The Kids Are All Right

We were having dinner last night, parents and two teenagers laughing merrily, when something important occurred to me.

Today’s generation of kids, the Internet Generation — they’re good people.

Sure there are exceptions. The news tells you about the exceptions. But I know more kids than my own and taken all in all this is a fine generation of American young people.

I would like to take some credit for this but I can’t. Or I won’t. Both of my own kids have had troubles growing up, troubles they have faced squarely and dealt with. I suspect this is true in many families. No, most families. No, practically all families.

This is the most promising trend of our time. We have a generation of
young people that has a lot more in common with the Greatest
Generation, with their grandparents, than it does with the Baby Boomers
who sired them. The Internet Generation faces different challenges from
their grandparents, but they are challenges which are just as great,
just as daunting. And I think they’re as ready as they can be to face them.

The reason why is obvious. Early boomers grew up in rather screwed-up times,
and were broken on the back of the hypocrisy. Facing
government-mandated death in a war a half a world away, a war their
parents supported, it’s no wonder many went crazy. (Today’s war is, for young people, optional.) And that craziness
became baked into the culture, it became an assumption that the rest of
us had to live with.

How many of you had this conversation, some years ago. How old are your
kids? Oh, 2 and 5. Well, enjoy them now because it’s going to be
horrible when they’re older. The assumption that teenagers would be
hell was still widely held, even a decade ago.

These aren’t. And it’s not just me. I know my kids’ friends, and their
classmates, and the other kids in our neighborhood, and most of them
are well-grounded. They’re intelligent, they’re strong, they’re kind,
they’re unselfish to a fault. They have good values. The demands and expectations of their
parents — like the one that they all have to go to Ivy League schools
— can drive them a little batty, but these are their parents’ trips,
and most kids in my acquaintance count them as such.

To those of you beginning the adventure of parenthood, a little advice.
Kids can just get better-and-better. There are going to be problems,
there are going to be troubles, there are going to be days when you
want to tear your hair out by the roots, but those are not a function
of age. They’re a function of what’s going on at that time. If you can
get through the problems, there is no guarantee of tomorrow, but there
is every hope that, after they pass age 13, they will become stronger,
wiser, and better than you can now imagine.

It’s hard to feel too down when you know this.