Are today's parents enabling their kids to be self-centered?

[hyde]

[/ QUOTE ]


It's appalling (lol, I always think of Simon Cowell when I use that word [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]) I can't stand how selfish a lot of today's parents are. I guess I'm just not sure the indulging parents are to blame for the state of our society. I can't figure it out. There are so many narcissistic shallow people running around of all age groups. I am not convinced that parents coming from a position of indulgence and love are necessarily to blame.
Makes me think we're all shallow.

[/ QUOTE ]

I could write a book.
Working title: I raised three teenagers and may live to write about it.
This topic is really complex. There is an element of nature vs nurture and certainly a shift in how society influences children.
Background: I have three children within 5 years, the youngest is 17. I have been in the trenches for a long while. Two of my children are 'perfect', great grades, no disciplinary issues, good work ethic, totally more reasonable than I was at that age. third child....we'll call him Damian, has been the challenge for a lifetime. I know way too many police officers by first name. The family savings was spent on a boot camp in West Virginia, He has no ability to defer gratification. Little ability to accept responsibility.
Chapter ONE: The cattle prod, teaching tool or a bit much?
Interestingly he is incredibly thoughtful around his grandmother. Like I said, this is complex.
And very similar nurturing has produced very different behaviors. Nature wires all of us differently.
I believe society has always had a flawed percentage of parents. Perhaps our culture has increased that percentage with a slide into narcissism. I can't imagine 25 years ago that 'Anna Nicole to be buried tomorrow!!" would have been 'breaking news'. Or a rich socialite riding a sex tape to fame and adulation, Or teenage girls giving blowjobs as party favors because it was not sex. Advertising anything from tag body spray to cars to boats as a path to getting laid more is IMO a cultural decline.
Yes, the evolution of our culture and society has increased the challenge of teaching our children.
Chapter TWO: Television, boone or bane?
Are parents enabling? Yes the percentage is increasing. I coached, the kids were good and challenging to work with, the parents were the pits. (25% of them).
As the percentage of enabling parents increases the number of children being raised by enabling parents increases. These children are less likely to know how to raise children without enabling and on and on and on. It is mathematical. It is a increase of enablers.
Chapter THREE: Require a license to have kids? Vasectomy upon birth? (they are reversible these days)
I (they) was lucky not to have children until I was 30+. I was not mature enough until then. I was challenged often these last 20 years, there were times I made the wrong decision. If I had it to do over I would have made better use of say...duct tape.
Back to enabling. I was involved in a group something or other many years ago, BK (before kids) and people were sharing their asses off about upbringing. The spoiled ones wished their parents were stricter, the strictly raised wished their parents had been more permissive.
Chapter FOUR: You are an adult, it's not your parents fault anymore.
Which reminds me, I recently wrote an open letter to my mother and my children. Thanking my mother for raising me the way she did. Manners. and ethics. And telling my children that they were pretty much adults and I was available for advice ( and would try my damnedest to keep away from the unsolicited kind) but they had the best foundation I could give them and life was now their responsibility. And don't feel bad about pulling the plug.
Chapter FIVE: I made what I thought was the best decision at the time.
Subtitle: too bad for you I wasn't smarter.

/end coffee buzz. good for them I gave up everything else.

sorry if this wandered and rambled.
Oh, and on the quote above. Simon Cowell, his behavior and his popularity speak volumes about our societies decent.
And no, we are not all shallow, talking about it, thinking about it, just knowing about it, is having left the shallow end of the pool. AND it is damned crowded in that end.

hyde

[Fishwhenican]

[ QUOTE ]
[But it's not like the hippies of the 1960s had a good work ethic either, right? I mean they were raised by conservative, disciplinarian parents and yet I got the impression that a lot of them didn't want to work very hard and indulged in kind of kooky, self-involved lifestyles.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is where it started! Damn Hippies! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

All parents should be like my Hero:

Red Forman


Bob Pinciotti: You know Red, that hurts.
Red Forman: So does a swift kick in the ass.
Bob Pinciotti: You know, Red, a kick in the ass isn't the solution to everything.
Red Forman: I'm afraid I'm gonna have to disagree with that, Bob.

[Myrtle]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

I see Boomers as the first generation to go down the road of overindulging our children to the point where their value systems are so skewed that their ethical standards are based more upon their personal wants rather than some ethical system of values.

[/ QUOTE ]


Forgive me if I'm being dumb on this issue but I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. Are you saying that previous generations did not base their life choices and "standards" on personal wants? Haven't all generations been somewhat conceited and self-serving, just in different ways?

[/ QUOTE ]

You're not dumb, Katy.

My statement above is my opinion, and is based upon my anecdotal observations and conclusions that I have drawn from them.

In the simplest of terms, my parents were children of the Great Depression, and as such grew up in a very difficult time.

Struggle with simply surviving was the main theme in their lives. After WWII, their generation had a legitimate opportunity to 'make a better life' for themselves and their families.

You need to remember, that nuclear and extended families were the rule of the day. The man was the breadwinner: the woman ran the household and took care of virtually everything domestic.

Parents most of all did not want their children to have to undergo the hardships that they had endured.

They struggled mightily in attempting to achieve this goal.

If you were of the upper middle class back then, your parents had broken free of the economic bounds that had constricted so many in the previous generation. More simply put, they had an excess of $$.

If you were of the working middle or lower class, things were still a struggle. There was not always enough food on the table to feed all. There may or may not have been enough oil in the tank (or coal in the hopper) to keep the house warm in the winter.

Many families could get by with one bread winner only, and as that was the social norm of the time, that's generally the way it was.

In any case, (and I'm oversimplifying here) life in general was much better for their children than it was for them.

