Geopolitical events shaping young adulthood?

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
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I didn’t hide under my desk for nuclear attacks, but we put our hands over our heads in the hallways for tornado drills. They still do that too. And of course they have active shooter drills which we didn’t have back in the day.

I am in my mid-late 50s. Right now, I feel more despair at the direction the world is headed than I have anytime in my lifetime. I think that’s what our kids and their cohort feel too. They definitely recognize their privilege and know that some of their peers here right around them aren’t as privileged and certainly know that other places in the world people are going through real trauma, but it’s like that question that the pollsters ask on political surveys — “Do you think the country is on the right track?” I think my kids and their friends would be fairly pessimistic if the question was about the whole world being on the right track. I think they are unsure at best about the US.

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But I think teens and young adults in previous decades would have also been pessimistic if asked such questions.

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Some of the popular cable TV news outlets are mostly opinions rather than news, and opinions are often intended to stoke fear and loathing to a greater extent than the actual news may.

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Again, I feel more despair about the track the world is on now. I am not a teen. I feel more pessimistic about things in the world now than when I was a teen. I came up when Reagan was shot and John Lennon had been murdered, but it didn’t seem like the whole world was going to heck-in-a-handbasket.

If you keep up with the news this is a pretty pervasive feeling in the west. I can cite articles about the increased rates of depression and anxiety if you really want me to.

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3/1: Deleted since this is all just debating now and not a discussion.

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I don’t. Talking about depression and anxiety Is not taboo today, which is a good thing. But I also believe it is why it seems more people are depressed and anxious.
My mom was just talking about watching the Vietnam war on tv and having friends not come home. My two uncles lucky enough to make it home but with PTSD and health issues. No one was surveying them about depression.
I actually feel optimistic as I see the world’s reaction right now to Russia. Am I concerned about things? Absolutely! But time continues, life continues and I believe in our ability to persevere and do right. Call me an optimist.

ETA- I am not making light of depression. My mother was diagnosed with clinical depression when I was in 6th grade.

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At almost 65 I have lived through a lot. There were issues in the late 1970’s when I graduated from college but I have never felt as concerned about our world as I do now. I truly believe we are at a turning point in the USA , our democracy is at stake and some people are in danger of losing rights. I am also very concerned about our planet.
These issues weigh heavily on my children’s minds. They would both like to have children so they do have some optimism. I have several friends whose children do not plan to have families. Many of these young people are in their 30’s so it’s not really a “they might feel differently when they are older” issue. Some, no doubt might have always felt this way but it’s somewhat more socially accepted now. Some are very concerned about the things I am.

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Yes we used to joke that in case of nuclear attack the drill was get under your desk, put your head between your legs and kiss your sweet behind good bye. I was 5 during the Cuban missile crisis (the Soviets were putting nuclear weapons a little closer than Ukraine) and of course the Bay of Pigs. The nuclear age was comparatively young and we had a love/hate relationship with the atom.

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Relax. We didn’t have a nuclear exchange then and we aren’t going to have a nuclear exchange now. Dictators and autocrats want to stay in power, so they aren’t suicidal. I’m more worried about the hardcore idealogues in this world, including some in this country. They’re more fanatical.

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The point isn’t whether or not there will be a nuclear exchange… the point is that half a generation grew up having missile drills while they were in grade school, and somehow we made it to adulthood without being overly traumatized.

Every generation deals with its geopolitical issues.

Agree the hardcore idealogues are a troubling, looming problem…

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Birth rates in US have been declining for a while. Steep decline in 1960s (availability of effective birth control). Small bump up in mid 70s that lasted until about 1990. Declining since.

Marriage rates declined since mid-80s. Had been relatively stable for about a decade until 2018. Decline in 2018 was to all time low.

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3/1: Deleted since this is all just debating now and not a discussion.

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I’m not young and I have concerns about where the world is going. I think the future generations will pay a price for our blind eye to things that aren’t easily reversed. We have spent a lot of time on the water and in the oceans. Coral and fish diversity has changed. Where once we saw colorful fish and coral the coral is now dying and the water murky and less fish. Reservoirs and lakes are at low levels I’ve never seen in my lifetime.

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Agree with your post entirely. If you are pessimistic and worried about what others have( the 1%, 5% or whatever), you won’t find the time or energy to do what you need to do to make your life the best possible.

My kids can be anything they want except negative. We don’t sell that type of thinking and we don’t listen to it. We don’t like excuses. You try your best. Sometimes you succeed sometimes you don’t. Everyone has reason to make excuses.

I find some of the arguments very tired and old (I won’t cite exactly which ones but they are often repeated and usually sound like a rigid philosophy/religion rather than an idea. Usually, there is no room for disagreement because they have been rehashed to death and people will stand by this negative thinking which they hear on the news and elsewhere over and over. Frankly, I think that post-Covid many are going to think about things in an entirely new light. I’m optimistic. Always have been. Always will be. Hope my kids will always be as well.

