The handicapped generation

Ran across the link to this kind of outdated article on my friend’s wall on facebook. Read it twice and I am of the opinion this piece should be an obligatory read for most today’s parents who bring up their offspring to become… Why do they call the future adults zombie creatures?

It is not a secret that gap between people born in 1970s and 1980s is far bigger than the gap between the latter and born in 1990s. I can say nothing about differences between people born in 1990s and those born in 2000s since I lack sample to make such comparison. This abyss between people of nearly the same age is not just the effect of growing up in different economic and technological environment, but is an element of a deeper social change. In big cities childhood in late PRL or in years of nascent capitalism differed much from today’s pattern of childhood, moreover communication was not facilitated by the Internet and mobile devices; yet these differences make up just the tip of the iceberg.

How sensitive children are is a clear consequence of how parents raise them. An average child is told on every step dangers loom all around. Imagine you are told not to stroke an animal since it may bite you or bacteria from its fur may jump into you… Imagine you are instructed to wear a helmet protecting your limbs, otherwise learning to ride a two-wheel bike you will get bruised… Imagine you are prevented from taking a mountain-hiking trip or a canoe trip, because for a few days you would live without electricity, sleep in a tent and wash yourself in cold water…

Parents’ attempts to assure comfort to their children and to save them from harm at any price at the end of the day do more harm than good. Childhood by definition ought to be the most carefree period in life. But childhood and youth are the period of learning and experiencing, also learning from one’s own mistakes which usually do not kill a child, but make them stronger and wiser. If children are to manage on their own in their early adulthood they need to be taught to take decisions and responsibility for them.

Today’s parents who do everything for and instead of their children not only fail to teach them taking decisions and responsibility, but also deprive their offspring of the carefree element of their early years. There is a built-in pressure to meet parents’ expectations instead of enjoying childhood the way a child wants. Yet a contemporary child would not want to enjoy it the way I did it over twenty years ago, since patterns of pastime activities have changed. Go to any housing estate and look out for children aged less than 10 running around or riding bikes nearly without parents’ care. Such was the reality in mid-1990s!

While today, parents want to spare their children as much strain as possible and bring them up to become frail adults, shying away from hardships or becoming so-called kidults. Pains, suffering, defeats, eating humble pie, etc. are the elements of brutal life. Children should rather be supported in coping with them, rather than shielded from them…

The article dwells on the appalling fitness of Polish children. I stick to my theory that today’s children’s life expectancy will be lower than today’s middle-aged people’s. The first and foremost reason is that children move too little, spending too much time staring at smartphone. The second cause is less straightforward, namely physical activity is, I argue, over-coordinated, not spontaneous. Parents sign up their offspring for horse-riding classes, swimming lessons, tennis lessons, etc. which in essence is commendable, yet takes away the element of spontaneity… I wonder how many parents signing their children up for various classes ask if their offspring really want to attend them and how many do it because of the peer pressure or to fulfil their own ambitions.

On top of this an average child of well-off educated parents gets what they want without even asking. Such behaviours among parents have been witnessed more than ten years ago, hence we already see young adults claiming they deserve to get something, but offering nothing or little in return. If children think they are exceptional and the world should treat them as a hub of the universe, the fault lies with their parents…

The advent of social media and the culture of sharing one’s life with others via them has changed motives which drive people’s activities. Author of the article incites his audience to ask a question whether youngsters do things for themselves of to impress other people. The quintessence of leading a happy life is doing things for one’s own pleasure. I see nothing wrong in sharing with other people things done for one’s own pleasure (and do it occasionally, may facebook fellows know I’m having fun), yet if impressing others becomes a primary motivation for choosing what to do in free time, a person falling victim to such way of thinking will sooner or later get hurt.

Such reasoning leads to dangerous conclusion, namely the measure of how much a youngster is worth is how much appreciation they receive. Number of likes under a person’s post on facebook becomes a benchmark of who’s more trendy, cool or… valuable…

The author also points up helplessness of youngsters in simple situations. Sewing in a ripped button, mending a leaking tap, changing a light bulb for many young people, not taught to cope with such tasks at home, have become insurmountable problems. This is horrifying, yet I have witnessed situations when youngsters were helpless staring at an overloaded rubbish bin, not coming up with a solution that emptying it (throwing away rubbish) would help…

This is also a matter of widespread consumerism. In the economy propelled by disposable items which once wear out or break down are replaced by brand-new ones. Though socialist economy was bound to collapse and had built-in depravity, it taught people resourcefulness. If you could not come by brand-new stuff, you had to seek ways to repair the old one, plus oddly enough, what was manufactured, though technically obsolete was much more durable. In today’s capitalism once a customer buys a new item, its vendor already plans how to attract the customer again (planned obsolescence is one of the tools). In the economy of shortage, with supply falling short of demand, a vendor was bending down backwards to keep the customer away from it for many years, so that insufficient supply of goods was less visible.

There is no use in protecting children from life’s hardships. The later they face up to them, the more painful the head-on collision with brutality will be.

Criticise children wisely, get them accustomed to criticism. Balance stick and carrot in upbringing. Praise when due, but teach to draw conclusions from judgmental remarks instead of taking umbrage with the world.

As the author points out towards the end of his essay (quite long, I once read for an average Pole a text longer than four A4 pages is too long to absorb, while the one on which I base my today’s post is six A4 pages long), not learning to overcome problems leads to mental diseases in early adulthood. Statistics quoted by the author of the percentage of students prone to depression, neurosis and other mental problems is horrifying. If those number are true, they illustrate the price paid for flying away from the golden cage of carefree childhood…

BTW, what’s the English for pierdoła? None of the translations found on the spot online renders properly the context in which the word was used in the title of the article…