Talking 'bout my generation

by James Toews

AParenthood is the one area of my life where I feel incompetent, out of control and like a total failure all of the time.@ This summary of parenthood by a successful attorney captures the anguish of a generation of parents whose children are now in their teens. It is to these anxious parents that Mary Pipher addresses her insightful book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls.

These are the parents who were teenagers in the 1960s--the heart of the Baby Boom generation--and they and their children are in trouble. Pipher documents that trouble, especially as it relates to adolescent girls growing up today. While acknowledging that there have always been teens with problems, Pipher contends that something has gone seriously wrong in recent years. AMany of us hated our adolescent years, yet for the most part we weren't suicidal and we didn't develop eating disorders, cut ourselves or run away from home.@

This is strange because we are the most enlightened, best educated and wealthiest generation of parents ever. With disdain we watched our parents' clumsy attempts to raise us. We were the heralds of a new age--the age of Aquarius. You couldn't expect us to live under ancient rules. We were a fresh start with fresh new answers to all of life's questions. And now we are parents of teenagers in trouble. What has gone wrong?

Indeed, many things are wrong--from broken families to a sexually perverted culture to an aggressive, consumeristic media. Pipher deals with them all. But perhaps her most striking insight is her assessment of Athe heroic rebel@. If there was one thing that marked my generation it was the anti-social character of our heroes. James Dean and Elvis Presley were relative choir boys compared to our heroes--Peter Fonda's Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin. They were rebels. Nothing restrained them, and at the end of the story they all had to die. They took the rugged individualism of Western society to its ultimate extreme.

It was my generation which enshrined rebellion as the heroic ideal and the primary rite of passage into adulthood. Now, suddenly, we are the parents, our children are fulfilling everything we taught them--and we are horrified with the result. It was one thing to rebel against a safe, benevolent authority who at the end of the day would travel to the ends of the earth to bring you home. It was one thing to rebel against restrictive old rules and customs when in fact they were deeply ingrained in the hidden places of our hearts. It was one thing to rebel when, in fact, most people confined their rebellion to posters and slogans.

But what does rebellion look like when there are no rules to begin with? What does rebellion look like when everyone actually seems to be doing it? It is not a pretty sight, but it is what we see when we look into the eyes of our children and their friends.

Reviving Ophelia is an insightful book, but perhaps in addition to it we might consider something that we thought we would never do--listen carefully to the ancient wisdom our parents believed in. In that wisdom, a warning is given: AYou cannot fool God, so don't make a fool of yourself! You will harvest what you plant. If you follow your selfish desires, you will harvest destruction@ (Galations 6:7-8, the Bible, Contemporary English Version).

This warning could immobilize us with fear if the Bible did not also offer hope: AIf my own people will humbly pray and turn back to Me and stop sinning, then I will answer them from heaven. I will forgive them and make their land fertile once again@ (II Chronicles 7:14, CEV).

Could it be that Amy generation@ is now prepared to listen?

Return to the M.B.Herald Vol. 37, No. 4 Home Page