Regaining the trust of our teenagers in our "broken society"
People these days blame the "broken society" on the fact that our teenagers are out of control.
But this misses the point: the connect between families and their teenage children has been broken for too long, partly because many of our "out of control" teenagers have lost trust and respect in their parents and families. With so much family breakdown, these teenagers no longer have any positive family role models to turn to, so they naturally rely more on their peers. This is one reason why youth crime has increased so much.
That´s why teenagers turn to alcohol and drug abuse, under the influence of their peers. That´s why teenage pregnancies are so high; because teenage girls want the love of a child to offset the lack of love and attention they recieve from theie families.
So, how can we regain their trust and repair the bond, making our society not "broken" but "connected"?
Views: 4
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Callum Tomlin on -
I have to disagree on one point... Young girls aren't getting pregnant because they want the love of a child. They are getting pregnant because of a lack of morals and positive role models in society, and because for many of them, government handouts are better than being on the dole. One only needs to look at the figures of children taken from young mothers by social services to see that there is a severe deficiency in their parenting skills, thus showing at least one point supporting my argument. Another point i want to make on this is that I believe that many young people are separated from their parents by a huge gap in understanding. That isn't to say that the parents of today's youth don't care, but that they don't understand them. If they were able to understand better, and if young people were able to communicate more openly with their parents, with many of the barriers removed (barriers such as the stigma attached to sex, or attached to discussing drugs), then it is possible to begin to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations of families. Does anyone else see where I am coming from in this?
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Permalink Reply by Lee Daniel Hughes on -
Yes, Callum, I completely agree with your point that there is a huge gap in understanding between parents and teenagers.
That´s one of the tragedies of family life in the UK: teenagers feels their parents can´t relate to them, thus they turn to their peers, and thus we have the problems of alcohol and drug abuse, as well as teenage pregnancy.
The real questıon is, as I said in my opening remarks, how can be make the "re-connect" between parents and teenagers?
For a start, parents have to be talking openly about sex at a much younger age than they do now with their children. Why?Because there is so much exposure to sexual issues in the media that children see everyday without properly understanding it, and parents failing to provide any context. This is the basis for the problems that exist today. This may also be a cultural issue in the UK in general; British people may be very open-minded generally, but are privately quite conservative about talking about moral issues in a family setting, rather than much more openly with their friends. Adults as well as teenagers are responsible for this behaviour.
Then there is the issue of alcohol (although Britain historically has been a heavy drinking country). Alcohol is seen as a panacea in general to the average British person´s woes: getting sloshed is seen as the answer to people´s problems in general. When people look forward to getting drunk for the sake of getting drunk (rather than looking forward to socialising with friends), that´s the start of the problem.
I like a drink as much as any person, by the way; I just wonder what is really going on in people´s head, psychologically and mentally, when they see getting plastered as the key to their problems. -
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