“It might sound a paradoxical thing to say –for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time –but the truth is that we neglected you.

• We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence.
• We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength.
• We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling.

Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.”

(Midge Decter)

Strong, convicting words from Ms. Decter. Words a large portion of us would confess about ourselves, and the current generation we’ve been parenting for the last 20+ years.

Except, of course, she wasn’t talking about Millennials. Ms. Decter was apologizing for the way her generation parented mine, Generation X.

Lord knows what she thinks about the job we’ve since we became parents.

Peace,