Would you want to have grown up in todays society?
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Sophief (
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April 29th, 2010
I was thinking about whether or not I would like to be younger. The answer is no. I would not like to be a teenager in todays society. Most kids these days are not brought up properly because their mother is more than likely only a few years older than them herself.
There is more crime and more drugs around now than when I was younger.
It seems the younger generation of parents don’t know how to be parents because are still children themselves.
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68 Answers
I think it depends on the family as a whole. Kids are pretty adaptable. If given a reasonable supporting structure, they usually turn out ok. If they don’t have a good base to work from, it’s a lot tougher, but a lot of them still turn out ok
“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?”
—Plato, 4th century BC
“Most kids these days are not brought up properly because their mother is more than likely only a few years older than them herself.” – This is horse poop. Perhaps you didn’t mean it this way, but “most” has a meaning, and this statement is just not true, as @grumpyfish pointed out before I could finish typing this. I don’t think things are that much different from when I was growing up, besides which, growing up with loving parents is what’s important not how other people grow up or what other kids are doing.
No, kids today have no respect for anyone,the toys that are out are not as a nice as they were back in the 90s,and things are alot more expensive now also, kids back then were geatefull, they just take take take today, so no glad i grew up back then and not now.
I have a feeling you have no idea what you’re talking about…...
Yeah, the good ol days were always better.
@jackm Selective of memory! Selective of memory! =)
@Sophief I’m curious, when would be your ideal time to have grown up, and where do you draw the line between today’s society and a time when it was better?
I would love to be a kid today. Kids today are raised in the most technologically advanced environment in world history. The level of knowledge accessible to modern children has never been as high.
Also, the moral environment is better today. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are demonized, unlike the state of affairs 50 or even 20 years ago. Anti-violence and anti-warfare are mainstream positions. I find the idea that “things were better back then” to be laughable.
@Snarp I’m not in the US, in the UK, there are loads of teenage pregnancies. They all want a child at 15, it’s pretty disgusting and sad. I don’t know when I good time would of been. 70’s or 80’s maybe. Kids these day want everything before they are grown up themselves.
@Sophief, you’re going to need to support your assertions with statistics.
Do you know for a fact that there are more teen pregnancies now than your idealized golden age of the 70’s and 80’s?
@Qingu 2006 UK teen birth rate is 29.1 per 1000 (aged 15–19), vs. around 41 in the US.
Edited to add: however, that can be locally different, parts of the UK have dramatically higher teen birth rates.
Yes they get to have the internet, computers but, it is not right for a child to be on the computer all day, i personally think playing with toys and games are much more apart of growing up.
@Qingu From your writing I see you are from the US. I’m talking about England.
@pinkgirl02, why do you think that? Isn’t that kind of arbitrary?
Couldn’t I just as easily say “Kids play with toys and games too much nowadays; I personally think that doing farmwork, laundry and hard labor is much more apart of growing up.”
@Sophief I understand that. Do you have any statistics to back up what you are claiming about the English teen pregnancy rate?
Yeah england have high teenage pregnancy rates, it is always on the news.
Oh yeah, housework duties to i agree, get them to do things aswell.
@pinkgirl02 How about factory work? They have smaller fingers and are much more useful in fabric mills than fully grown adults.
Well, that depends on the parents really.
@Qingu Thats a wonderful quote from Plato!
@pinkgirl02 So if the parents are OK with factory work, the kids should be allowed to do it?
@Qingu No, just my eyes, and I’m not that interested to look it up. It was just an observation everytime I leave the house.
No, i would not let a child do that, there is a limit of course.
The first thing I googled for “England teen prengancy rate” was this story
”Teenage pregnancy rate falls
The number of teenage pregnancies in England and Wales has fallen by 4%, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
A total of 41,325 women under 18 fell pregnant in 2008, down 3.9% from 42,988 in 2007, the figures show.”
Actually, the graph on that story shows that young people aren’t the ones getting pregnant more often— old people are.
