Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Boomers' Hope: That The 'Kids' Are All Right

This is another piece about twentysomethings living at home with their parents that I posted about last week. In this article from USA Today, author Sharon Jayson reports that at least between peers, parents are sharing concerns that their young adult children don't have a clue about what they want to do with their lives, and are expressing hopes that enabling them to remain at home hasn't stifled their kids' self-sufficiency.

Around the kids, they're nothing if not supportive. But a growing number of baby boomer parents are freaking out inside.

They don't want to let on to their adult children that they're getting worried, but these parents are sharing their concerns at work, at the gym, at the grocery store or anyplace they can commiserate: Their offspring — post-college degreed and in their mid- to late 20s — still haven't a clue about what to do with their lives.

These young adults aren't slackers; they often have jobs to pay the rent and are seemingly on their own. But one of parents' biggest worries is whether their close relationships with their children may have stifled their self-sufficiency.

"Watching this as a parent, you're concerned that they find their own path," says Richard Hesel, 62, a marketing consultant from Timonium, Md., and the father of two sons in their 20s. "We've gone out of our way to help these kids, but you do wonder: When does it end?"

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-24-boomers-kids_N.htm

Protracted Adolescence Keep Young Adults At Home

Ran across an article on the trend of young adults who are still living at home with their parents. It appears that many parents are happy to have their twentysomethings at home. Worth the full read. What do you think about this trend? Does a prolonged phase of adolescence serve to better prepare kids for adulthood, or does it actually keep kids from assuming adult responsibilities?

Brittany Lambros of Scotch Plains started her freshman year at Lock Haven University in the fall of 2006. She left the central Pennsylvania school for home during winter break -- and never returned.

The 20-year-old is still at home, taking classes at Union County College, working in a hair salon, going to the gym. Eventually she wants to get a four-year degree, start a career, move out, get married and have a family. But Lambros figures she has another 10 years to reach those goals. "I'm just taking it day to day right now. I like being young like this. And there's no place like home."

Lambros is the new face of young adulthood, say experts studying the "millennial generation," 81 million Americans born between 1980 and 2000. For them, transitioning out of adolescence is more protracted.

They are taking longer to get through school, start a career, marry and have children. This means many are continuing to live at home with parents who are mostly happy to have them back.

"There's a new life stage between adolescence and young adulthood, a time for trying out different possibilities, what you feel is the right fit," said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a developmental psychologist and author of "Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens Through the Twenties."

Source: NJ.com
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-13/1205646131105450.xml&coll=1

Message to Teens: Eat Your Breakfast!

Teenagers who eat breakfast consume more daily calories but weigh less than those who skip the first meal of the day, a study released Monday in the United States showed.

"This study clearly supports what other studies have shown: kids who skip breakfast tend to gain more weight, and therefore would be at a higher risk for obesity," said Dr Mark Pereira of the University of Minnesota's department of epidemiology and community health, which conducted the study.

Source: AFP
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jj_kWfuxvXqR7F-QVObrD8rJPCXQ

So that's what happened to me!? I was one of those teens who always skipped breakfast. Now I have something to blame my "well-nourished" state upon. If your teens need a tangible reason for eating breakfast this just might be it. I wish the study would have addressed the "why" eating breakfast translates into weighing less. I saw a couple of television news reports on this item last night and at least one tried to explain that if kids eat breakfast, they tend to eat less later throughout the day. That seems reasonable as an explanation, but I came away feeling that the study itself did not identify a cause-and-effect link to the reasons why kids who eat breakfast end up weighing less.

Spanking Kids Increases Risk Of Sexual Problems As Adults

Children who are spanked or victims of other corporal punishment are more likely to have sexual problems as a teen or adult, according to new research presented today by Murray Straus, co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire.

Straus analyzed the results of four studies and found that spanking and other corporal punishment by parents is associated with an increased probability of three sexual problems as a teen or adult:
• Verbally and physically coercing a dating partner to have sex.
• Risky sex such as premarital sex without a condom.
• Masochistic sex such as being aroused by being spanked when having sex.

“These results, together with the results of more than 100 other studies, suggest that spanking is one of the roots of relationship violence and mental health problems. Because there is 93 percent agreement between studies that investigated harmful side effects of spanking, and because over 90 percent of U.S. parents spank toddlers, the potential benefits for prevention of sexual and relationship violence is large,” Straus says.

