Sorry this is kinda long, but I guess you touched a nerve.
No, I disagree, respectfully, Between my first wife and my second, I have 3 children and five step children. Ages 18-26 now. Both me and my wife who I've been married to for two years now, were in long marriages previously. My youngest is 22 and was almost 18 when his mom and I divorced. Anyway, there is Zero comparison between today's generation and the Gen X generation. Kids today have far more confusion, anxieties, depression, angst, feelings of entitlement, lack of ambition, issues with all these ailments that they use as excuses and barriers, Confusions about their sexualities only compounded by this whole 1000 genders movement such that they don't know what they identify as from one day to the next. They thrive on drama and victimhood. We can do our best as parents to see that they grow up in as normal of an atmosphere as possible, but the outside influences of Social media that didn't exist in the 70's and 80's has politicized children, created all sorts of divisions, and driven a lot of the crap we see today. My wife and I have put eight kids through the school systems. The curriculums and agendas being pushed today were not at all what we grew up learning in the 80's.
Also, I work on the corporate side of a Large restaurant company, I've literally been in hundreds of restaurants that rely on today's youth to operate. When I worked in one as a teenager, kids were begging for hours, we were never understaffed, no shows were a rarity. We never had a problem wondering if we'd have enough staff to operate. That's not the case anymore, even though they are making in a lot of cases double what the federal minimum wage is.
Also, would you today let your middle school aged kid hop on their bike and ride about 8 miles away to loiter in a department store playing video games? Do you live in a jam packed subdivision on a postage stamp lot where all the houses look alike or do you have some property around you to stretch out on, or hundreds of acres of woods that your kids could go exploring through? how much time do your kids spend outside in the summer? and I'm not talking about at the neighborhood swimming pool or at rec league baseball/soccer games that you sign your kids up for to keep them occupied. How much time do your kids truly spend outside on their own, exploring, doing things with their friends, making up their own games, never being bored or stuck in front of a TV screen or phone or playing X-Box all hours of the day or night? how often are they outside on their bikes with their friends by 8:00-9:00 AM and aren't home till dinners ready? do you sit down and have a family meal at the dining room table every night?
Yeah, of course our parents had their own sets of worries and issues to deal with back then, but today, those issues are being pressed on our youth and the crap I see from them today is night and day different from what I grew up with. Our parents had ways of shielding us from all of that noise back then, we don't have that ability today.
There's a reason Gen X is sort of the forgotten generation, or the one nobody wants to talk about. We are the Bear you don't want to poke. I hope more Gen X'ers weigh in here.
