Times: Never letting go

From The Times (UK)
July 9, 2007
Never letting go

Are we in danger of producing a generation of tethered teens who are
so cosseted and indulged that they will never be able to withstand
life's hard knocks?

Catherine O'Brien

Josh is 16. He doesn't smoke or do drugs and he's never been blind
drunk. At school, he's popular and hard-working without being geeky.
At home, he spends too much time on MSN and his Play-Station, but he
practises his saxophone when prompted (he's just passed grade 6),
tells funny jokes and has a delightfully engaging relationship with
his parents. Sounds like the perfect teenager? Think again.

Josh is part of a new social phenomenon - the tethered generation.

These are the children who, in the most childcentric time in our
history, get on with their parents perhaps too well. Their mothers and
fathers are attuned and all-providing. Instructed by numerous manuals,
they have striven to raise confident and well-adjusted offspring. The
dialogue between parents and teens is more open than it has ever been.
The ability to text and e-mail through the school day, the university
term, the gap-year trek, serves to enhance the bond.

Predictable clashes remain - untidy bedrooms, unwashed dishes,
homework - but many parents are proud to declare that their teen is
also their friend. With that friendship, however, comes an emerging
fear: have we produced a generation that will not be able to fend for
itself?

"My son is quite shockingly attached to me," says Josh's mother
Caroline, a 42-year-old lawyer. "What worries me is how he is going to
make the leap from his comfortable life with us to independence."

Louise, 48, a communications consultant and mother of three, feels
similarly uneasy about her 14-year-old son Luke. "In a way, I would
find it easier to deal with a child who was wilfully disobedient. It
would give me something to grab on to. What I have is a child who
doesn't appear to understand the realities of life. I can't seem to
impress upon him the importance of knuckling down if he is going to
make it in the work-force. His teachers say that desire for
achievement has to come from him - meanwhile I feel guilty because
I've generated his laid-back approach by being too soft."

To understand the tethered generation - and their well-intentioned but
fretful parents - you first have to understand the shifting social
patterns of the past four decades. Those now raising teenagers are, in
the main, part of Generation X, the section of the population born
between 1965 and 1976. Their own parents and grandparents had lived
through the deprivation of war - "you don't know how lucky you are"
was a mantra of their upbringing. And yet, in many ways, Generation
Xers were not so lucky. During their childhood, divorce became easier
and therefore more widespread, their emancipated mothers began
experimenting with the "have-it-all" theory, creating the term
"latchkey kids", and meanwhile, the economy went into major recession,
with mass unemployment and a three-day week during the 1970s. To
succeed, Generation Xers have had to be resilient and adaptable self-
starters. The tethered generation are part of Generation Y, also known
as the Millennials. Born between 1977 and 1999, their backdrop has
been economic boom and a rising stock market. Their families may
struggle at times to pay the bills, but still they have no concept of
a world without mobile phones and remote-control televisions. No home
is complete without a PC - and preferably a laptop for their personal
use, too. This has made them technically literate, but also impatient.

They demand instant gratification and more often than not their doting
parents let them have it. "Teenagers of today possess a distinct sense
of entitlement," says Suzanne Franks, co-author of the brilliantly
titled Get Out of My Life, But First Take Me and Alex into Town. "We
want them to feel loved, but we need to stop trying to be so popular.
If they become tethered to us then that is our fault." According to
Rob Parsons, author of Teenagers: What Every Parent Has to Know, "You
rarely meet a parent who doesn't want the best for their child. The
problem is not that we don't love them enough, but that we love them
too much. We want everything for them - the extra tutors, the
holidays, the custom-made ski boots that won't rub. Instead of saying
'Go get a Saturday job if you want to go clubbing', you see parents
hand over the money - and then ask their teenagers if they can go
clubbing with them. That may appear cute, but it is not good. As
parents, you have got to be prepared to take the unpopularity hit."

How has it come to this? Can parents really be getting it so wrong?

The answer is multilayered, but one thing is apparent: the gut
instinct of all parents is to blame themselves. "Ours is a generation
of uncertain parents," says Franks. "We have this sense of not really
being in control. We think back to our own childhoods and we know we
were more obedient. We didn't talk to our own parents as boldly as our
children talk to us. That comparison can make us feel that we have
failed and, to make matters worse, our own parents, if they are still
around, endorse that sense of failure."

