Generation Gap

25 Фев 2011

Generation gap exists always. The problems and misunderstandings between parents and their children are more pressing when they live together. Hundreds, thousands of European over the age of 20 still live in their parents’ home. Some do so out of sheer necessity when they have lost job or are unable to find one. Some seek the perpetuation of a warm and supportive parent-child relationship. Some find it just easier and creepier to stay in the nest. Whatever their reasons, increasing numbers of young Europeans, especially well-educated, middle class young adults are simply not leaving home. The pattern is beginning to worry some parents and sociologist as well. “Post adolescence” has emerged as a term to describe the phenomenon, which is now rampant in Europe.

But may be it’s parents, rather than their children, who have changed. Now a generation of permissive parents has made it easy for the generation of ex-rebels to return to the fold. Some parents do everything possible to tempt their children back to the family homestead. Loneliness is tended to push parents and their post-teen children closer together.

Some parent, though have begun to rebel at what they see as flagrant exploitation by their own children. Parents complain that children aren’t even embarrassed at being completely dependent. They use the house like a hotel with all services. They treat parents as moneybags and then ignore them or just plain insult them. They take it for granted that the fridge will always be well stocked and the closet full of clean cloths. To get them to do anything around the house, you have to yell bloody murder.

Professional observes see some even deeper danger in the emerging situation. Today we have grown men with the behavior patterns of teenagers. They are failing to mature losing their masculinity, turning into what called old young men. And today’s youngsters are suffering from too much security and becoming soft. Much as parents may complain about the overgrown louts hanging about their houses, many of them actually relish the situation. Mothers, especially, divorcees and widows want their kids at home for company. Working mothers ridden with guilt, that they may have neglected their children in infancy, go on trying to atone for it when the children are in their 20s. On the kids side as well, the attractions of protracted adolescence are unlikely to diminish soon. Nowadays they don’t have to move out to make love. They have no problems of bed and board, no taxes, and no bills and no serious points of difference with Mom and Dad.

Surely the stay-at-home kids problem is not the only in the family relationships. There should be mutual respect and confidence between wife and husband to create a really harmonious family. The problem of generation gap should be solved in every family in their own way accoding to the conditions and relations.