generation gaps Options

[brooklyneast05]

how do you feel about this? does it ring true or are we still at fault? i think the majority of us would agree kids are f*cked up nowadays. even people in their early 20's like me feel that kids are f*cked up and that it's a world apart from how it was when we were kids. what happened? or is this just how it works, and we are forever destined to think the generation in below us is f*cked? at what point does it get to be too messed up? now we hear stories of 5th graders giving head in the bathroom or other bizarre sounding events. regardless of whether my generation was f*cked up at 11 years old, that's not the kind of f*cked up people were complaining about i don't think. how important is this and how is it going to shape our world? how big an effect does the loss of innocence have. i'm not talking completely about sex, but i guess sex related is just a good example. i'm more talking about the fact that it seems like kids have an increasingly more narrow frame of time to be kids. is it going to go to the point where they don't have a childhood hardly at all?

[brooklyneast05]

i just read this article which sort of plays into this

are you raising a douchebag?
http://www.details.com/sex-relationships/m...g?currentPage=1

this picture alone cracked me up, just look at what this kid is eating.



some quotes

Alas, convenient as it might be, we can't blame the children. "There's no such thing as a spoiled gene," says parenting expert Michele Borba, author of Don't Give Me That Attitude! "The brat factor is all learned." Which means that if you're the dad pushing Junior around in a limited-edition Bugaboo stroller by Bas Kosters ($2,000), carrying a Louis Vuitton diaper bag ($1,380), and checking in at a members-only parenting club like Citi-babes in Manhattan (annual membership: $2,000), your offspring are probably developing some serious entitlement issues. Just read the news. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the rise of sixth-grade "fashion bullies" who terrorize peers who don't wear Junior Dolce & Gabbana. Then there was the New York Times article on youngsters—4-year-olds!—who fancy themselves collectors of highly coveted works of art.


It's not just about money, though. Since the nineties, a surge in overprotective parenting has promoted discussion over discipline and made leisure activities contingent upon nanny CPR training (have you ever even considered letting your kid play with a pocket knife or a rusty Flexible Flyer, never mind have a paper route?).

In 1999, Katie Allison Granju wrote a book, Attachment Parenting, about the virtues of catering to the needs and emotions of the very young, from breast-feeding-on-demand to co-sleeping. While she still advocates that approach, she also believes that society tries to turn babies into children too fast and then treats older kids much like babies. Her forthcoming book is titled Let Them Run With Scissors: How Over-Parenting Hurts Children, Parents and Society. "We no longer allow children to have personal autonomy, to experience hard knocks, or to take real risks," she says. "The result is a nation of overweight, overindulged, overly neurotic kids who whine and moan and often can't function on their own."