One of the side effects of this was an ability on their part to 'indulge' their children (my generation) in ways that were not possible for their parents to indulge them.

That's where I see the phenomena of over-indulgence and eventual narcissism as beginning.

My parents generation were faced with a choice that they had never envisioned.....Having more than they needed to survive, and being faced with the opportunity to indulge themselves in things that were previously considered unreachable luxury.

This ability to attain previously unreachable material things could not help but filter down to have an effect upon their children.

Remember.....the family was still a nuclear unit, unaffected by the "latchkey & daycare children" syndrome so common today.

Life was good....mostly. Mom & Dad were together. Divorces were scandalous and a rarity. Children had a strong support system in place around them. There was a very strong code of morals and ethics in place, given that we in the US had just come out of WWII.

Things such as personal responsibility, keeping your commitments, earning your way were generally not things that were negotiated between parents and children.

As children, we were expected to understand the above, and there was little doubt that you would pay the piper if you went out of bounds.

Soooo.....We were what I would call the "transitional" generation.

Our feet were firmly rooted in our parents experiences of their struggle to survive, but our appetites had been whetted by the fact that we were mostly unfettered with having to worry about the bare necessities of life.....Food, clothing and shelter.

There were bigger and better things ahead for us on the horizon.............

[HoldingFolding]

[ QUOTE ]
When I was a kid, if I really wanted something special I had to work for it. I wanted a 10 speed bike. My dad was nice enough to supply the lawn mower and told me to get people to let me mow their lawns to make money. So, I mowed lawns, a lot of lawns. If I wanted an allowance I also had to mow our lawn along with making sure the dog poop was picked up in the back yard.

[/ QUOTE ]

This far into the thread & 'The Four Yorkshiremen' haven't made an appearance yet. Shape up, gentlemen, shape up.

Great thread BTW, wish I had something substantial to add. How do you see the trend (is it a 'downward' trend or an oscillation looking reach equilibrium) continuing over the next few generations?

[Myrtle]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When I was a kid, if I really wanted something special I had to work for it. I wanted a 10 speed bike. My dad was nice enough to supply the lawn mower and told me to get people to let me mow their lawns to make money. So, I mowed lawns, a lot of lawns. If I wanted an allowance I also had to mow our lawn along with making sure the dog poop was picked up in the back yard.

[/ QUOTE ]

This far into the thread & 'The Four Yorkshiremen' haven't made an appearance yet. Shape up, gentlemen, shape up.

Great thread BTW, wish I had something substantial to add. How do you see the trend (is it a 'downward' trend or an oscillation looking reach equilibrium) continuing over the next few generations?

[/ QUOTE ]

...short answer?

More pendulum in nature.

Extremes of the pendulum are Authoritarian on one extreme to Permissive on the other extreme.

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
What I'm getting from these posts is that 20 somethings today have a poor work ethic. But it's not like the hippies of the 1960s had a good work ethic either, right? I mean they were raised by conservative, disciplinarian parents and yet I got the impression that a lot of them didn't want to work very hard and indulged in kind of kooky, self-involved lifestyles.

[/ QUOTE ]
Most of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies weren't hippies. Back then about the best thing my parents and family would say about someone is that "they are a hard worker". Today it seems being known as a hard worker is akin to being some sort of sucker. I have friends with kids who don't even mow the lawn or keep their room clean. That's impossible to imagine back in my day.


[ QUOTE ]
I think it's interesting what jfk said about people "branding" themselves. Sort of depressing to think that in this consumer-based society we are all just trying to sell ourselves but I think this is what's going on. I don't like it. Makes me think we're all shallow.

[/ QUOTE ]
Today never wearing clothes with a visible label is sort of a minor eccentricity. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

~ Rick

[adios]

I think that kids have a tougher time for the reasons you mention as well. It's amazing observing the level of sophistication my 15 year old granddaughter has and comparing it to the level of sophistication her mother had at that age. Honestly I think alot of this stuff gets over emphasized though. I see children (yeah a 15 year old is a child to me) today that are incredibly bright, intelligent, sophisticated and what not that are really great to be around and talk to. I know that many of these kids that I'm talking about are way more advanced than I was at that age. Sure there's brats, malcontents, delinquents, criminals, and what have you but not sure the proportion of "good" to "bad" is that much different than it ever was.

Being a parent of a 17 year old is one of the hardest assignments for a parent. The 17 year old is at an age where the laws give them a lot of legal rights that it doesn't afford a 16 year old or less while at the same time the parents retain much of the responsibility, in a legal sense, that they had at when their children were sixteen. What does a parent do with a 17 year old that decides to quit school, hang out to all hours of the night, and basically freeload for a year or so? At least where I live there really isn't much the parent can do about that situation and yet the law makers from time to time seek to pass laws that punish the parents for not having control of their 17 year olds.

[adios]

I'd be willing to bet that more "problem" children come from single parent homes than from two parent homes where both parents work. I guess we'd have to define the criteria for "problem" children first though.

[katyseagull]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd be willing to bet that more "problem" children come from single parent homes than from two parent homes where both parents work. I guess we'd have to define the criteria for "problem" children first though.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hm. I'm just not sure about this. I've known a lot of self-centered, bratty young adults who came from 2-parent homes. I would actually disagree with your statement. I could be wrong though. I think there are a lot of factors that play into this, most importantly, the innate personality of the individual.

[adios]

What teenager isn't narcisstic? Anyway this apparently was a sample of college students and in my opinion doesn't provide conclusive evidence that parents are "enabling their kids to be self centered" and furthermore that this is a major problem with the way children are being parented today. Color me extremely unimpressed by this article. Not stating that kids and parents don't face significant and difficult challenges, just saying that this article isn't very good and the "evidence" it's based on is problematic at best.