Worst Parents...EVER!

I discovered skating later in life. As odd as it may seem, I find there is something so very relaxing about putting on a clunky pair of beat up hockey skates and doing laps on a big sheet of ice while listening to every form of music ever recorded that doesn't feature an accordion. Last time I was doing this, I was making my way back to the ice when I came across a group of what my generation lovingly calls "Bebe (Bay-bay) kids". Bebe kids are the ghetto equivalent of latch key kids but with considerably less "home training." There were at least four of them and they were all under five. They were with a group of adults and for some reason the kids all had balloons.
As I was walking past this one little girl who couldn't have been more than four, she got directly in my path and as I tried to walk around her she stepped back into my path and for no apparent reason reached back and punched me in the groin. It didn't hurt but my reaction was to look over at the adult she was with for some degree of clarity. He was some brother built like a boiled egg balanced on two tooth-picks and was wearing a shirt that wouldn't have fit the average seven year old. He looked over at me dismissively as if the by product of his contempt for the condom industry had just given me a cookie. I said to him "It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't hit me square in the nads." He looked at me and shrugged. Apparently his kids aren't his problem, they're society's problem.
If we flash back to circa 1970-something when I was a small child prone to doing stupid crap and I had done something similar my mother would have grabbed me by the arm and made me apologize to the stranger I'd just hit and if I DIDN'T she would have pulled my belt off as if she were starting a lawn mower and lit my ass up like a camp fire. However, in this the era of "child services" no one disciplines their kids. Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate people beating their kids, but at the same time no one even seems to bother correcting their kids anymore. My parents generation (the baby-boomers) weren't the BEST parents they could have been, but my generation (generation X) is MUCH worse.

Those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80's are possibly the worst parents ever. My logic? Gen X had to learn lessons the hard way, not as hard as our parents in the 50s and 60s, and certainly not as hard as our grand parents, but your actions had consequences. If you screwed up in school you more than likely would have gotten paddled. If you were a continuous problem you risked expulsion. Now adays there are "grief" counselors at every school to let little Johnny talk about his feelings because apparently his cursing out his teacher and hitting his classmates with rocks and sticks is either a desperate cry for attention, or an indication that he's too restricted by the school's lack luster curriculum and he expresses his angst at academic malaise by swearing and hitting.
The same excuse can be used as a reason for not doing class work. When I was in middle school or high school if a teacher or principal called your home you were in serious trouble. You were going to be grounded and more than likely mom and or dad would wear your butt out and this would be seriously compounded if the teacher or principal wanted your parents to come in for a conference.

Parents NOW are of the opinion that their child is utterly infallible and when teachers and principals call home now they are greeted by defensive accusations of bullying. The Gen-X parent is of the opinion that it's the schools "job" to raise his/her kids...provided they don't attempt to discipline them or teach them any thing vaguely resembling values of any kind. From the cradle my generation told their children how "wonderful" and "special" they are. They played t-ball instead of little league and were given huge trophies simply for participating. When something was too difficult for these kids rather than telling them that it was important to learn things which are difficult as a means of building character we simply gave them easier tasks to accomplish. Public schools where kids don't do homework, rather than flunk those who don't do it simply tell teachers not to assign it.
Children don't have to earn anything they need simply ask and receive. While it's great to know that you can give your children anything they want and that you couldn't have as a child, my generation is hindering this generation FAR more than it's helping them.

My generation thus far has produced a group of people who don't associate work with reward. They don't know the value of either education or money as they've never had to earn either. They were given academic equivalent of slow-pitch soft-ball assignments in school so their grade point averages were artificially high and when they arrive in colleges they usually drop out because professors actually require them to do actual work and research.
Were you to walk into the average high school library and see a book open, it will either be because the librarian is reading something or a teacher is checking out a book. The students will be on the library's computers busy downloading mp3s and assorted viruses, playing Halo and other interactive video games or POSSIBLY doing a research paper.
Don't get excited, this generations idea of a "research" paper is simply going to either Google or Wikipedia finding whatever facts they need and simply either cutting and pasting them unto the paper OR printing it out and presenting it as their own. Don't mention the words "bibliography" or "footnotes" as they don't know them. These people are woefully prepared for actual academia as the bulk of them haven't truly been subjected to it.

There was a point when I lamented the fact that I never married and didn't have any children , but as I encounter more and more of the "me me me...Mommy I want that" generation I want do a celebratory dance whenever I'm in a public place and overhear some spoiled adolescent denizen of a cul-de-sac apathetically telling his/her mother or father how they simply misplaced a $300 phone or video game in the same detached way one would tell a teacher they lost their pen or pencil and wished to borrow one.

Do I blame these young people for being lazy, irresponsible and stupid? Not at all. Disciplined, hard working, responsible have usually been conditioned to be so. People who are taught that rewards are the result of hard work and that consequences have actions usually have some degree of personal responsibility. People who are given all they have never know the value of anything as they assume that whatever IT is either has no real value or is in abundance. My generation can't sit back and criticize their children without realizing that they then have to spend a few minutes gazing into a mirror.
In our misguided hopes of being the "cool" parents we wished we'd had we became a group of irresponsible fools who have unleashed upon the world a group of people who think casual drug use and unprotected, promiscuous sex are cool thus insuring that there will be yet ANOTHER generation ill prepared for the cruel, harsh real world in which they'll learn the hard way that they're NOT special and will have to earn every little thing that they may call their own.