I saw a video recently about Gen Alpha kids and the mistakes their parents are making raising that generation.
One of the arguments is that the parents of Gen Alpha were abused and had nasty parents and so they're overcomensating.
Is it really that way, though?
Gen Alpha is largely raised by the millennials and a few early zoomers. They in turn were raised by the boomers. The boomers were actually raised by parents who weren't very good on account of the modern era's ending through the depression and the world wars basically traumatizing generations of people.
As a result, the boomers often raised the millennials with a very gentle, permissive, and protective style in contrast with the authoritarian and often abusive and neglectful childhoods they had. The boomers were, after all, the "latchkey kids" but also the generation to get the belt, and they are the ones who changed that.
The boomers get a lot of flack, but in some ways they've seen a whole change in the world. Yes, they grew up in the postwar boom, but they came of age just as that age was ending. They've been living in basically a world that has never stopped decaying around them. Early on when they were doing their basic childcare, many of them still had some benefits from the dead age before them, but their kids did not.
So what the millennials and early zoomers brought to the table would be this higher level of parenthood based in the postmodern era that rejected the modernist methods of raising children, paired with a lack of resources to implement that higher level of parenthood. This explains why they'd take shortcuts like using tablets or even buying adult makeup for children and pre-teens, because they don't have enough resources in terms of time, attention, or money to provide the boomer parent style upbringing.
One of the arguments is that the parents of Gen Alpha were abused and had nasty parents and so they're overcomensating.
Is it really that way, though?
Gen Alpha is largely raised by the millennials and a few early zoomers. They in turn were raised by the boomers. The boomers were actually raised by parents who weren't very good on account of the modern era's ending through the depression and the world wars basically traumatizing generations of people.
As a result, the boomers often raised the millennials with a very gentle, permissive, and protective style in contrast with the authoritarian and often abusive and neglectful childhoods they had. The boomers were, after all, the "latchkey kids" but also the generation to get the belt, and they are the ones who changed that.
The boomers get a lot of flack, but in some ways they've seen a whole change in the world. Yes, they grew up in the postwar boom, but they came of age just as that age was ending. They've been living in basically a world that has never stopped decaying around them. Early on when they were doing their basic childcare, many of them still had some benefits from the dead age before them, but their kids did not.
So what the millennials and early zoomers brought to the table would be this higher level of parenthood based in the postmodern era that rejected the modernist methods of raising children, paired with a lack of resources to implement that higher level of parenthood. This explains why they'd take shortcuts like using tablets or even buying adult makeup for children and pre-teens, because they don't have enough resources in terms of time, attention, or money to provide the boomer parent style upbringing.
I understand that the term "latchkey kid" is generally associated with gen x and not the boomers, but the term is older, and was in some quarters associated with them. The term was created a couple generations earlier with the interbellum generation between WWI and WWII. It showed up in print in the 1940s because dad was off to war and mom was working in a factory so the kids had to fend for themselves.
There's a reason why one of the stories of the boomer generation is almost always "at 16 I moved out of my parents home".
Once dad came home, even in the postwar boom many of those fathers were home every day, the scars of the war remained and those fathers (and sometimes the mothers for different reasons) would be emotionally distant but authoritarian at home, having come of age in an environment like modernist mass conscription in a world war.
Later generations were branded as such, but the term already existed to explain a phenomena that was already in existence.
There's a reason why one of the stories of the boomer generation is almost always "at 16 I moved out of my parents home".
Once dad came home, even in the postwar boom many of those fathers were home every day, the scars of the war remained and those fathers (and sometimes the mothers for different reasons) would be emotionally distant but authoritarian at home, having come of age in an environment like modernist mass conscription in a world war.
Later generations were branded as such, but the term already existed to explain a phenomena that was already in existence.
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