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Because todays kids are coddled and have a 'safety net' of being able to stay home and not join 'adulthood'. I mean when I was a teen ager - my parents couldn'

Because todays kids are coddled and have a 'safety net' of being able to stay home and not join 'adulthood'. I mean when I was a teen ager - my parents couldn't afford to support me. I had no way of staying home and riding it out. If I wanted anything in my late teens (car, fuel, guitar, computer, books, money for dates - etc.) I had to come up with the money for it - my parents provided shelter, food, clothing and a safe environment to sleep in. Everything else, it was unsaid fact I was going to have to provide myself. This allowed us to be a lot more free - we knew at worst we would be like our parents. Make ends meet and eck out a basic living. It wasn't too bad as everyone else was the same. So knowing that doing nothing - would result in being where we were - the only way out was to do something. Take a risk, go out and see what the world offers. Today, I see plenty of kids having iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. Why work hard? Why take chances? Life isn't that bad after all. The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids.

secfirstmd 9y ago
I really dislike the whole "kids are coddled," "young people are soft" posts. I work and volunteer with young people all the time and most of them are awesome, wonderful people who are better, kinder and more intelligent people at their age than I was. Their pressures are totally different, there is no way I would swap my youth for theirs. -I grew up fairly free to roam around as a child, even as a teenager. Leave in the morning, come back when hungry or dark. Good luck being a parent doing that these days. -We spent most of our evenings all watching BBC and talking about what was on the news. We had no choice but to talk to adults and other kids about the world and they had no choice either (in a positive way). How many times do you meet parents these days who are present but not really present with their kids because they are on their phones? -Parents are cash rich but time poor. For many, even when they are home they are home they are working. We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid but no way would I have preferred an ipad to spending an evening kicking a cheap soccer ball with my Dad. -When I grew up, if you did something stupid like puke when getting drunk as a teenager, only your classmates would know about it. Now, your whole life is like some kind of advert - your open to social media bullying and pressures 24/7 - that's absolutely horrible. -Parents and schools have replaced educated with homework. Literally kids are more screwed than ever with the amount of learning they are expected to do. -Sex education, especially in most parts of US and Ireland is a joke. I got part of mine in the UK at the age of 8 and it was a massive difference - contraception, STDs sex, etc etc, all you need to know. There are still schools I know these days who think sex education is a video of a nun talking bullshit about marriage. Kids are overwhelemed by online adverts, porn etc but society in many places still isn't willing to give them the tools they need to deal with it. -Casual first jobs that used to be easy to get as kids/teenagers have now become much harder to get. My first was working in a local shop. My next was the MIT Media Lab Europe when I was 15 - purely because I rang up and asked did they need a web master. They said yeah, why not? Do you know how much paperwork they would need to do to be able to do that these days?
SandersAK 9y ago
Every 10 years someone posts this. The message it sends is this "I don't actually take time to understand the unique situation of being a kid in today's economy and culture. I do not acknowledge that the experience is rapidly changing. I am uncomfortable with this new world and would rather put the blame on kids being 'coddled' without any data to suggest this than confront my own lack of understanding."
- eighthnate 9y ago
  Every previous generation thinks the current generation is coddled. When I was a kid, I had to walk through 10 miles of snow to get to school. "Snow day"? Schools are creating sissies I tell ya.
  - secfirstmd 9y ago
    Back in my day, my Mum used to listen to the internet on our house phone!
    - MarkPNeyer 9y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
  - hackinthebochs 9y ago
    That doesn't make it not true. It's very possible (and seems likely to me) that each generation has been more coddled than the previous in recent memory.
    - slededit 9y ago
      In fact it's the default expectation with the rising standards of living. However that has started to stagnate for all but the upper middle class so the next decade should be quite interesting.
  - spookyuser 9y ago
bredren 9y ago
> The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I mean, do we want life to be uncomfortable for young people? It wasn't just your situation with your parents. A lot of adults today grew up with Joe Camel and cartoon ads like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHsoW6CTjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHsoW6CTjM There was no anti-bullying education. Actually, bullying was basically okay when I was in high school. No concept of diversity training for staff and administrators. I mean if things aren't as rough on teens as they used to be, why force them to suddenly grow up anyway? Don't they deal with a whole set of separate, new challenges adults never had? Baby boomers get to live much longer as adults thanks to recent medical advances. Why can't young people live their lives young for longer as well? If ycombinator is right about the coming future of basic income, then not only do these folks not have to become adults very early, they don't have to "eck" out a living either. Earning income isn't necessarily a sign of adulthood. I'm not saying people don't become adults ever, because this is already a problem. We all know adults that act like children. I'm saying why force them to deal with some of the primitive experiences you and many other folks have dealt with?