@Sophief, your eyes are incorrect, according to actual statistics. I’m sorry to hear that you’re not “interested” to factually verify your beliefs.
@Qingu The other thing to watch is birth rate vs. pregenancy rate. @Sophief is specifically talking about teenagers raising kids. Pregenancies end naturally or by choice at a pretty high rate.
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This may or may not apply to other countries, but if you walk thru an old cemetary and look at the birth dates and death dates on the tombstones, there are a lot of kids that never made it out of childhood. The old days look good from our perspective, but there were a lot of challenges just to survive.
@Qingu Must just be the town I live in then.
@pinkgirl02 Yes your right., but they like statistics on here. This town could be full of teenage mums, but that won’t matter, only statistics count.
@Sophief, perhaps it’s just confirmation bias?
You believe that there are a lot of teen pregnancies, so you are more likely to see and remember pregnant teenagers. Happens to the best of us!
@Sophief If you’re surmising that the town you live in is a hotbed of teen pregnancies, there’s no way to confirm it without knowing what town you’re living in.
@Qingu The Office for National Statistics data showed there were 41.9 conceptions per 1,000 15 to 17 year olds in 2007 – up from 40.9 the year before.
In total, there were estimated to be just over 42,900 conceptions in under 18s.
The under 16 conception rates also increased from 7.8 per 1,000 to 8.3, meaning there were nearly 8,200 pregnancies.
Teenage girls in the North East were the most likely in England to become pregnant, with 52.9 pregnancies per thousand girls aged 15–17.
Hartlepool and Middlesbrough were the towns with the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the North East, with 66.8 per 1,000 and 66.7 per 1,000 respectively.
Of the 2,598 pregnancies in the North East, 42% led to an abortion – almost 10% lower than the national average.
Pregnancy rates were also high in Yorkshire and Humberside, the West Midlands and the North West, with all recording more than 47 pregnancies per 1,000 girls.
@grumpyfish It’s none of your business really. What you going to do look up statistics?
@pinkgirl02 Bet London has far more than here, and I am only about 60 – 70 mile away maybe.
@JeffVader Your feeding them!
“Would you want to of grown up in today’s society”?
I think the big problem here is constant substitution of the word “of” instead of “have” as demonstrated in this question. Apart from sounding a little bit alike, these words do not have anything to do with each other and should not be used interchangeably.
@JeffVader, Plato was such a cock. There’s also, iirc, a quote by him where he bitches about this newfangled “Writing” technology that’s corrupting the kids nowadays and ruining their ability to memorize epic poetry.
Can someone just clarify, sorry this has nothing to do with this question, what does s o mean?
@Sophief Yep! I’m actually happy to do your research for you!
Here’s a great source, you can look it up yourself: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/resources-and-practice/IG00200/
In 2008, for the London GOR—overall rate is 44.6/1000 conceptions under 18, with 61% leading to abortions. Rate is highest in Kensington & Chelsea LB at 71.5/1000 with 58% leading to abortions. (Note that that’s down 16.2% since 1998).
Anyway, nationally, that’s the highest I could find for 2008.
—
What I’m arguing is that the premise of your question is wrong: there are not more teen births now than there were in the past, it’s just a hot issue in the UK right now, so you’re hearing a lot about it. This isn’t to say that it’s not a problem, just that it’s more of a “popular” issue right now than in the past.
Thankyou, just been bugging me.
@grumpyfish I’m not all that interested actually. I was just asking a question, I couldn’t think of anything to ask.
@pinkgirl02 That’s ok ;-)
“I’m not all that interested actually.”
Why bother asking then?
@jjmah I was just asking a question. I see a lot of teenage mums, I’m not interested in statistics, just observing what I see. I’m not a teenage mum, if I were, then I guess I would be interested.
@Sophief Let’s be respectful of people who are taking the time to answer your question. It’s not fair to turn around and say that you’re not interested in answers of a particular type, or answers that are based on statistical information.
