"Kids today, they're just no good. No hardships + no cause + boredom, anger, and idiocy." (Millennial 3) Howe and Strauss claim that this generation is filled with good, smart and intelligent kids however they just have never faced any hardships that defines past generations. They make us sound almost perfect due to our excellence in academics and respect for our elders. On the contrary, many teens and children have faced difficulties situations in life that some people may not be able to empathize with. Can they say that children in foster care or the ones that suffer through abuse had the same pampered easy upbringing our generation supposedly had? It is clear that Howe and Strauss only know half the story, they don't what other teens in America are facing.
Howe and Strauss claim that our generation has been coddled and protected because of the more positive attitudes about children Americans have expressed. This has resulted in being put under constant surveillance making us "the most watched over generation in memory."(Millennial 9) While Howe and Strauss believe that to be true they fail to see that not every child in America is shown the love and affection our generation has supposedly been subjected to.
In order to vouch for the other teens in my generation who have to suffer through some sort of hardship let me share my personal story about a hardship I am currently still facing. I come from a family of pure Indians, where dating is almost non-existent compared to the Western culture. In India, it is a generally accepted fact that your family will choose your future mate for you. While Indian families living in the West still carry on with the tradition of arranged marriages, others find themselves adopting from the western cultures, and young adults are allowed to do some actual dating based on their own preferences. However, it's hard to discard 5000 years of tradition, so parents demand their children to seek other Indians to date, and one day marry.