- Jill_the_Pill 9y ago
  > The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids. And which kids? My children have classmates who are homeless, who can't afford field trip money, who actually do rely on the free school meals.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Those kids have always been there. Had them in my school 40 years ago.
- smileysteve 9y ago
  > I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I mean, do we want life to be uncomfortable for young people? Yes. The result of rubber playgrounds is surprisingly more serious injuries.
  - 9y ago
monknomo 9y ago
When you were a kid, there were plenty of kids with the totems of success and comfortable lives. It's likely you didn't see them, because we sort by class. Presumably, you are doing better than when you were a teen, since you're on hn. That means the kids you see probably have pretty well off parents, with the cool new toys and stable homes. You can still find kids with marginal existences and few to no cool toys. I mean, what's the difference between a pair of Jordans circa '88 and an ipod circa now?
sp332 9y ago
You know a lot of the current generation is going to end up worse off than their parents right? https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/there-s-a-generation-growing-up-poorer-than-their-parents-a-new-study-explains-why https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/there-s-a-generation-...
- usrusr 9y ago
  And the economic situation of our parents is the yardstick we all use for assessing our own capability of providing for an adequate upbringing. A mailman's son will likely feel more at ease starting a family when he is a mailman himself than a lawyers's son when his father was a partner in a successful firm while he himself is only on a lowly salaried career (yet far above that mailman). Sorry for the gender stereotypes, but they share too much with those mechanisms to be cut out. To make things worse, that yardstick is based on us seeing later stages of our parents' careers, while we apply it to. In times of widespread growth this does not make much difference, but in times of stagnation or worse it can be crushing. A part of the puzzle the article is marveling at might be current teens not feeling very much in a pipeline towards house and kids.
yorwba 9y ago
Your explanation for fewer teens (but still the majority) learning to drive, dating, having sex or drinking is that they can easily afford everything on their parent's money? That strikes me as strangely backwards. If your parents provided you with a car, wouldn't you be more likely to learn to drive? If your parents gave you a generous allowance, wouldn't you have more dates, buy more drinks and as a result be more likely to have sex, rather than less? Personally, the reason I didn't have those classic "growing up" experiences is that I mostly don't think they will or should be part of my adult life. I don't expect to need to drive, I don't want to get drunk and I'm not interested in meaningless hookups. How most adults today grew up has little bearing on the way I want to live.
analog31 9y ago
Oddly enough, the most successful people have always provided their kids with an extensive safety net, but for kids in the middle class and below, I suspect that the safety net is withering. Student debt might be one measure to look at -- there might be others.
heurist 9y ago
Don't worry, kids today are still suffering. Children in America today have a 1 in 5 rate of living in poverty, roughly the same 40 years ago.
- robocat 9y ago
  Probably because the definition of poverty always shifts to make the lowest x% in “poverty”...?
  - Retra 9y ago
    The definition of poverty shifts because the wealth required to survive shifts.
detaro 9y ago
> If I wanted anything in my late teens (car, fuel, guitar, computer, books, money for dates - etc.) I had to come up with the money for it - my parents provided shelter, food, clothing and a safe environment to sleep in. Everything else, it was unsaid fact I was going to have to provide myself. What makes you think that's not the case for many kids today? Are you sure you are where the kids that don't have > iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. are, and that you notice the absence of this when you see them?
TuringNYC 9y ago
>> Today, I see plenty of kids having iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. Why work hard? Why take chances? Life isn't that bad after all. I see the same thing happenning, but IMHO nothing has actually changed -- I have just been lucky, educated, and hard-working enough to have gone up several socio-economic tiers. What i'm seeing was likely the case even back when I was young, except on the other side of the tracks. Now i'm living on that other side.
nlknz88 9y ago
Now you're thinking like the classist that the elites expect! It was only that way for most people because of economic status. The rich have been pandering to and pampering their kids for generations. None of them are kicked to the curb at 18 or told to mine, smelt and chop down the materials for their guitars. It's "adulthood" to you because that's what the adults that reared you apparently told you to do. Because that was THEIR experience too. Not because it is some requirement to join "adulthood". If the outcome is the same, the sense of being more free is an illusion, isn't it? You're just on the same old path, even though the buildings and faces look different.
watwut 9y ago
Kids today also take less drugs and commit less violent crimes. Less drinking is nothing wrong either (plus schools treat drinking as grave offense instead of minor infraction it should be ). Responsible attitude towards sex (wait for partner you trust, do it only if you have proction) means less of it untill you have stable partner. With exception of driving, we have bundle of starts about kids being better behaved then previous generation. Meanwhile, previous generation complains, cause if you are not like them you are weak. There were always rich kids and poor kids. Rich kids always got gifts from parents and poor kids still don't get them.

