A year or so ago I was in Wadi Rum, the desert in the south of Jordan, near the Saudi border.
I spent a few days with a young bedouin, who in the absence of his parents, maintained the extended family, had mounted a successful business, spoke several languages fluently, hunted, played the jordanian mandolin, was humble yet strong. He was one of the most stable, centered, culutured, balanced and smart people I've ever met.
All of this at the ripe age of 19.
It made me consider his peers of my EU hometown Paris, and the only thing that came to mind was: Where has it gone so wrong. Western culture is raising generations of weak-minded, watery examples of sloth.
Travel really opens your eyes to the fact that determination, culture and independance are muscles that can be trained, apparently like their physical analogues: through reps.
The well-off tend to have better children because they don't have crushing economic burden to worry about, so they can spend more time cultivating family. This holds across cultures.
Sure there is a trend towards helicoptoring that punches above its weight in our media, but there are plenty of solid, well-adjusted American kids in college too.
Meh, I know bilingual piano playing job holding family supporting 19 year olds too. But they're Hispanic mothers and the same people that get histrionic about weak kids these days get histrionic about: single mothers and people that can speak spanish.
"Kids these days aint shit" it never ends and we can always find enough examples to prove it to our satisfaction if we want to.
Our problem is that we have produced a society where the next generation inherits the reliance on social security and the government from their parents.
This is a dangerous, deadly cycle as it produces a society where more and more people are incapable of acting independent and looking out for themselves.
And what is our answer to this? Utopian phantasies like unconditional basic income for everyone, because why can't we all just sit at home and play video games instead of doing something productive for ourselves and our society?
I'm not against social security per se, but it should only be available to those who objectively can't survive without outside help.
We've perverted this into a system where healthy, capable people can choose to not work and this doesn't hurt just them but the whole of society including businesses because they have to pay for this.
For example in Austria where I am 75% of all taxes are paid by the top 10% of incomes (with a >50% income tax), yet the other 90% still complain that we at the top are all thieves and we should give them more free stuff.
These arguments that primitive cultures produce stronger more capable individuals ignores the inherent massive trade offs.
Modern healthcare, farming, family planning, improved access to education, and the liberation of women cause an extended adolescence.
In exchange, you get to live like a king, enjoy unprecedented personal security, have a constant supply of goods from the world over, and very decreased likliehood of dying.
Of course primitive cultures produce more rugged individuals. It's not that their methods of living are superior.
The article never considers that the network effect of humanity may add up to a more productive whole, even if it appears to be made up of less productive individuals. This is the very nature of teamwork, and it's a good thing. Young people have to take longer to figure out what they should do, they can play and explore more, and make mistakes that don't starve their family.
I've observed the exact opposite of the folksyism of this article. Young people with increased play time were able to find more meaningful and more lucrative long term positions due to the luxury of explorations. Those forced to "grow up" early ended up in dead end positions due to suboptimization for short term needs.
But the New Yorker is hung up on the trope of individual success, as is the cultural center they arise from.
I have the sense I am a lot older than many readers here. So here are two old man's observations for those with young kids, or those looking forward to that who read this article. I don't claim these are the most important things, just that they are things I have seen that others don't seem to comment on.
1) In the US at least so many people are living away from family and often even friends. My wife and I were essentially on our own. We did not have the wisdom of people who had done it and learned (hence this post and I expect the article ..). We had the general idea of helping, but I certainly think we helped too much (our kids are OK, not living at home for one thing).
2) At least some of American parenting ratcheting-up is a contest among mothers. "I'm a better mother because my daughter takes both piano and horse-riding." It is not a pretty truth, but it is nonetheless a truth.
Anyone who has been China can tell you this is wrong:
"With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world."
Affluent kids in China are also very much indulged, mostly by grandparents.
The main factor at work here is not a mystery: the demographic transition that began in the West around 1850. When families have 20 children, the children are under pressure to prove their worth to the family, relative to all the other children. They compete with each other to show their worth. But when a family only has one child, the parents and grandparents compete to win the favor of the child.
There are nuances, that vary from country to country, but the primary force at work here is the demographic transition.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
Spoiled kids and 'adultesence' are portrayed here as the same issue. But I think in the latter case, a lot of superficially immature behaviour is just a form of status signalling. It's showing that you (or your family) has enough social, financial and educational capital that you can afford to play even in your twenties, when someone with less would be working all hours in a poorly paid job to get by.