Source: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080228220451.htm

This is the first connection I've ever seen linking corporal punishment and potential sexual dysfunctions. It's worth noting. But, more intriguing to me is that the study includes no insight into any potential link between the attitudes of parents who spank and their demeanor when applying corporal punishment. I can envision significant differences in long term affects on kids simply based on the "whys" and "hows" parents utilize spanking. It seems to me that there is a big difference between an  angry, vengeful, emotionally distant parent who spanks to punish and a calm, loving, supportive parent who spanks as a measure of discipline. In any case, I think the study would have been better if it had taken these differences into account. What do you think?

Watch Your Mouth!

Adolescents and preteens are swearing more publicly than ever – especially at school, experts say.

It's conversational swearing – in the hallways and in the classroom – that is on the rise, says Timothy Jay, one of the leading scholars on cursing in the United States.

Teens are more likely to drop casual expletives, or "fillers," than the generation before them and have more trouble adjusting their conversation to fit their audience. That means adults – especially strangers who cannot sanction the teens – hear more of the same language that the teens' friends hear, says Jay, author of "Why We Curse" (John Benjamins, $35, 328 pages) and "Cursing in America" (John Benjamins, $66, 272 pages).

He estimates that the average adolescent uses roughly 80 to 90 swear words a day.

The solution, says Jay, is for parents to teach the etiquette of swearing.

"Kids should know about the power of language. Parents should remind them about how important words can be and when you should use them," agrees Leahy.

P.M. Forni, author of "Choosing Civility: The 25 Rules of Considerate Conduct" (St. Martin's Griffin, $12.95, 208 pages), sees the comfort teens have with cussing as a result of parents and teachers opting not to address the issue.

"Many parents have decided not to fight this battle, and one of the reasons is because they often swear themselves and hear it at the workplace," Forni says. "Parents should ban swearing in the household in the same way that they've banned smoking in the household."

Source: Sacramento Bee
http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/727392.html

Kids Learn to Lie... From Their Parents

In an interesting (and in-depth) article from the New York Times Magazine, the author, Po Bronson, shares results of a study on why kids lie.

Learning to Lie
The most disturbing reason children lie is that parents teach them to. According to  Dr. Victoria Talwar, an assistant professor at Montreal’s McGill University and a leading expert on children’s lying behavior, they learn it from us. “We don’t explicitly tell them to lie, but they see us do it. They see us tell the telemarketer, ‘I’m just a guest here.’ They see us boast and lie to smooth social relationships.”

Consider how we expect a child to act when he opens a gift he doesn’t like. We instruct him to swallow all his honest reactions and put on a polite smile. Talwar runs an experiment where children play games to win a present, but when they finally receive the present, it’s a lousy bar of soap. After giving the kids a moment to overcome the shock, a researcher asks them how they like it. About a quarter of preschoolers can lie that they like the gift—by elementary school, about half. Telling this lie makes them extremely uncomfortable, especially when pressed to offer a few reasons why they like the bar of soap. Kids who shouted with glee when they won the Peeking Game suddenly mumble quietly and fidget.

Meanwhile, the child’s parent usually cheers when the child comes up with the white lie. “Often, the parents are proud that their kids are ‘polite’—they don’t see it as lying,” Talwar remarks. She’s regularly amazed at parents’ seeming inability to recognize that white lies are still lies.

Encouraged to tell so many white lies and hearing so many others, children gradually get comfortable with being disingenuous. Insincerity becomes, literally, a daily occurrence. They learn that honesty only creates conflict, and dishonesty is an easy way to avoid conflict. And while they don’t confuse white-lie situations with lying to cover their misdeeds, they bring this emotional groundwork from one circumstance to the other. It becomes easier, psychologically, to lie to a parent.

Source: New York Times Magazine
http://nymag.com/news/features/43893/

Interesting stuff. This underlies the importance of honesty as a family value. And, the only way to pass the value of honesty along to your kids is by living it out in real life. Maybe it's a good time to do some self-evaluation and ask yourself "What example am I setting for my kids in the area of honesty?" For further information, click on the following article title:

"Why Integrity of Parents is Important to Kids"