secfirstmd 9y ago

I really dislike the whole "kids are coddled," "young people are soft" posts. I work and volunteer with young people all the time and most of them are awesome, wonderful people who are better, kinder and more intelligent people at their age than I was. Their pressures are totally different, there is no way I would swap my youth for theirs. -I grew up fairly free to roam around as a child, even as a teenager. Leave in the morning, come back when hungry or dark. Good luck being a parent doing that these days. -We spent most of our evenings all watching BBC and talking about what was on the news. We had no choice but to talk to adults and other kids about the world and they had no choice either (in a positive way). How many times do you meet parents these days who are present but not really present with their kids because they are on their phones? -Parents are cash rich but time poor. For many, even when they are home they are home they are working. We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid but no way would I have preferred an ipad to spending an evening kicking a cheap soccer ball with my Dad. -When I grew up, if you did something stupid like puke when getting drunk as a teenager, only your classmates would know about it. Now, your whole life is like some kind of advert - your open to social media bullying and pressures 24/7 - that's absolutely horrible. -Parents and schools have replaced educated with homework. Literally kids are more screwed than ever with the amount of learning they are expected to do. -Sex education, especially in most parts of US and Ireland is a joke. I got part of mine in the UK at the age of 8 and it was a massive difference - contraception, STDs sex, etc etc, all you need to know. There are still schools I know these days who think sex education is a video of a nun talking bullshit about marriage. Kids are overwhelemed by online adverts, porn etc but society in many places still isn't willing to give them the tools they need to deal with it. -Casual first jobs that used to be easy to get as kids/teenagers have now become much harder to get. My first was working in a local shop. My next was the MIT Media Lab Europe when I was 15 - purely because I rang up and asked did they need a web master. They said yeah, why not? Do you know how much paperwork they would need to do to be able to do that these days?

SandersAK 9y ago

Every 10 years someone posts this. The message it sends is this "I don't actually take time to understand the unique situation of being a kid in today's economy and culture. I do not acknowledge that the experience is rapidly changing. I am uncomfortable with this new world and would rather put the blame on kids being 'coddled' without any data to suggest this than confront my own lack of understanding."

eighthnate 9y ago
Every previous generation thinks the current generation is coddled. When I was a kid, I had to walk through 10 miles of snow to get to school. "Snow day"? Schools are creating sissies I tell ya.
- secfirstmd 9y ago
  Back in my day, my Mum used to listen to the internet on our house phone!
  - MarkPNeyer 9y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
- hackinthebochs 9y ago
  That doesn't make it not true. It's very possible (and seems likely to me) that each generation has been more coddled than the previous in recent memory.
  - slededit 9y ago
    In fact it's the default expectation with the rising standards of living. However that has started to stagnate for all but the upper middle class so the next decade should be quite interesting.
- spookyuser 9y ago

bredren 9y ago

> The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I mean, do we want life to be uncomfortable for young people? It wasn't just your situation with your parents. A lot of adults today grew up with Joe Camel and cartoon ads like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHsoW6CTjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHsoW6CTjM There was no anti-bullying education. Actually, bullying was basically okay when I was in high school. No concept of diversity training for staff and administrators. I mean if things aren't as rough on teens as they used to be, why force them to suddenly grow up anyway? Don't they deal with a whole set of separate, new challenges adults never had? Baby boomers get to live much longer as adults thanks to recent medical advances. Why can't young people live their lives young for longer as well? If ycombinator is right about the coming future of basic income, then not only do these folks not have to become adults very early, they don't have to "eck" out a living either. Earning income isn't necessarily a sign of adulthood. I'm not saying people don't become adults ever, because this is already a problem. We all know adults that act like children. I'm saying why force them to deal with some of the primitive experiences you and many other folks have dealt with?

