> Millennials on the whole are incredibly neurotic about all kinds of things.
Truly, this hasn't been my experience. I'm GenX (edit: not GenZ), my parents were Silent Gen (WWII vets) and my kids are Millennials. My 25yo kids understand behavior and psychology better than my parents ever did.
The reason my kids grew up imprisoned is there was nowhere for them to go. The risk to their well-being was never from strangers but from cars and police.
> I'm GenZ, my parents were Silent Gen (WWII vets) and my kids are Millennials.
My understanding is that Gen Z comes AFTER millennials, so if you are Z, your kids can't be millennials. Maybe you are Gen X? Also, if your kids are 25 now, then they would be gen z, not millennials.
P.S. Don't shoot the messenger, I didn't make up this dumb system or these dumb names ^_^
I agree with everything in your top level comment.
If your parents were WW II vets, wouldn't they be part of Greatest Generation (often considered to be those born 1901–1927)? Silent Generation are often considered to be those born 1928–1945. They weren't adults when WW II was fought.
I'm GenX, but had kids a little late, so most of my kid's friends either 1. have Millennial parents or 2. are raised by their Boomer grandparents (parents not much in the picture). The differences in how these two sets of caretakers behave is astounding. Take a typical visit from the friend to my house to play with my kid:
The friends who are with their grandparents show up. Grandpa parks his car in my driveway, and walks the kid to my door. We greet, kid runs off to play, and we shoot the shit for a while, asking how things have been going, maybe Grandpa wants to check out the latest on my woodworking project, whatever. Then Grandpa says goodbye, I'll be back later, and heads out.
The friends who are with their Millennial parents show up. Dad parks his car waaaaay out by the curb, never even going on my property. Kid gets out of the car and walks himself to my door. Dad speeds away in his car, never even acknowledging us. Dad comes back to pick the kid up, same thing. Parks way far away, texts his kid, and the kid excuses himself and runs all the way out to the car. I don't even know the names of any of my kid's friends' Millennial parents!
I'm a Millennial, and I do something much like this intentionally. I make it a point to explicitly put my kids into situations where they are responsible for themselves and are uncomfortable because of it.
The transition to adulthood was rough for me for several reasons, and looking back I think that was one of them - my parents always did things for me, but never expected me to do things on my own.
I almost certainly go overboard with this, but that's the nature of things.
No kids of my own, but my niece is 16. Wife and I took her to dinner when she was ~10, and afterward she said she wanted some ice cream. Sure. We drove to the grocery store on the way home (it's an older store, not huge) and handed her a $10 bill, told her to go get whatever flavor she wanted.
She freaked out. She'd been so terrified by a litany of "stranger danger" stories that the thought of just going into a store alone - a small store with one public entrance - was alien to her. We told her she could do it herself, or not have ice cream, because we weren't doing it for her. She went.
I'm glad to hear you're pushing your kids this way.
Since we're doing anecdata, I experience the exact opposite.
What's most crazy to me is how somehow almost all boomers are more addicted to smartphones than gen Z and Alpha. They'll have their grandkids over, and they'll be glued to their smartphone instead of interacting with those kids.
As a boomer, I'm sure it's because we didn't grow up with smart phones and therefore never learned good habits around them. Hell I was probably near 50 when I got my first one.
I think it's similar to kids who grow up with alcohol vs those who don't. The ones not exposed go off to college and go completely nuts.
Silent Americans are the most fucked up generation ever. They are the ones actually responsible for most of the bullshit that people attribute to Boomers.
I don't know if it's the parent that is neurotic so much as that it only takes 1 of 1000 assholes, who now have their little snitch device in their pocket 24/7, to call the child snatchers (CPS). And the child snatchers are legally barred from revealing who your accuser is, so the anonymous cowards can fuck up your life for weeks at no cost to themselves and with the utmost convenience. This effectively means every single person who views your child, now has veto powers on your parenting. The end result of that is people parent in the most paranoid, liability averting way possible.
When I was a kid the Karens against childhood autonomy existed but it actually cost them time and money to rat us out since they would have to drive home to a telephone, so long as we didn't play near houses. If an asshole raised hell we were gone by the time they could call the authorities.
Here's a few examples that's happened to me personally
(1) I didn't personally appear at bus stop, thinking my kid would be able to just walk the short distance from the stop to our house. Nope, school did not let kid off bus, given a timer to show up at the transportation office before child services will be called.
(2) Let my kid walk on our own property, someone drives up and starts interrogating them why they are "alone." Fortunately I was actually watching from further away and I managed to diffuse the situation before they alerted the authorities.
(3) Took my kid to the park so they could have a nice time outside in public. Whoops, looks like my child is a difference race than me. That means I am a kidnapper. Karen (from bodycam, a passing yuppie looking cyclist) calls police, who arrive and scare the shit out of me and my kid and detain us for about an hour. Not released until a woman's voice comes on the phone (they literally did not check, just any female voice) says the man can let his child play at the park. They also contacted child services of both the city of the park, and my hometown -- fortunately even though the city of the park looked like they were ready to fuck with me my hometown CPS did tell them to kick rocks and since I left town there was nothing further they could do.
I was in the process of creating a brochure about our family. It's be available at our front door, to help facilitate CPS agents on their visits. It'd have a map to the fridge and to the kids' bedrooms, the names of their schools and contact numbers for family.
All this due to a disgruntled neighbor who endlessly called cps (anonymously), with a variety of bizarre accusations. I suspect CPS got so sick of seeing us, they eventually ignored the calls.
Truly, this hasn't been my experience. I'm GenX (edit: not GenZ), my parents were Silent Gen (WWII vets) and my kids are Millennials. My 25yo kids understand behavior and psychology better than my parents ever did.
The reason my kids grew up imprisoned is there was nowhere for them to go. The risk to their well-being was never from strangers but from cars and police.