From a Different World

Many teens feel that their parents don't understand them. It is as though their parents are "from a different world." This is a normal reaction, due to the generation gap between teens and their parents.

Parents tend to be conservative in the child-rearing philosophy. They are under a lot of financial and social pressure to succeed, and they don't have enough time or energy to devote themselves exclusively to taking care of their children. They probably remember experiencing many of the same problems their kids are going through, but they also recall how naive they were at that age. Of course, they also hope their progeny can avoid some of the mistakes that their parents made. One of the few guides they have is remembering the way adults (especially their own parents) responded to them when they were young, so they tend to act the same way. This is how families have been raised for millennia.

Kids, however, have not lived through any earlier time. They don't have a large backlog of experiences. Everything is relatively new to them, and full of possibilities. "Some people look at the world and ask why, but I look at it and ask why not?" is likely to be a dominating attitude. They are unsympathetic to their parents apparent apathy. They know the world is full of hypocrisy and unfairness, and they strongly believe that they can change it. This is how human society makes progress, though it is far slower and less complete than the young want.

What happens of course, is that the young, impatient (and maybe radical) as they are, eventually grow up, get a job, and start a family; and the cycle begins anew. Before they know it, they are the hide-bound conservatives they had despised in their youth, and the children they conceive are the ones with the time, energy, and vision needed to try to create a new society.