Posted on 07/16/2004 8:01:52 AM PDT by BigWaveBetty
Extra! Extra! The big news of the past decade in America has been largely overlooked, and you'll find it shocking. Young people have become aggressively normal.
Violence, drug use and teen sex have declined. Kids are becoming more conservative politically and socially. They want to get married and have large families. And, get this, they adore their parents.
The Mood of American Youth Survey found that more than 80 percent of teenagers report no family problems -- up from about 40 percent a quarter-century ago. In another poll, two-thirds of daughters said they would "give Mom an 'A.'
"In the history of polling, we've never seen tweens and teens get along with their parents this well," says William Strauss, referring to kids born since 1982. Strauss is author, with Neil Howe, of "Millenials Rising: The Next Great Generation."
In an article in the latest issue of City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute, Kay S. Hymowitz writes:
"Wave away the smoke of the Jackson family circus, Paris Hilton and the antics of San Francisco, and you can see how Americans have been self-correcting from a decades-long experiment with 'alternative values.' Slowly, almost imperceptibly during the 1990s, the culture began a lumbering, Titanic turn away from the iceberg."
Adults are changing, but kids seem to have changed most -- and they may comprise the new "greatest generation," as Tom Brokaw called the World War II cohort. "What is emerging," writes Hymowitz, "is a vital, optimistic, family-centered, entrepreneurial, and, yes, morally thoughtful, citizenry."
That's trouble, I believe, for the Democratic party, at least in its current anchored-to-the-'60s version. It's possible that John Kerry will win in November because of the war in Iraq (though the smart money is on George Bush), but the long-term trend is clear. College freshmen who call themselves liberals outnumbered conservatives by about three to one in 1971; now the figures are roughly even. "Young voters are also more supportive of President Bush than the public at large," writes Hymowitz.
The changes in politics are rooted in changes in values. Last year, the rate of teen pregnancy dropped to a record low. Better birth control is not the sole explanation; the proportion of teens who had intercourse fell from 56 percent in 1991 to 46 percent in 2001.
Kids don't want casual sex; they want families. Harris Interactive reports that 91 percent plan to marry and, on average, they'd like three children.
Already, Generation X (born between 1965 and 1979) is more traditional than its parents. "The number of married-couple families, after declining in the '70s and '80s," writes Hymowitz, "rose 5.7 percent in the '90s." More brides are taking their husbands' names, and in 2000, the number of women in the workforce with infants dropped for the first time in decades. A study by Yankelovich found that 89 percent of Gen Xers think modern parents let kids get away with too much.
Twice as many Gen-X mothers as Baby Boomer mothers (born 1946-1964) spent more than 12 hours a day "attending to child-rearing and household responsibilities," according to a new survey by Reach Advisors, and roughly half of Gen-X fathers spent three to six hours daily on such tasks, another big increase.
Meanwhile, student marijuana use, which rose sharply in the 1990s, is on the decline, as is binge drinking. The juvenile murder rate fell 70 percent between 1993 and 2001; burglary is down 66 percent. Schools are safer, too.
What's going on here?
Hymowitz offers four explanations: 1) a "rewrite of the boomer years," with young people reacting critically to the world of sexual experimentation and family breakup and "earnestly knitting up their unraveled culture," 2) the trauma of 9/11, which has made kids more patriotic and turned them inward toward the comfort of family, 3) the information economy, which has given young people greater faith in their own chances to succeed, especially through self-reliance and entrepreneurship, and 4) immigration, which has produced what she calls a "fervent work ethic, which can raise the bar for slacker American kids, as any higher schooler with more than three Asian students in his algebra class can attest."
Whatever the reasons, the change in young people and their parents is very, very good news -- which is precisely why so much of the media is ignoring it.
bump
True.....however, what amazes me is how little the liberal influences have stopped the conservative tide.
This may just be a generational thing and the next generation will be liberal, but I am not so sure.
Don't loose hope, perhaps she's a late bloomer. :-)
That is my hope. She's only 15, so there's time.
One thing I can say for her, she's anti-abortion. But pro-everything else...
The writer forgot to add the "Roe" effect. More children have been born into conservative homes than liberal homes in the past 30 years. The 1.3 million abortions every year have not been evenly divided into pregnancies of conservatives and liberals.
Liberals have reduced their own pool of new voters voluntarily.
I will admit I was surprised.
However, people my age have been bombarded by propaganda since we were kids. When I attended KU (Go Jayhawks) in the early 90's, the propaganda was shoved down every students throat. This was back when PC reared its ugly head on campus. Not toeing the line on liberal issues was not tolerated. I turned conservative in my last year there and got booted from a class because I wrote a term paper on Margaret Thatcher. True story.
