The emotional bond between millennials and their parents is simply different from what many of us experienced with our own mothers and fathers — even those of us who have close and caring relationships with our parents.Besides the shared outlook, I think a change in parenting style is also involved. Parents of my generation are less authoritarian than those of previous eras, and more interested in interacting with their children as friends. Whether this is really good for the emotional health of the children is an interesting question.
Many parents of millennials — we boomers — grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, when the “generation gap,” reflected in politics, culture, fashion and music, was the norm. Today, there is no such gap, or at least it’s a lot narrower than it was. In many cases, millennials and their parents share similar tastes in fashion and music (O.K., maybe not hip-hop), and our politics are often aligned.
My daughter and I shop together and sometimes share clothing. My husband has gone to concerts with both of our children, and I’ve worked on political campaigns with them. We share book recommendations, hike together and all enjoy going to the gym. The truth is, our kids seem to like hanging out with us, and we enjoy hanging out with them. We help to make them feel safe in a turbulent world; they keep us connected and make us feel alive and young.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Millennials and their Parents
A recent Pew poll found that 36% of Americans 18 to 31 live with their parents, the highest number ever. Why? Besides housing costs and the lousy job market, Randye Hoder senses something else at work:
An interesting question, and also surely an unanswerable one for many reasons, prominent among which must be the fact that it would be almost impossible to separate the observer's biases from anything approaching reality. If you don't like the sight of adult children living with their parents, or if you wish the millennial generation were tougher, etc., you're going to say the non-authoritarian parenting style isn't good for folk's psychology. I'm also not sure asking the question has much value on anything other than an individual basis. Exposure to danger, conflict, and physical risk may make some people tougher, but will probably leave others even more fearful, and self-hating to boot.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I'm unconvinced one generation can actually be said to be tougher or better equipped psychologically than another. The Greatest Generation looks great storming Omaha Beach, but the America of 1940 looks xenophobic, pusillanimous, or worse (yes, that would be the Greatest Gen's parents, but still). Necessity, not upbringing, makes large groups of people display collective good character. In any case, if we really want tougher, less fearful kids, perhaps we should raise them the way the average Russian 18-yr-old of 1942 was raised.
Of course, I like the non-authoritarian parenting style, so I'm rationalizing. But I think I'm right as well.
Thinking further about this, it strikes me a key concept is raising children to be afraid of authority that they regard as legitimate. The children that live happily with their parents aren't afraid of them, even though they are in many cases genuinely fond of them: that is, the parents have legitimacy, but have not imposed fear. Toughness is, in many cases, I think really a matter of being more afraid of the disapproval of legitimate authority than of external danger. This is not to say that it is impossible to combine fondness and fear. That said, do we really want to set back up a system in which children are supposed to fear of their parents (however productively and honorably sublimated that fear becomes)?
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree that it is very hard to say that one personality type is "better" than another, except by invoking personal preference, and I agree that we see "greatest generation" toughness in a response to a real crisis rather than in normal life.
ReplyDeleteI simply wonder about these things. It seems to me that different styles of parenting ought to produce, on average, different outcomes, so when the style of parenting shifts across a whole society, a major social change should result. But is that true? If so, what are the differences?
I agree with David that this tends to be an unanswerable. However, is too too much of a stretch to suggest that personal responsibility seems to be at an all-time low? If that's at all the case, then I start to wonder if incidents such as teenagers shooting Australian nationals for fun, will become more commonplace.
ReplyDeleteI also think we can chart some of the parameters of results simply by asking what makes a good citizen, and then asking by category, whether such parenting on the whole produces adults whose behavior supports those parameters.