The Millennial Generation and Failure to Parent

This is described in terms allowing them the freedom of pontification on issues of the environment, pay equity for jobs which aren’t market driven, reproductive rights dismissing a need for personal sexual responsibility for the ever increasing STI epidemic, and supposed victimization by their high educational debts and inability to buy a house. Much of this is being launched from the cocoon of their parent’s home, truly burdening their elders with kids who won’t leave home without them.

The saddest malady is the numbers of aging parents compromising their own retirement and welfare in trying to contribute to the cost of living for grown children. Whether it is the assumption of raising their own grandchildren for errant children whose lives are disjointed due to drugs or other infirmities, many of their own making, or degreed, unemployed kids unable to afford the lifestyle in which their parents reared them. Additionally the living on credit which can't be easily repaid stifles too many futures. Many have been raised with the mistaken entitled belief that each succeeding generation would be assumed to be better off than they experienced.

The problem is often not appreciating that many of us are who we are because of the struggles and sacrifices made by our parents to make sure we had what we needed to succeed. This calculated in an appreciation that our parents had to work for what they had as should we.

Many have gone to school and studied often with less than hoped for careers, dressed for success in a mess or worked two jobs to make ends meet. In so being reared, we often didn’t want our kids to experience that sacrifice for themselves, so we gave them too much, thereby crippling their ability to fend for themselves. Few kids need cars in high school, but many of today’s generation drive rides better than their parents who are paying their bills. Many children are working, making decent money while skipping out on helping with the household debt or saving for their future.

Education at least to the level of high school is not an option. For those dropping out, trades and technical careers provide meaningful and well-paying alternatives. Entrepreneurship has its place. By most measures, disruptive students are a burden on not just the school system but society. Too often schools are for babysitting and education is sidelined by the lack of discipline exhibited by our progeny requiring weapons monitoring, school resource officers, and other expensive enforcement for the orderly progression of learning. Why not require parents to take their students home if they won’t behave?

Parents just don’t understand, that we are who we are because of our experiences while often bending over backwards to spare our progeny the same. At 18 my children were clear that they would go to work, join the military, go to college or some equivalent work, but they were going out of my house because parents are not responsible for caring for grown kids.

There ought to be a constitutional amendment making 18 the legal age of adulthood which would make it crystal clear to all parties when we are expected to be up and doing. Such would instill in children an unfiltered view that they need to get their lives together, could exercise their legal right to vote and become capable of providing for themselves as well as give them an appreciation of the fact that they are not owed anything. This would also demonstrate a clear demarcation between childhood and adulthood, thereby sparing young children from being sentenced as adults. Lastly we need to make citizens understand their need for individual responsibility in carrying out their lives.

Ada M. Fisher, MD, MPH is a licensed teacher, retired Corporate physician, former county school board member, speaker, author of "Common Sense Conservative Prescriptions Good for What Ails Us Book 1" (available through Amazon. com) and is the NC Republican National Committeewoman. Contact through DrAdaMFisher.org. To read more of Dr. Fisher's reports, Click Here Now.