What Causes The Differences In Opinions And Beliefs Between Parents And Their Youthful Children?
This question really makes sense to me seeing as my family is having this problem right now. So let me explain what I know on the matter.
Children's behavioral patterns and way of thinking are influenced by four things.
- Their environment
- Their upbringing
- Their age
- Their experiences
The thing that most people don't understand or refuse to understand is that these four factors, as basic as they may seem, are the foundation of every person's thought process and as a result behavior and opinion on different matters. These things differ from person to person and from time to time and as such leads children of any generation to think differently from their parents who are of an earlier one. Let's take the current age as an example.
The parents of nowadays grew up in a world that was safer, more loving and more straight forward. It wasn't as openly cunning as the modern day is. There have always been crimes and all the negativity this world has but it was by far lesser then than it is now. As such, it leads to two very different opinions of life.
Where parents have seen the world descend into the thing it is today, children have only ever known the world to be what it is. This difference in time leads to two different views of what is right or wrong. My father has always looked down on people with dreadlocks. I on the other hand have no problem with it. Its just a hairstyle. But he was born into an age where such things as dreadlocks were signs of mischief and nothing good so he cannot trust it. The same applies to our views on almost every matter. Then compiling this with the rough neighborhoods that some children grow up in and as a result, the friends that they grow up having, the words, right, wrong and decent will have a list of meanings.
Leaving that aside, we have to also take note of the fact that children are generally lacking the life experience that their parents have. Experience is the source of our every decision and so a vast difference in it will lead to a vast difference in thinking.
This, I think are the major causes of the difference in opinions of parents and children. Take note though, its not always the children who are at fault. The older we get, the less adaptive we become. Old men and women refuse to change because they have a way of life they are used to and it is everything they know. So even if it no longer suits the modern day, they refuse to learn. This also applies to parents and their children. The children might be adapting to the modern age in a way that their parents find unreasonable because it is new to them. So they refuse it for their children but the children who know it better struggle to accept it. That is life and it is the cause of most parent-child arguments and problems.