Generation Gap

GENERATION GAP - pozor, obsahuje drobné chyby, nobody's perfect ;)

What is the Generation Gap ? Almost everyone meets this wide chasm today. It is often discussed phenomenon. It has individual measure by everyone. I have the huge one and I am going to describe it from my subjective and biased point of view. So it will be from the younger generation point of view. At first, I am going present few examples.
Typical example is time of return of child from town in the evening. The child would actually stay with friends to midnight, but parent requires him to get home by half to ten. Here starts the misunderstanding. Child doesn’t see problem here, it isn’t afraid to go home at night, and when he is, it’ll get some friends to see him out. Parents, however, see this from aspect of security of their own child. And, because parents worry for their child more than child worries for itself, it is begin of problem number one. The child can’t understand this fear, that is only known by people who have own child, and quarrels begin. Greater problems develop when the parent doesn’t explain his requirements, and just give orders. Sometimes fear of parents is unreasonable. Sometimes they think up various scenarios of what is happening with their child in the enviroment where they let it to go. I am thinking drugs, uwanted pregnancy and such problems. The term child is not about age. It is just to express relative status to parents. We are talking about people of age about 15 to 18.
Among another problems is discrepancy of opinions of parents and their children of fashion, free time, friends, lifestyle and some things that parents think their child is too young for. For example some parents don’t understand how can their child spend so much time at the computer. They say that in their childhood they played on meadows with friends. But today’s youth lives in the city center, where no meadow takes place. Today’s lifestyle differs, and entertainment is different too. Parents have to get used to weird music, horrible movies and other unpleasant things that their children love.
Later, when child begins to go outside, it wants to wear clothing that parent would immediately throw into garbage. But this is problem that was surely experienced by our parents too. Even in their young times they had problems with their parents regarding fashion. It is interresting that they do the same. I am conservative in clothing and I don’t have problem with my parents in this.

I even think that some of these restrictions are useful for society, from aesthetic point of view. Today’s young people mostly want to go to pubs and other meeting places, often in the evening and they often want to stay there to the morning. They must, however, only themselves realise what is bad and good for them. Our parents have been educating us and now they have to release us to the real world and believe that they brought us up well. They shouldn’t try to change our lifestyle. They should let us do what we want. They just hope that we want to do things that are o.k., good for us and not dangerous.
Another type of conflicts are problems regarding school and profession. It its obvious that children are not responsible and they don’t care about their future. Parents want the best for their child and want them to have happy future. Children don’t realise what their parents mean and don’t understand that having good grades mean happy future. But In some way children are right. There is no rule, like “be good in mathematis, then you will be successful”. Parents should study their child and try to find out what talents it have and what it likes to do. They should support him in anything reasonable. I think everyone is goot at something. Children of course don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. They just know what they want to do now. Parents should be able to discriminate it. Anyway, they shouldn’t force children to go to balet or painting courses and other perfect child’s spare time activities, unless they themselves ask them to.
Let’s do a little summary. There are many types of conflicts between younger and older generation. I think this problems have roots in misunderstanding of each other. Parents have gained much more experience and look at the world differently than children do. They try to explain and interpret these experiences to children. These things are sometimes difficult to believe, when not experienced at own, and at certain age, children may not accept it any more. This was about child vs. parent. Let’s look at another Generation Gap hot topic. It is old people and society. Ages ago oldest person was the most respected one in the community. But now we don’t pay much attention to old people.
According to me, this is connected with changes in lifestyle and even with technical progress. Living standard has rapidly risen in latest years. Life became nicer, better but running faster as well. Therefore it seems shorter and that’s the reason why we became more egoistic. We want to live and don’t want to look after others.

Antoher thing is that formerly, old people were an important information, knowledge and experience resurce. Everybody listened to the interresting stories that grandparents told to their grandchildren. Old people used to be intelligence of the nation. They gave advices, helped, assisted. According to me we can say that formerly, old people were much more able and more conductive and helpful to the society. Today’s little child rather turns on the television than listens to grandmother. Today, old people aren’t significant information resource any more. We have tones of other ones. In combination with today’s egoism it ends with situation in which many of old people are today. They are in fact outcasts. We move them to old people’s houses. But I don’t reproach this solution. Old people like standstill and solitude. Maybe they don’t need the society so much. Many of them told me that, however I can’t understand that. Now I can’t imagine my life without many people that I meet every day. Another thing is that certain level of egoism is right. I don’t know what will come, but I wouldn’t manage to look after my parents all time. I don’t know what would I do but, but it surely wouldn’t be according to the old traditions.