Some great parenting insights in this thread.
Not necessarily.
In many cultures it’s not “normal and expected,” even though brain development is presumably the same everywhere. Typically, in societies where children spend time learning or apprenticing with parents or other family elders, instead of at school, this doesn’t happen. These are often societies where they don’t even have a word for “adolescence.” This is part of what Left Hand of Dorkness’ is saying above–the very first sentence of the OP is a misguided premise.
I don’t know why anyone would think the only ways kids rebel is by smoking weed, drinking, doing drugs, having sex. Sometimes rebellion is simply noncompliant behavior, and even “open” parents have expectations. The kid who gets stopped for driving 100 mph on the freeway is probably going to be in trouble even if her parents smoke weed in front of her.
I think the original was Malcolm X’s “A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”
I like the version you quoted, too.
Rebelling against decent parents is what God created the Juggalos for.
I don’t have children myself but I was going to touch on this. I’ve noticed my younger colleagues and nieces/nephews (aged 16-24) are much less wild than we were at their age (I’m 48). I wonder if they’ve grown up watching their parents drinking too much at parties and don’t fancy it much themselves (note this is the UK, where regular drinking is commonplace).
My WAG: Very few parents are truly “open.” Almost everyone is closed-minded or intolerant of something or certain things. So an open parent who doesn’t mind teenagers smoking pot or cross-dressing might say “Don’t you dare hang out with (Category of People)” and then, guess which crowd their teenager hangs out with.
At the age of 12 I’m not sure he’s doing that with the specific purpose of antagonizing his mom. Age 14-17, sure.
In societies where children are apprentice adults and are given adult responsibilities as soon as they can handle it, if not sooner, the kids don’t often rebel. Because what would be the point?
The rebelliousness comes from a combination of expectations plus powerlessness. The parents treat the kids like children, but expect compliance about bullshit stuff.
The whole “generation gap” in the 50s and 60s happened because children were suddenly being raised differently. In earlier times, kids were put to work on the farm or in the factories. And sure, there were bullshit social conventions they were expected to follow, but they were the exact same rules that everyone had to follow, adults included.
Then along came the 50s and 60s. And with the depression over and the war over, it was a new era. Dad went to work but the kids went to school instead. And therefore an new thing was invented, adolescence. Young people were no longer treated as apprentice adults, but as children. And so the famous generation gap, where parents raised in the old style were raising children in the new style, and then wondering why their kids turned out different.
The generation gap is over because baby boomers raised in the new style raised their kids in the new style, and those kids raised their kids in the new style. Baby boomers aren’t parents anymore, they’re grandparents, and the generation that didn’t understand the new generation are now dead or in nursing homes.
Yes, kids today. They get in trouble in ways we didn’t when we were kids! Except some of the new problems that kids today get into aren’t problems for kids, they’re problems for everyone. Yeah, there are kids today who get exposed to toxic ideas online and become MRAs or whatever. And plenty of adults do too. It’s not just kids who are spiraling out of control on social media, Fox News Grandpa is doing the exact same thing.
One of my classmates dressed so preppy we didn’t even have a word for it. Ironed light grey slacks, pastel-toned V-neck knits. Another classmate eventually asked him how come, what’s up with all the light grey slacks and light pink knits. “You know the hippy store at the cathedral?” “Yeah…?” “My mother owns it :D” “HAH!” You wanna piss off a mother who’s the hippiest hippy in town, go preppy.
One of my students was the son of a rich American sculptor and his also-rich, also-artsy Spanish wife; they lived in Spain, where she owned an artsy-craftsy store she opened when she felt like it. The son? When I met him he was a lieutenant in the US Army. You wanna piss off a pair of artsy types? Join that organization they hate more than they hate mismatched colors.
My grandparents from Hell didn’t set foot in a church if they could help it. Gramps appeared to find it irritating that God couldn’t be bothered smite him, despite having taken part in such lovely activities as burning down convents and raping female prisoners (including the occasional nun). My mother went daily-Mass and married a man who was actually devout.
Rebelling against your parents doesn’t require them to be strict. It just requires you wanting to take charge of your own life.
I have seen such kids rebel and the parents simply accept their rebellion for who they are. Want to stay out all night, great, remember if you need help from us just call no matter how late. Sort of like the mormon religion where those of early adulthood are allowed to live a ‘sinful’ life in society for 1-2 years as part of their self discovery process, after which they are welcomes back. And through they can engage in sinful behavior it is not considered sinful for this purpose.
Bingo. “Open” parents are usually just strict about OTHER things. I’ve known parents who insisted, for example, that their kids’ toys did not belong to specific kids…that they were communal. And I’ve never seen anyone gorge on as much soda, junk food, and frozen foods as those kids whose parents insisted upon a very strict healthy, organic diet at home. I have a business associate who is currently going through very rough times because her son wants to join the Boy Scouts.
My son smokes too much weed. And doesn’t have a girlfriend - he had one in middle school (he’s almost 20) and it was “too much work.” And managed to not make it through tech school. But he does hold two jobs and his bosses love him - if I go into the restaurants he works in, they tell me what a hard worker he is. So his rebellion is “I don’t want to grow up yet.”
My daughter is non-gender binary and asexual.
I’m the only mom I know with condoms in the house for the kids, whose kids apparently don’t have and don’t want sex lives. So apparently, they are rebelling by never giving me grandchildren…which I sort of hope they never do.
Neither has gone conservative or religious.
That’s amish, not mormon.
Wasn’t that the premise of Michael J. Fox’s sitcom Family Ties?
I was thinking of the same cartoon - Mad Magazine probably?
Think Alex Keaton from Family Ties.
Oops - see I was not the first with the example.
Is that statement phrased correctly? If that child is non-gender-binary, is it correct to refer to em as your “daughter”?
I have her (their) permission to use female terms of reference. She/they chooses to present as a woman, just doesn’t identify as such.
My parents are (well, were – they might be ossifying in their old age) socially very liberal while I was growing up, my mother especially so. We never had a curfew, they rarely if ever waited up for us to come home, and when my father once asked me if I was going to wear that skirt out (ca. age 14), my mother forbade him from commenting on my clothing choices ever again. My sister dyed her hair black cherry red twenty years before cartoon colors were fashionable. They did not care if we drank or tried pot, as long as we were not using excessively, or stupid enough to drive like that.
In my case, the ‘rebellion’ was against my mother’s idea that we should be best buddies. She not only wanted us to feel safe coming to her with anything, she actively pestered us to tell her everything. The result was that I felt everything was just gossip to her and told her as little as I could get away with, dwindling to absolutely nothing once I moved out for college.