Lurdan
old wave
Today's Times :
Parental failings ‘spawned an infantilised generation’ - Times (paywalled - text of article in spoiler)
Parental failings ‘spawned an infantilised generation’ - Times (paywalled - text of article in spoiler)
Greg Hurst, Social Affairs Editor
Monday July 13 2020, 12.01am, The Times
A failure by parents and schools to enforce boundaries has spawned a generation of “infantilised” millennials and fuelled identity politics, according to a new book by a sociology professor.
An unwillingness to chastise children or use moral-based judgments has left young people “disorientated” as they have been deprived of a natural process of navigating or chaffing against rules set by adults, Frank Furedi argues.
The emeritus professor of sociology at Kent University said the dismantling of boundaries has occurred over three or four generations and weakened the process of socialisation by which parents transit values to their children.
“Children develop by reacting against those lines, the boundaries that are set, and that is a very creative process to gain self sufficiency and intellectual independence,” he said.
“If what’s happening now is they are kicking against open doors, which is really what is going on, then the whole developmental process becomes compromised and you do end up with a situation where the transition from childhood to adolescence takes much, much longer than ever before and the transition from adolescence to adulthood also takes much longer.”
The result, Professor Furedi said, is that millennials in their twenties behave as they did in their mid-teens. His book, Why Borders Matter, says another of the boundaries to have been blurred is that between children and adults; he described seeing a man in a T-shirt with the slogan “I’m done with adulting”.
“Mothers take their 18-year-olds shopping and it’s their daughter that tells them what to wear, not the other way around. Fathers wear the same T shirt [as their sons], listen to the same music — [there is] almost this conscious effort not to be a father to your child or a mother but to be their best friend, which is not what children need.
“They can make their best friend with their peers. They need somebody that can look up to, somebody that can inspire them. There is this estrangement from adulthood.”
He said that, similarly, the debate on transgender rights had challenged the binary distinction between men and women, just as in politics the boundary between public and private lives has become blurred.
Professor Furedi argued that the dismantling of moral boundaries has created a paradox. Young people who have grown up without them abhor others who make moral judgments.
But the millennial generation has, he says, created borders of its own, notably the concept of “safe spaces” from which they ban people whose views clash with their own, and has embraced an inherently judgmental identity politics.
He said: “The thing about identity politics is that every expression they use is actually a contradiction. They talk about diversity — that’s one of the key values of identity politics — but identity politics is totally hostile to a diversity of viewpoints. So if you argue a different narrative to what they are arguing that is seen as racist, as offensive, as hate.”
Monday July 13 2020, 12.01am, The Times
A failure by parents and schools to enforce boundaries has spawned a generation of “infantilised” millennials and fuelled identity politics, according to a new book by a sociology professor.
An unwillingness to chastise children or use moral-based judgments has left young people “disorientated” as they have been deprived of a natural process of navigating or chaffing against rules set by adults, Frank Furedi argues.
The emeritus professor of sociology at Kent University said the dismantling of boundaries has occurred over three or four generations and weakened the process of socialisation by which parents transit values to their children.
“Children develop by reacting against those lines, the boundaries that are set, and that is a very creative process to gain self sufficiency and intellectual independence,” he said.
“If what’s happening now is they are kicking against open doors, which is really what is going on, then the whole developmental process becomes compromised and you do end up with a situation where the transition from childhood to adolescence takes much, much longer than ever before and the transition from adolescence to adulthood also takes much longer.”
The result, Professor Furedi said, is that millennials in their twenties behave as they did in their mid-teens. His book, Why Borders Matter, says another of the boundaries to have been blurred is that between children and adults; he described seeing a man in a T-shirt with the slogan “I’m done with adulting”.
“Mothers take their 18-year-olds shopping and it’s their daughter that tells them what to wear, not the other way around. Fathers wear the same T shirt [as their sons], listen to the same music — [there is] almost this conscious effort not to be a father to your child or a mother but to be their best friend, which is not what children need.
“They can make their best friend with their peers. They need somebody that can look up to, somebody that can inspire them. There is this estrangement from adulthood.”
He said that, similarly, the debate on transgender rights had challenged the binary distinction between men and women, just as in politics the boundary between public and private lives has become blurred.
Professor Furedi argued that the dismantling of moral boundaries has created a paradox. Young people who have grown up without them abhor others who make moral judgments.
But the millennial generation has, he says, created borders of its own, notably the concept of “safe spaces” from which they ban people whose views clash with their own, and has embraced an inherently judgmental identity politics.
He said: “The thing about identity politics is that every expression they use is actually a contradiction. They talk about diversity — that’s one of the key values of identity politics — but identity politics is totally hostile to a diversity of viewpoints. So if you argue a different narrative to what they are arguing that is seen as racist, as offensive, as hate.”
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