But comparing child-rearing between generations is neither helpful nor
constructive. Many of the boundaries that existed during the
adolescence of Generation X have disappeared. A hard smack is no
longer an acceptable answer to disrespectful back-chat. The fear
factor that came with physical punishment has gone. This is, surely, a
good thing. We want our children to feel empowered, not intimidated.
For today's teenagers, there is no question of being left in the pub
car park with a bottle of Coke and a packet of crisps while their
parents enjoy a Sunday lunchtime drink. We embrace our children into
our social lives and go to Pizza Express instead. "My son knows my
friends as well as I do," says Caroline. "I work long hours, and when
I do have spare time, I make the effort to spend it with him. That
means not shutting him out when we see friends."

No one bothered to collect figures for working mothers in the 1970s
and 1980s. Today, however, we know that 67 per cent of mothers are in
full or part-time employment. Life is busy - too busy.

"Mums tend to get the rough end of that," says Parsons, who speaks
regularly at parenting seminars. "Ask an audience of mothers for one
word that sums up how they feel, and the unanimous answer is 'guilty'.
They feel guilty because they are so busy giving their kids what they
didn't have, they sometimes can't give them what they did have -
time."

"Nannies and au pairs help to get you through the early years," says
Fiona, a fashion buyer and the mother of two teenage daughters, "but
just as you think your children are going to be more independent, it
is you they need and no one else will do."

It is a huge shock for many parents - and one that even the most
finely tuned time-management skills cannot resolve. "My 15-year-old
daughter was calling me at work up to five times a day during the
Easter holidays," says Fiona. "I know she misses me when I am not
there, but what do I do? Stop work and become a stalker mum? She
doesn't want that either."

Symbiotic to the emergence of the tethered generation has been the
proliferation of "helicopter parents". These are the breed who start
by fighting their children's playground battles and go on to "hover"
well into adulthood. Many will know couples such as Tony and Cherie
Blair, who not only helped to finance their children through
university, but bought them flats or houses to live in while they were
there.

Such hand-holding may give students a secure start, but it also risks
stifling self-reliance. A current advertisement for Citibank suggests
that financial planning to pay not only your own children's school
fees, but also "your kids' kids' school fees", which begs the
question: at what age might your children then expect to stand on
their own two feet?

In America, there are several examples of companies actively involving
parents in career planning for their children. Merrill Lynch has held
open days at which undergraduates and their parents are invited on to
the trading floor before being given lunch. Ernst & Young sends out
parent packs.

Charles Macleod, resourcing leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers in
London, has observed the trend with interest. "The idea behind it is
that there are parents of today's students who never went to
university and had the sort of careers guidance they would want to
pass on to their children. These companies can't get to the students
while they are at university because students tend to be pretty
disengaged, so instead recruiters are targeting their parents, who
might then work on their children during the holidays. What you have
to ask is: where is the motivation coming from? The answer is not the
students, which is why I hope it is not something that will be taken
up here."

So what is the outlook for the tethered generation? Happily, parents
can rest assured that it is not as gloomy as they might have feared.

While child-rearing has evolved, so too has the corporate world. To
attract Millennials, companies have had to adjust their thinking.
"Once, the employee had to justify the privilege of working for a
company. Today we have to justify why talented people should stay with
us," says Macleod. "Millennials own their own skills and abilities and
want to go to the place that is giving them the best opportunities. As
an employer, we have to emotionally engage with them if we are to
retain them." In many companies, monthly feedback sessions have
replaced the starchy annual review process. Bosses no longer talk
about individuals' weaknesses, but of "developmental needs".

According to Tony Schneider, a human resources consultant who has
worked for several multinationals, including AOL and Hilton, the days
of the manager who throws a piece of paper across the room and barks
"do it again" are numbered. So are curt "not what I wanted" e-mails.
"The graduates coming into the employment market don't thrive on the
fear factor. They are used to being mentored and cared for. They don't
respect hierarchy for its own sake. They need to be impressed before
they will listen. They expect to be treated with fairness and
understanding. And if they don't get what they want, they are quite
prepared to move on."

This approach works, of course, for as long as the economy remains
buoyant and competition for high-calibre graduates remains intense.

"The ones who make out best long term will be those who have the
education and confidence, but who can also survive the knocks," says
Schneider. The child who has failed an exam, not been picked for the
sports team, who was forced to save up for his own laptop, is less
likely to experience panic and denial when he is rejected for
promotion.

"The best thing we can do for our teenagers is to back off. Stop
mollycoddling them," says Franks. Parenting is about many things, but
ultimately it is about letting go. That much hasn't changed.


http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/l...cle2040275.ece