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I am by nature an optimistic person or at least a realist. I am not a pessimist, but things of late are rough. It’s pervasive and it definitely is affecting some of this generation of kids. I don’t know how people can be pollyanna-ish about that. It’s like sticking your fingers in your ears and singing :musical_note: la-la-la, there’s no COVID, there’s no global climate change, there are no dictators invading other sovereign nations :musical_note:. It’s like the everything’s fine dumpster fire meme.

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I don’t think people are doing that at all. I think the differing opinion is that this moment in time is not on the brink of the end of days.

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I hate to sound like a broken record, but spend ten minutes with someone who was rounded up at gunpoint after spending half their childhood living in the Warsaw Ghetto, somehow managed to survive the selection line at Auschwitz, and since then has spent life giving back out of gratitude… and you won’t be calling positivity pollyanna-ish. You’ll be lauding it for the life-altering force it can be.

Honestly- not everyone in our country spent their childhood years in summer camp and having cook-outs. Yes, things are rough. Are they “rougher” than they have ever been in human history? Is Zoom school hard? Of course. But so is living in a concentration camp, child slavery, sex trafficking, and all the other horrific things that people living around you have managed to survive. And they don’t stick their fingers in their ears- they are out there trying to make life better for the NEXT round of survivors of horrific things.

If you find life is a dumpster fire, go find something small you can do to regain some semblance of control. Collect coats for the homeless. Volunteer to teach a creative writing course at an institution for incarcerated kids. The current generation of adolescents in America are the only kids who have had it rough? What about the “lost generation” who died in the Spanish flu pandemic- most of them teenagers and young adults- their lives were pretty $%^&, no?

I know it’s rough and pervasive, but you have to maintain perspective. There have been tiny slivers of history where it hasn’t been rough and pervasive-- or, there have been tiny slivers of the population (affluent ruling class) who didn’t have it rough while there was suffering all around them. Perspective.

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That might work for you, but your prescription doesn’t work for me and I don’t think it begins to address the point of this thread, which is:

My answer is yes, I do think my kids and their peers seem to view the future more negatively than we did 30 years ago.

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Did you grow up in the USA?

The kids didn’t ask for a safe space to recuperate because the parents either mocked them and told them that they were weak, or the parents themselves went to pieces on the kid’s behalf. Parents have been screaming “won’t somebody please think of the children!!!” for decades every time they saw something that bothered them (though the children may not be affected).

These parents, and the generation before, had panic after panic. They were afraid of commies hiding under their beds, they were afraid of atheists. Then the Boomers as parents stumbled from panic to panic. They were the ones who didn’t let their kids play outside, they were the ones who were in a panic about cults of Satanists kidnapping and murdering children. They were the ones who continued to panic about “a rising wave of crime” as crime continued to drop.

At the same time, their kids were told “your panic isn’t real, grow up”. But they themselves, never practices “Keep Calm and Carry On”

As for the people who were living through the Blitz, and who coined that term? They were panicking, sending their kids to the countryside. They lived in fear day in and day out. But people can be incapacitated by for only so long, before the learn to compartmentalize it, and go on with their life. That doesn’t mean that they are happy, of that this is the best way to deal with what’s going on.

Why do you think that the Baby Boomer age group in the UK and France were so rebellious? Because their traumatized parents bottled up their trauma, and refused to take care of their mental health and that effected the way they raised their kids. The rebellion should tell you how successful that was.

I’m sorry, but “Keep Calm and Carry On” is a terrible way to deal with trauma.

PS. I have lived through a number of wars and conflicts, personally participated in one+ and have been through a lot. I can say that “Keep Calm and Carry On” didn’t help, and I wish that I had a safe space when I needed one. And I grew up in a country which, unlike the USA, does not believe that demonstrating strong emotions Is Only For The Weak.

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Two things can be true at once.

  1. Past generations did not deal with, or even acknowledge, trauma. My grandfather was WWI cavalry. He had night terrors for many years. Never talked about what happened. My father escaped Poland and then East Germany. He rarely talked about his experiences. My mom, her sister and her dad were once captured by the ‘Mongols’ at what became the East German border. They were in very real danger of being killed, or raped. Yes, it affected the way they raised their kids and I truly wish somethings in my past had been done differently. And, I still battle some of the effects of being raised in an environment where people were always on edge…expecting something bad to happen. Where the prevailing thought was people can’t be trusted, and evil is just around the corner.

  2. The generation under discussion here was protected from many things. And, the parenting style included shielding them from some of the knocks, hurts and bruises (metaphorically speaking) that are simply part of life. Not everyone is picked first for the sports team - some people (like myself) just suck at that…and SHOULD be picked last. Sometimes you make a mistake and there are effects - late paper, cut class - and parents didn’t come charging for the teacher and assume it was somehow THEIR problem. If they were in pain. - there was a rush to medicate. If anything this generation has a great ability to demonstrate strong emotions - witness the after effects on college campuses after the 2016 election. What might be missing is a filter - one where hearing someone utter ideas or positions counter to ones own, where looking at the news - where lets be honest, we pick our own echo chambers- doesn’t result in incapacitation and an expectation that SOMEONE fix the discomfort.

I am sure we will disagree

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