Americans raising the Weakest Generation

/Image via flickr

 

Before today, I have never written anything for public consumption wishing it was wrong. I sincerely hope my apprehension about the current crop of young Americans is just the latest example of one generation looking askance at the next.

But I've long believed one of the greatest responsibilities in life is bearing witness to the world around me. And what I've seen and heard in my communities over the past 20 years, including my own extended family, is alarming.

I'd bet my house you've seen or heard most of the following in your community or extended family:
- Parents describing their minor children as their best friends.
- Parents routinely providing drugs or alcohol to their minor children.
- A teacher reporting unacceptable student behavior to a parent, who then charges into the school to verbally abuse or physically assault the teacher.
- Parents giving more than $500 to a child to go shopping for holiday gifts.
- Children verbally or physically abusing parents.
- Parents and children complaining that students have too much homework.
- Parents allowing able-bodied children to linger in their household for years after graduating high school or college, without requiring their offspring to get a job or otherwise take responsibility for their own livelihoods.
- Children "shopping" in unlocked cars for wallets, spare change, GPS devices or anything else of value.
- Children with $700 per week illegal drug habits.
- An adult child who would rather collect unemployment and live at a mom and dad's house than get a job.
- A school that would rather allow a child to spin out of control into teen pregnancy, drug addiction or a life of violence than run the risk of a parental lawsuit or having to place the child in an expensive out-of-district educational facility.

As one of my best friends would say, that's just the tip of the piley.

If you haven't already dismissed me as a caveman longing for a return to the "Leave it to Beaver" heyday of American culture, as someone who doesn't appreciate the difficulty of raising children in the modern world, believe me, I get it.

More often than not, my generation was raised in two-parent homes. Today, a quarter of all children are raised in a single-parent household, with mothers bearing the bulk of the burden.

More often than not, my generation went home after school, played in the yard or neighborhood for a little while, had a good dinner, did homework, watched some TV, then went to bed. Today, children come home from school and want to stay affixed to their smartphones or computers, usually taunting one another on Facebook or playing violent video games.

More often than not, my generation knew there was no way to avoid parental discipline. Today, when a child clashes with a parent at home, the minor can bug out to a friend's house, where there's either no parent present or an overly permissive parent allows the wayward child to hang out to avoid making waves.

The Americans who survived the Great Depression and World War II then helped establish the United States as a military, economic and cultural superpower in the 1950s and 1960s have been celebrated as the country's Greatest Generation.

The current generation of young Americans appears destined to be the Weakest Generation. I hope they prove me wrong.