, “Lo, the assholes will be with you, always.” There will always be an “ankle-flasher” or two, but society will chug along as usual.

15

I can say on a personal level that my father - and his brother and sisters, and his mother - were beaten quite regularly, and not just spanked in childhood, I’m talking about getting their asses kicked. [To me, this is a major point: how can spanking a misbehaving child be OK, and a proportional punishment to an older child be wrong?] He and his brother are both much better parents than that, and one reason is that neither would decide raising a hand to their kids is a way to solve a problem. Parents who spank surely mean well, but I’d wager many are just aping their parents and working out their own anger issues.

Has it occurred to anyone that there may be a reason spanking is on the wane? Ex-children, that is, parents, likely realized “gee, I really hated it when my parents belted me. Maybe my kids would appreciate if I didn’t do it to them.”
This is apparently still rather a radical notion for some reason. :wink: Kids don’t like being spanked, parents (healthy ones) don’t like doing it, so perhaps the decline of spanking isn’t such a great loss. I think the only lesson involved in beating up on someone smaller is that if you’re stronger and bigger than someone else, you’re automatically an authority figure and you can get what you want. Wonderful lesson, that. An even worse lesson might be “it’s OK to hit people you love/who love you in the right circumstances.”
Frankly, despite the notions we carry about childhood being carefree (at least ideally), kids have enough crap to deal with without worrying about the people who are supposed to love them the most smacking them for breaking the rules.

16

Laziness, apathy and general shitty parenting? Could be. Could be.

17

Well, I guess it’s fair to pull one sentence out of context like that. :stuck_out_tongue:

At the VERY least, you’d think it’s obvious that a parent isn’t good just because they decide spanking their kids is fine.

18

Really, this is just the same thing people say generation after generation. There’s a different excuse every time, and I’m curious to see what my generation’s version will be.
You could blame it on the decline of child labor in the West just as reasonably as spanking - why not try that? Get the kids back in the factories, it’ll put some starch in their collars. Oh yeah, and get 'em to wear collars.

19

I blame tthe tribulations of America’s youth on the fact that those spiked rings used to quell masturbation are no longer in use. Doctors warned us it would lead to degenerates . . .

20

I believe there is a difference between discipline and child abuse. Smacking around your kid when he deliberately does something wrong would be considered some discipline; child abuse is when a father has a bad day at work, gets home and chugs down a few shots of vodka and takes it out on his boy.

Lissa, I don’t mean to offend you or anything, but haven’t you misbehaved before when you were a kid? Did you honestly, seriously listen to your parent’s lectures, soak it all up and think about what you did? I certainly don’t anymore, if I did in the first place. Personally I don’t think I’ve grown to be too bad of a person, knowing that anything I’ve ever done pales in comparison to some of my peers. I would’ve preferred a quick five minute beating than a thirty minute lecture I’ve heard before time and time again. I’m not saying everyone should be subject to being spanked or whatever physical punishment the parents can come up with, nor am I saying its the right thing to do, but still, don’t you think its time that kids need to be reminded that some of their actions do have consequences?