Generations

From the Greatest Generation to GenZ and how that turned out...

As a child, I spent my days wandering my street, knocking on my friends' doors, asking if they could come out and play. The street was full of families with children around my age, some older, some younger. When we had a good downpour in the summer, I would run out in the street with my bathing suit on and splash in the puddles. We would play ‘jumpsies' on the road with elastic chains, skipping and double dutch, hopscotch, and baseball in the street. We’d move out of the way of cars, and no one would be upset we were out there. I would go out in the morning, and if I wasn’t in the house by the time the streetlights came on, you could hear my mom calling my full name. It was the 1960s in the Toronto suburbs.

I am on the tail end of the Boomer generation. However, I was raised by parents of the Greatest Generation. My dad was born in 1913, and my mom in 1920. I was the youngest child by 20 years and the only girl. The youngest of my three brothers was 11 when I was born. Therefore, my upbringing was different than even my friends, whose parents were in the Silent Generation. My father lived through two world wars, the Spanish Flu pandemic and the Great Depression. My mom missed out on WW1 but was a child during the Great Depression and watched her husband go off to fight in WW2. Both of them lost their fathers while they were small, and my mom lost her mother when she was three and her dad when she was six. They were no-nonsense, strict parents regarding our behaviour and character who expected respect and hard work from their children. They did not spoil us (although my brothers would say I was spoiled!), nor did they hover over us. I rode my bike from one end of town to the other. My mom wanted to know where I would be, but she let me go. She raised me and my brothers to be independent and strong.

The youngest is my mom in 1923, London, England. My dad on his father's knee, 1918, Toronto..

My upbringing taught me to shake it off, ignore teasing, not hang out with mean kids, and be resilient. I wasn’t coddled; my parents let me suffer the consequences of my actions and taught me to move on from hurt feelings. And occasionally, my mom gave me a good ‘lickin’ with the strap for egregious behaviour. Did the behaviour of my parents and brothers affect me and change my behaviour? Absolutely. Was my brother scaring me by telling me there were witches under my bed, trauma? Perhaps. I see it as part of growing up in my generation.

My children span two generations. My three older children were born in 1982 and 1985 and are early Millennials. My two younger children are Gen Z. When I talk to my kids about my upbringing and what I was allowed to do and not do, the way my parents disciplined us, the story of the permanently bent belt that hung on a nail in the kitchen, and my father’s alcoholism, some of them think I lived through trauma after trauma. In my mind, trauma was a major incident - a car accident, being assaulted, or experiencing war. To them, trauma means something different. Perhaps they’re right. Psychologists, counsellors, and Gabor Maté seem to think so. By their definition, my life was littered with trauma.

Sheena, Sarah & Derek in 1985 and Nathan & Evan in the early 2000s

This different perspective means that sometimes there is a communication glitch. I speak a different language and approach problems differently, which can offend. They’re much more perceptive to language and meanings. Words are important. They have distinctive generational ways of thinking.

My children benefited from having free rein to play outside with their friends and run around the neighbourhood. I let them be “free-range” kids to a certain degree because I had that kind of upbringing. Did I worry sometimes and watch out the window? Yes, but I knew it would foster independence, creativity, and self-reliance. My youngest two seemed to think I was strict, but compared to my parents, I seemed pretty relaxed. I wish I had been more relaxed, but shows like Phil Donahue having guests on their show about toddlers snatched from backyards and pictures and TV shows of missing children certainly gave me pause to consider how free I wanted to let my children be.

I am interested in the subject of generational differences and Gen Z, which will be a part of my dissertation research. However, the idea to write this post was sparked by something I read on After Babel, a Substack by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He had a guest post from Lenore Skenazy, the infamous author who let her nine-year-old son ride the subway in New York in 2008 and dared to write a column about it. The backlash against her was swift, and she was titled “America’s Worst Mom.” Her book, Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children, is already in its second edition with a new tagline - How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow. I think this is the decade for her book. People were not ready for it when it first came out. However, seeing the data on Gen Z and the latest generation, the Alphas, about the rising anxiety and mental health issues, people are rethinking how we parent.

Now, I do not think this is all caused by helicopter parents. However, I do believe parents' over-protectiveness contributed to the situation. Parents not letting children fail or take responsibility for their mistakes does not help them. I remember talking to a mom in 2012 whose son was around my younger boys’ age. We had the usual talk about kids today, and I remember her saying she could not let her son fail his class because it would mean not getting into the best university. Did I not realize how competitive it was for kids these days? I didn’t bother to tell her that kids need to fail when they’re young, so they learn how to handle it when they’re older. Failure is part of life. A decade later, we hear of students needing ‘safe places’ and being offended by professors, protesting and demanding they be fired - and universities bowing to this pressure.

I am encouraged to hear more talk about mental health issues in young people and how we parent. I think we are waking up to realize we were asleep at the wheel with minicomputers and social media and how they affect our children. Being connected constantly isn’t good for us, never mind our children. There’s a great article here on After Babel by Zach Rausch and Jonathan Haidt about this subject from October 30. I believe people are waking up and realizing that we need to help our children become more resilient and able to cope with life. How you do that is being debated, but with new research and a will to identify the problems, I am hopeful we will find a way.