Today’s Youth

This is a really good article on today’s youth.

Teen angst is nothing new, and neither is rebellion. And many indicators show that most young Canadians are doing quite well — graduation rates are up, and teenage pregnancies down. But a significant minority has gone another way. Social shifts are partly to blame, but alarming numbers of these underachievers are coming from the country’s better educated, more privileged families.
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Many people in their 20s prefer to put off jumping into the job market for as long as possible, Dr. Korenblum notes, sometimes until 30 or beyond. ”There is a fear of failure and of growing up,” he says.
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A recently released Statistics Canada report confirms that young people now are nearly three times more likely to move back home than their parents were: ”Although many parents may be unprepared for this ‘blast from the past,’ an adult child returning home has become a fairly common, predictable event in family life.”

So, what’s wrong with these kids? The thing that struck me in the article was this para….

Today, 63 per cent of high-school students believe that they will have professional careers, as doctors, lawyers or accountants. Yet only 20 per cent actually end up there.

And that’s what is inherently wrong with the society. I firmly believe this “angst” is not today’s youth problem rather a problem created by parents and the society as a whole. The pressure to conform to an image (especially successful parents’ image) is incredible. And when the children do not become what their parents hoped for, trouble begins. I went through this and I think I managed to dig myself out of the hole. But I remember staring into the abyss of “non-achievement” and almost took that path. And taking the path is far easier than anchoring down and taking some responsibility for your life. Parenting is not easy but to assume your kids will be everything you were and judge them with that criteria is absolutely wrong.