Times have changed, but parents haven’t
By Daily Bruin Staff
Sept. 21, 1997 9:00 p.m.
Monday, September 22, 1997 Times have changed, but parents
haven’t COLUMN: Life holds more challenges, dangers and faster pace
for youth
By Alex Balekian
"Don’t drive like a maniac," my mother yells as I prepare to do
the Sepulveda Slalom. The Slalom, my daily ritual as a commuter,
requires skillful driving as I weave between the Sunday drivers in
their Fords and take the sharp curves at unsafe speeds on my way
from the Valley. "When I was your age" is all I hear before I zone
my mother out.
Spare me the flashback. When my parents were my age, the Reds
were in Eastern Europe, Ed Sullivan was on TV, and the ozone layer
was still up there.
These petty scolding episodes from my parents do little more
than reinforce my faith in retirement homes. Our parents would like
to guide us through life, but the lives of young people today are
drastically different from what they were 20 years ago.
Children today read at an earlier age, learn with and utilize
more sophisticated technology, and cope with more challenging
family problems such as divorce. Our parents had the sexual
revolution; we have the information superhighway. The best our
parents can hope to achieve is to draw parallels, in lieu of
similarities, between their lives and ours.
Education, for instance, is a far cry from what it used to be.
More students, especially women, continue their studies after high
school. In the current, competitive job market, an ordinary high
school diploma, or even a Bachelor’s Degree for that matter, will
not suffice in securing a well-paying position. Young women today
don’t get married at 20 and wait for the bread to come home; they
go out and get it themselves. In addition, students now compete
against an ominous presence that barely touched the generation
before them. In the name of diversity, some talented scholars are
denied their hard-earned places in higher institutions. Today’s
bright pupil may not be accepted into the university of his choice
because of the simple fact that he was not born into a minority
group.
My life after high school is certainly not the same as my
parents’. For starters, I will be in school at least six more years
(assuming I don’t flunk out of medical school) in order to find a
suitable, well-paying job and amass a plethora of loans to repay.
In that same amount of time, I will reach the age at which my
parents married; with respect to our future, our generation has
many more opportunities than just graduating from high school,
marrying quickly, and apprenticing a vocation that will last until
retirement age.
Besides killing myself to get into medical school, I also devote
25 hours every week to work part time and support my expenses (my
textbook bill last quarter, for instance, matched almost exactly
the amount that my mother paid for her wedding). Yet throughout all
of this hardship, I still have to let some minority students cut in
line ahead of me; this is my punishment for being, as some
religions and cultures call me, the Great White Devil-Man, building
his ceilings of glass above the hapless villagers and trapping them
forevermore in entry-level position complacency. Can my parents, or
anyone’s parents for that matter, actually relate to the situations
I face now and give me helpful, worthwhile advice?
The changing times do not stop at education. American society
today has evolved greatly from the social climate in the late ’60s
and ’70s.
Subjects which were once taboo and shameful are now everyday
fodder. Divorce, for instance, has skyrocketed to unprecedented
levels. A stable marriage and family life will not come easily to
today’s generation, considering the 50 percent divorce rate. How
would you feel about marriage if the fate of yours essentially
boiled down to calling heads or tails? Young adults have to face
daunting tasks in their quest for love, marriage, and having
children (not necessarily in that order). Abortion, for instance,
has come a long way from when we were born. A pregnant girl today
has a choice, not a child. She can elect to have her child, or she
can abort it. She can abort it in a clinic. She can abort it in a
motel. She can abort it in a dumpster. She can abort it at her
prom. Nothing is unheard of anymore.
Young people also grow up with more risks and dangers around
them. Crime has risen steadily from 20 years ago, and violent
crimes claim a victim every several seconds. Streets are no longer
safe at night (or in the morning), and doors are no longer left
unlocked. Deadly handguns are easily accessible to any would-be
criminal, and powerful drugs are widely available to any would-be
junkie. Whereas marijuana was the drug du jour of the late ’60s and
’70s, heroin, cocaine and a more powerful form of pot characterize
the lethal drug experience of the ’90s.
Drugs and crime are not the only added risks of our lives today.
The risk of HIV is everywhere we turn. Wouldn’t we like to see our
parents’ generation try to stage a love-in during this decade? The
sex we practice is potentially deadly, the cigarettes we smoke are
tainted to hook us for life, the alcohol supposedly forbidden for
us is easily obtained on fraternity row, and the air that we
breathe is akin to placing our mouth around an exhaust pipe. Were
our parents privy to these aspects of our everyday lives when they
were our age?
Despite the grave picture I have painted, not all of the
differences between our lives and that of our parents are so
extreme. The English we speak with one another has allowed and
prohibited the use of some words since our parents’ time. For
example, my friend’s parents were enormously pleased to find that
their daughter’s song du jour was "Bitch." In the ’90s, we have
more leeway to swear, but we have less room to call people by what
they used to be called. Allow me to elaborate: Today we are in an
age of hyphenated Americanism. I have no more oriental, black or
hispanic friends.
They’ve all become Asian-American, African-American, Latino/a,
and Chicano/a friends of mine, but I’m still Caucasian. I find it
amusing that the majority is lumped up into one unfair,
all-encompassing term, and the minorities split up and name
themselves more quickly than the newly emerging Baltic States.
I know my parents mean well when they try to lecture me on
certain subjects and dangers, but I just don’t understand how they
have ever really been in my shoes. Like most people my age, I go to
school, I work, I hope for a good future, and I try not to get
stuck under the wheels of the juggernaut of everyday life. The past
generation grew up with bell-bottoms, women’s lib and Tricky Dicky
Nixon while ours grows up with 64-bit video games, gay rights and
Do-Up-Your-Trousers Bill Clinton. I worry about more things than my
parents did, and my problems aren’t exactly their cup of tea. In
the long run, my children will probably be under more stress than I
ever dealt with, and that certainly won’t be my cup of iced
mocha.