"The Kids Are Too Soft"

Within these sorts of schedules, there is little tolerance or space for the things we say we want to nurture in children: creativity, imagination, spontaneity, the patience borne of extended boredom, space to really feel your emotions, or any activity that can’t be boiled down into a potential line on a future college application. (There’s also lit... See more

We’ve all heard the saying “Children are meant to be seen, not heard.” It was a slogan of sorts that summed up our older generations’ mindset around raising children. This mindset was born out of an understanding that the only needs children had were basic, such as food and shelter. Resource scarcity was a reality for many members of these generati

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For those growing into adulthood during most of the twentieth century, therefore, the backdrop to life was the loss of faith in coherent systems of thought and morality. Sophisticated people knew they were supposed to rebel against authority, reject old certainties, and liberate themselves from hidebound customs and prejudices. Artists rebelled aga... See more

As Barbara Ehrenreich and Katherine Newman have convincinglyargued, many boomers also had anxiety about falling out of the middle class in their 30s and 40s. But those years of their lives were not subject to constant optimization. The kernels of productivity culture had been sewn, but they hadn’t yet been normalized. Some upper middle-class white ... See more