SHELLE - Without doubt many parents are fucked up beyond belief and they do not have the skills to raise a well-adjusted child.
It's been remarked many times that it's amazing that you need a license to get married, drive a car, open a restuaraunt or fish from certain lakes, but you don't need a license or need to pass any proficiency test to be a parent.
(In my utopia, you would, but that's another topic.)
Kids having kids is a big problem and all the studies have shown that the younger the age of the mother (I believe up to 20) when she had her first kid, the less likely the child to complete school and the more likely the child to go on some kind of public assistance and/or end up in jail.
But that can't be the entire story. It was relatively recently (within the last 100 years certainly) that our life expectancy was near as high as it is now.
At birth, men's life expectancy is 74 years, and women's life expectancy is 80 years. Interestingly, the older you get, the more likely you are to live longer. For example if a man lives till 85, his life expectancy shoots up to 92. A women in the same situation would have a life expectancy of 94. (OK, so I find it interesting!)
But just a few hundred years ago, people rarely lived past their thirties. The further back you go the lower the life expectancy. People them married at ridiculously young ages like 12 and 14 and had kids immediately. (As part of the continuing oppression of women, virtually all religions forbade birth contorl.)
The children they raised were certainly not more problomatic then the children of today. They couldn't be. If they didn't work for example, they starved.
The answer then has to lie somewhere in the environment. The world is a very complex and frightening place. If a person has not adjusted to it, he or she has little chance to raise a child who will be well adjusted to it.
And when that child shows signs of becoming well-adjusted and functioning on a higher level than his or her parents, the parents often hinder the child's progress so as to avoid feeling badly about themselves.
JOBBERIFFIC said it nicely that some parents place their own happiness ahead of their kids.
Still others indulge their kids every whim. Still others feel their child can do no wrong. (My wife, a school teacher, has at least one of these types of stories every day).
AGGIE - You are correct that the generation of today is vastly different than the generation of yesterday. There's been a tremendous culture shock just from new technology. I mean my mom's VCR is still blinking 12:00!
Feelings of alienation and separateness from our common culture are created and maintained, and the child has no one to turn to when he or she most needs it for help in how to navigate through our difficult world.
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