Nowadays, KU resembles a little more like it did in the 80's with a bigger College Republican org. and less granola types - although that is still there.
They very well may, at least temporarily. Be vigilant.
My son recently registered as an Independent (I think that was for his dad's (the liberal!) sake.) but will vote for GWB. We won't tell dad though, just knowing that our two kids and my vote will triple cancel his vote is enough.
My daughter and her husband and kidlet moved up to Louisiana almost two years ago, he's from Slidel (sp?) and went to LSU. They love it up there and are big, big LSU fans. Best of luck to your son with his college studies!
Computer Assistance for a large oil&gas company in the 4Corners area.
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Oh good grief, lose not loose!
The family with 15 children...were they in the news recently for having the 15th child?
The family I saw recently was absolutely beautiful. They were homeschoolers and the parents were under 40 also.
Having more teens who believe they're gay being 'out' makes it more acceptable I believe. They are after all full of heart (not so much brains) and don't want to deny their friends something they think isn't an issue. More education on how allowing same sex marriage will damage children is needed. They'll come around when they understand it's not about denying two people that "love" each other marriage but it's about how the world works. Even if they're not religious I believe they'll understand the reason nature set up the world with mothers and fathers is because a child, whether girl or boy need both influences of male and female to become a well rounded person, which then leads to a well rounded society. Not just because "we hate gay people."
Interesting side note; my son at the age of 14 asked if he could spend the night at a girlfriend's house. All the kids would be there, boys and girls. I was ready for this one since it had become fashionable to allow this sort of party. Of course my answer was no. But she's gay he told me! LOL! I explained why and that was that except then a friend of his (boy) mother called me to explain that the girl was gay and therefore nothing to worry about! (This woman claimed to be a republican!) And this woman's sister is gay so of course she's more knowledgeable than me.
I laughed out loud over the phone, then I realized she was serious. I had to slowly explain that a girl aged 13 couldn't possibly know if she were gay (she had sex with both and knows for sure at 13?!), the mom insisted they know these days and it would be fine. Finally had to tell her my job wasn't to put my child into situations that could possibly life threatening, i.e., rape accusations, pregnancy, STD's, no matter how sure this 13 year old is she's gay. The mom said she didn't realize I was such a fuddy duddy, I proudly stated I am.
What happened a couple of years later? The girl discovered she wasn't gay after all. The poor thing was looking for attention as I later learned her parents were even more flaky than the republican mom that called me.
Way to GO, MOM!
Ditto for this dad. My 18 year old son has his head on straight and recently became a believer. He's on fire for the Word and best of all he's on fire for his future.
Praise The Lord!
I agree:
"Children absorb the values of their parents... liberals abort, conservatives don't. Thus children are disproportionately born to conservative families, and absorb conservative values at a higher rate than the older generation."
Happily the feminazi-barracudas who considered themselves slaves to men and call mothers "breeders" didn't reproduce another generation with their self involved, warped sense of life.
I am 29 and live in NYC metro area. Most of my friends and everyone I know my age are very conservative in their values and politics. Pro-Gun, Pro-Less Taxes, Pro-military, Pro-Anti Illegal Alien.
Certainly that horror pushed many over the line but I saw some of this change coming years ago. And long before 9/11 my son went from anarchist (kids are fun!) to conservative in one breath it seemed. I think part of this change does have to do with the access to information the internet gives to kids. It gives them the opportunity to compare what their friends, parents and the media are telling them, a tool people my age didn't have. I remember hearing about the ERA and how we were all doomed if it didn't pass but there was no where to get the alternative opinion, just old Walter Crankypants to tell us Nixon wanted to subjugate us wimmin folk.
One day I was complaining about the way the media treated President Reagan and BAM!, my son told me I was right, that he had read some of Reagan's letters and he wasn't just a dumb actor like they had portrayed him. I nearly fainted. I'm positive that if I had plopped down a book on Reagan and told my son to read it, it would have gone unread. Finding the information on his own makes it more palatable.
My son also enjoys arguing with the teachers and amazed his political science teacher recently because he was the only one in class who knew who Dan Quayle was. He is going to have lots of fun when he gets to college. :-)
The radical left shift by society was nothing more than attempt to undermine us as a nation using the babyboomers as the catalyst... now that they are aging and dying.. we will return to our moral, correct and historical course, and end the nonsens of our parents KGB and Drug induced follies.
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