@Qingu That may be so….. doesn’t mean he was wrong though.
One stat I left out is the overall conception rate in 2008: overall it’s 79.9, with the peak at the 25–29 age group at 133.5/1000.
@grumpyfish I’m guessing your a teenage parent or a parent of one?
@JeffVader, well, the reason I quoted Plato was to show that people have been whining about “kids these days” for at least 2,400 years. So one wonders when this supposed golden age where kids were well-behaved and respectful actually took place.
@Sophief I’m 30, happily married, with no children. My parents were happily married for 10 years before they had me =)
Just because I care about an issue, doesn’t mean I’m personally involved with it.
Sure, I was never much of a “go with the crowd” kind of kid and I don’t see that as being a generational thing so why not get a chance to grow up with a new and more advanced set of technology and see how I adapt to/with it differently than I have. I suspect I’d pretty much be into the same (well, similar) stuff if I was growing up now. Most of it is still around. Though I have to admit, I liked having toys that were actually made of metal and could take a beating rather than so much cheap plastic. They’re still there they just seem much harder to find.
There was a time, structure and respect was a priority. Now it is an after thought.
Mothers stayed home and raised their children. For the most part.
When I was 5 I could “roam” the neighborhood, meeting up with other friends.. It was safe.
My mother could send me to the store for something without fear.
Can’t do that today.
And, children socialized. Outside and together. There was more reality and less virtual.
I am not condemning or putting down today’s children or society. It is what it is, always trying to make the best of it.
Would I want to be a child in today’s society. Plenty of “cool” stuff. Cool stuff and technological advancements being relevant of the time.
But I would pass, today’s youth have it rough.
They have and are missing out on being young and are being polluted will too much distraction.
They are smart and as capable as anyone else in history for success. But still missing out and will never experience what I had experienced.
Being born in 1964.
@ChazMaz Not an answer I was expecting. But great answer and very well put.
Tell you the truth I’m a teenager myself. I don’t like it. There are so many things going on in the world. You can’t be alone anywhere and you cant be at a party because there are alot things going on like drugs or sex or fights going on. True some parents don’t know how to be parents. My parents are not young they married when they was 23. But my friend’s parents are young. They really don’t care what their kids do in school or at home. And most of the time young parents are not good example for their own children.
@Love_or_Like Thank you for that. I be it is hard to be a teenager in today. Having to try to be somebody your not just so you don’t get bullied.
@Sophief yes I love my friends but the way they act or the way their parents made them. Is very bad they do anything you tell them. Don’t care about their self and don’t even respect their self and no one. I really don’t get bully because I speck the truth to them and most of the time I make the think that what they do is not right. They say I really help them out and a great friend. Mostly what I hate is drugs and sex.
Well I’m pleased you don’t follow them. How old are you?
@Sophief – Damn skippy I prefer now.
In my mother’s day: Lynchings, murder, rape, an educational system that literally taught my older relatives that they were monkeys and savages, and the inability for people who looked like me to participate in the direction of the country of my birth, unable to make a decent living, unable to travel freely and their attempts to live with dignity and humanity were, by law in many cases, trampled upon.
There are people in their 60s who remember those (not so far off) days, and were oppressed by the standards and social mores of the time. My ancestors fought against this, and people died so that I and those after me don’t have to live like chattel. Could I have done what they did? I don’t know, but I’m very grateful to be alive now and raised post-1965.
Growing up is hard no matter what time period it is. It’s the nature of adolescence. Being a kid now is just as hard/fun as it was when I was growing up.
Yes, I would like to grow up in some future society when there is no such thing as starvation and disease and all the people act in their own best interest, which would promote nothing but civilized behavior.
(Own best interest = for the good of all)
@YARNLADY – That exists. Its called a Movie Theater. :-)
@Sophief Im 15 going to be 16 in 4 months
@Love_or_Like Well, thank you for answering the question, it was good to have an opinion from someone of your age.
Thank you to you too; I really liked this question.
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