This has been on my mind for a long time, but I finally gathered the courage to talk to you about it. We Baby Boomers have a lot to apologize for. There, I said it.
As we watch what seems to be the technology, media and adrenaline-fueled decline of youth in America, I would like to be the first (if not the most articulate) to apologize. We can’t take back what our well-intentioned but sorely misguided parenting has done to you. If it takes a village to raise a child, then we have all failed.
The things I am sorry for:
1. Encouraging high self-esteem but fostering depression, anxiety and isolation.
2. Giving you so much freedom and so few boundaries.
3. Raising your expectations and not developing your ability to meet them.
4. Shielding you from frustration so completely in childhood that you are terrified to grow up.
5. Not making you understand that rights and privileges come with responsibilities.
6. Making you think that what you own says anything about who you are.
7. Making role models of those who are morally bankrupt.
8. Elevating interpersonal drama to an art form and letting you watch so you can emulate us.
9. Rendering you incapable of altruism.
10. Not making you take responsibility and not making you respect us enough to shoulder it.
11. Being so non-judgmental of your behavior that you have no concern for its effect on others.
12. Making you think you are so good that anything you do is above reproach.
13. Giving you the impression that material goods are a right but your compliance is a privilege.
14. Tending to your wardrobe but not to your conscience.
15. Letting you act like a victim every time someone tries to impose a limit on you.
16. Being so afraid that you’ll be angry at us that we fail to discipline you.
17. Making you think that stratification doesn’t exist in society and that authority, no matter how reasonable, is to be questioned.
18. Allowing you to be overtly critical of everyone and everything but too emotionally fragile to handle criticism yourself.
19. Giving you computers, video games and other technologies before you are responsible enough to use them appropriately.
20. Being surprised that you act the way you do, given how we have raised you.
The place for my writing, my musing, my random thinking and, occasionally, my ranting. Enjoy!
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