Development
Parenting the Next Generation
What will the world be like for your child? How will she and her peers see the world around them? Two historians take a look at the next generation.
As we watch our children grow, it's common to ponder what sort of people they will be and what sort of world they will live in. How will it be different from our own life experience?
The kind of unique individual a person becomes is due in large part to genetics and upbringing. But the culture in which people mature and the mood of the nation they inhabit play a large role in shaping the personality of each individual and determining the characteristics of entire generations. In a nutshell, the personality of one child is largely up to heredity and parenting, while the personality of that child's generation is all but predetermined by the behavior of the generations that preceded it and the major social events that occur during that 20 or so years that make up a generational era.
What Comes Around Goes Around
Just as history repeats itself, so do generations. According to generational historians and authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, each generation lasts about 20 to 25 years, and the characteristics of generations repeat approximately every 80 to 100 years—the average length of a human life. These experts studied the last 500 years of generations and discovered a pattern; there are four types of generations that have consistency recycled approximately every century. That means that babies born after 1998 will most likely resemble the traits of the so called Silent Generation, folks now in their 60s and 70s, while their children, your grandchildren, will behave much like the Baby Boomers.
Who Are You?
The Who asked this question in the 1960s, but their Boomer generation is still searching for the answer. The soul searching, self-actualizing hippies that characterize our parents' generation (1943-1960) are called Prophets by Strauss and Howe, "because they are remembered best for their coming-of-age passion and principled elder stewardship."
But clean-cut behavior can be a good thing. The last Artist generation experienced the lowest levels of suicide, teen pregnancy, crime and drug abuse in history. They also scored higher on standardized tests than any generation before or after.
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