Jill_the_Pill 9y ago
> The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids. And which kids? My children have classmates who are homeless, who can't afford field trip money, who actually do rely on the free school meals.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Those kids have always been there. Had them in my school 40 years ago.
smileysteve 9y ago
> I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I mean, do we want life to be uncomfortable for young people? Yes. The result of rubber playgrounds is surprisingly more serious injuries.
- 9y ago

monknomo 9y ago

When you were a kid, there were plenty of kids with the totems of success and comfortable lives. It's likely you didn't see them, because we sort by class. Presumably, you are doing better than when you were a teen, since you're on hn. That means the kids you see probably have pretty well off parents, with the cool new toys and stable homes. You can still find kids with marginal existences and few to no cool toys. I mean, what's the difference between a pair of Jordans circa '88 and an ipod circa now?

sp332 9y ago

You know a lot of the current generation is going to end up worse off than their parents right? https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/there-s-a-generation-growing-up-poorer-than-their-parents-a-new-study-explains-why https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/there-s-a-generation-...

usrusr 9y ago
And the economic situation of our parents is the yardstick we all use for assessing our own capability of providing for an adequate upbringing. A mailman's son will likely feel more at ease starting a family when he is a mailman himself than a lawyers's son when his father was a partner in a successful firm while he himself is only on a lowly salaried career (yet far above that mailman). Sorry for the gender stereotypes, but they share too much with those mechanisms to be cut out. To make things worse, that yardstick is based on us seeing later stages of our parents' careers, while we apply it to. In times of widespread growth this does not make much difference, but in times of stagnation or worse it can be crushing. A part of the puzzle the article is marveling at might be current teens not feeling very much in a pipeline towards house and kids.

yorwba 9y ago

Your explanation for fewer teens (but still the majority) learning to drive, dating, having sex or drinking is that they can easily afford everything on their parent's money? That strikes me as strangely backwards. If your parents provided you with a car, wouldn't you be more likely to learn to drive? If your parents gave you a generous allowance, wouldn't you have more dates, buy more drinks and as a result be more likely to have sex, rather than less? Personally, the reason I didn't have those classic "growing up" experiences is that I mostly don't think they will or should be part of my adult life. I don't expect to need to drive, I don't want to get drunk and I'm not interested in meaningless hookups. How most adults today grew up has little bearing on the way I want to live.

analog31 9y ago

Oddly enough, the most successful people have always provided their kids with an extensive safety net, but for kids in the middle class and below, I suspect that the safety net is withering. Student debt might be one measure to look at -- there might be others.

heurist 9y ago

Don't worry, kids today are still suffering. Children in America today have a 1 in 5 rate of living in poverty, roughly the same 40 years ago.

robocat 9y ago
Probably because the definition of poverty always shifts to make the lowest x% in “poverty”...?
- Retra 9y ago
  The definition of poverty shifts because the wealth required to survive shifts.

detaro 9y ago

> If I wanted anything in my late teens (car, fuel, guitar, computer, books, money for dates - etc.) I had to come up with the money for it - my parents provided shelter, food, clothing and a safe environment to sleep in. Everything else, it was unsaid fact I was going to have to provide myself. What makes you think that's not the case for many kids today? Are you sure you are where the kids that don't have > iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. are, and that you notice the absence of this when you see them?

TuringNYC 9y ago

>> Today, I see plenty of kids having iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. Why work hard? Why take chances? Life isn't that bad after all. I see the same thing happenning, but IMHO nothing has actually changed -- I have just been lucky, educated, and hard-working enough to have gone up several socio-economic tiers. What i'm seeing was likely the case even back when I was young, except on the other side of the tracks. Now i'm living on that other side.

nlknz88 9y ago

Now you're thinking like the classist that the elites expect! It was only that way for most people because of economic status. The rich have been pandering to and pampering their kids for generations. None of them are kicked to the curb at 18 or told to mine, smelt and chop down the materials for their guitars. It's "adulthood" to you because that's what the adults that reared you apparently told you to do. Because that was THEIR experience too. Not because it is some requirement to join "adulthood". If the outcome is the same, the sense of being more free is an illusion, isn't it? You're just on the same old path, even though the buildings and faces look different.

watwut 9y ago

Kids today also take less drugs and commit less violent crimes. Less drinking is nothing wrong either (plus schools treat drinking as grave offense instead of minor infraction it should be ). Responsible attitude towards sex (wait for partner you trust, do it only if you have proction) means less of it untill you have stable partner. With exception of driving, we have bundle of starts about kids being better behaved then previous generation. Meanwhile, previous generation complains, cause if you are not like them you are weak. There were always rich kids and poor kids. Rich kids always got gifts from parents and poor kids still don't get them.