I can't recommend treating immature behavior as a reliable signal of status, having seen a lot of immature people with no social, financial or educational capital whatsoever who were simply immature.
well, it is kind obvious - being able to do things vs. being able to demand and command of others to do things - skilled worker vs. manager/executive - natural selection rules, it is just selecting for different qualities in the post-post-industrial society than it was doing it in the pre-industrial.
interesting viewpoint. are we simply training our kids to be comfortable with ordering things to do tasks for us- the computer,the internet(services), the robot? vs trying to micromanage everything and failing miserably
The problem is that actually its not the parents spoiling there kids, its that a whole industry is using them as lever to sell goods and undermines parental authority systematically.
You can not win against george lucas, without looking like you are on the dark side.
They are so much more enthusiastic consumers, it would be a real shame if those know-it-all parents could hold them back.
[+] [-] kweks|9 years ago|reply
I spent a few days with a young bedouin, who in the absence of his parents, maintained the extended family, had mounted a successful business, spoke several languages fluently, hunted, played the jordanian mandolin, was humble yet strong. He was one of the most stable, centered, culutured, balanced and smart people I've ever met.
All of this at the ripe age of 19.
It made me consider his peers of my EU hometown Paris, and the only thing that came to mind was: Where has it gone so wrong. Western culture is raising generations of weak-minded, watery examples of sloth.
Travel really opens your eyes to the fact that determination, culture and independance are muscles that can be trained, apparently like their physical analogues: through reps.
[+] [-] vinceguidry|9 years ago|reply
Sure there is a trend towards helicoptoring that punches above its weight in our media, but there are plenty of solid, well-adjusted American kids in college too.
[+] [-] Avshalom|9 years ago|reply
"Kids these days aint shit" it never ends and we can always find enough examples to prove it to our satisfaction if we want to.
[+] [-] arjie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DominikR|9 years ago|reply
This is a dangerous, deadly cycle as it produces a society where more and more people are incapable of acting independent and looking out for themselves.
And what is our answer to this? Utopian phantasies like unconditional basic income for everyone, because why can't we all just sit at home and play video games instead of doing something productive for ourselves and our society?
I'm not against social security per se, but it should only be available to those who objectively can't survive without outside help.
We've perverted this into a system where healthy, capable people can choose to not work and this doesn't hurt just them but the whole of society including businesses because they have to pay for this.
For example in Austria where I am 75% of all taxes are paid by the top 10% of incomes (with a >50% income tax), yet the other 90% still complain that we at the top are all thieves and we should give them more free stuff.
[+] [-] s_q_b|9 years ago|reply
Modern healthcare, farming, family planning, improved access to education, and the liberation of women cause an extended adolescence.
In exchange, you get to live like a king, enjoy unprecedented personal security, have a constant supply of goods from the world over, and very decreased likliehood of dying.
Of course primitive cultures produce more rugged individuals. It's not that their methods of living are superior.
It's that everyone else is already dead.
[+] [-] antisthenes|9 years ago|reply
The parallels drawn here unmistakably read like something from Dune
[+] [-] tsunamifury|9 years ago|reply
I've observed the exact opposite of the folksyism of this article. Young people with increased play time were able to find more meaningful and more lucrative long term positions due to the luxury of explorations. Those forced to "grow up" early ended up in dead end positions due to suboptimization for short term needs.
But the New Yorker is hung up on the trope of individual success, as is the cultural center they arise from.
[+] [-] jimhefferon|9 years ago|reply
1) In the US at least so many people are living away from family and often even friends. My wife and I were essentially on our own. We did not have the wisdom of people who had done it and learned (hence this post and I expect the article ..). We had the general idea of helping, but I certainly think we helped too much (our kids are OK, not living at home for one thing).
2) At least some of American parenting ratcheting-up is a contest among mothers. "I'm a better mother because my daughter takes both piano and horse-riding." It is not a pretty truth, but it is nonetheless a truth.
[+] [-] lisa_henderson|9 years ago|reply
"With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world."
Affluent kids in China are also very much indulged, mostly by grandparents.
The main factor at work here is not a mystery: the demographic transition that began in the West around 1850. When families have 20 children, the children are under pressure to prove their worth to the family, relative to all the other children. They compete with each other to show their worth. But when a family only has one child, the parents and grandparents compete to win the favor of the child.
There are nuances, that vary from country to country, but the primary force at work here is the demographic transition.
[+] [-] Kristine1975|9 years ago|reply
This sounds like a really dysfunctional family to me.
[+] [-] Kristine1975|9 years ago|reply
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
(I know the quote is not really by Socrates)
[+] [-] ajb|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _yosefk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trhway|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkarakk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lunchTime42|9 years ago|reply
They are so much more enthusiastic consumers, it would be a real shame if those know-it-all parents could hold them back.