Problem Children: Every Generation Has Them

An article from The Canadian Press claims that there are more problem children today than there were fifty years ago. Children are “disruptive, aggressive or delinquent”. This following quote seems like it would fit seamlessly into this argument. “Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.” But this quote was written by Socrates who lived from 469 BC to 399 BC.

Every generation thinks they were angels as children but their children are little devils. According to the sociology of childhood and Dr. Sternheimer, when adults look back at their childhood they remember through children’s eyes, not adults. How can it be claimed that chidlren are worse today than they were fifty years ago? Well what was going on in the 1950s? Elvis. Music is a big part of generation gaps. Parents, for the most part, considered Elvis Presley as symbol of deviance. The sexual movement of his hips was unacceptable. Parents did not understand why their children liked this rock and roll. A common connection to adolescent music is some sort of deviant behavior. Parents feared that if children listen to this music they will do drugs, commit crimes, become more sexual, and so forth. But to understand why children today seem so much worse than fifty years ago, the definition of child and its connection to innocence must be closely monitored.

When adults think of children they think of innocence. In my sociology class we were asked to write down synonyms to the word child. Words like immature, innocent, hopeful, cute, carefree, and others came up. But when asked to do the same for adults we found that most words were the opposite we put for child. It is in the definition of the term child that causes the problem. Society expects children to act in a certain manner even if children have never acted in that way before.

These claims could easily manifest into a moral panic. A moral panic is when the moral, ethics, and interests of a society are threatened. The fear is much bigger than the actual panic and there is always a group that will benefit. Childhood behavior could easily fall under a moral panic. Adults are scared and threatened of children and adolescents. An actual threat does exist, but the fear is disproportional to that threat. An example would be the school shootings in the 1990s. It would seem, because of new coverage, that there was an outburst of school shootings and violence in the 1990s when in fact there was a decline in number of children killed in schools. Statistically a child is twice more likely to be killed by lightning than killed at school. Media and news coverage add to the panic because they provide constant footage and information. The reason there seemed to be an increase in school violence was because there was more media coverage than there was in the past.

Forensic psychologist Marta Weber states that parents spend less and less time with their children because of work. She believes that lack of parent involvement has helped create these behavioral issues. Over 200 years ago in the colonial period children worked starting at the age of seven. There was even less parent involvement then. During the Industrial Revolution in the 1850s children were sent away to school or work and had very limited parent involvement. Throughout history there have been times where there has been no parental involvement and no behavioral problems. The correlation Weber is trying to make between parental involvement and child behavior is weak.

Children today are no worse than children fifty years ago. Children have changed, this is true, and so have their behaviors. But their behaviors are not worse, just different. Some are even the same. “Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.” This has been and most likely will always be how adults feel about children in general.