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Young adults and mental health: Is more childhood independence the answer?

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Re: Young adults and mental health: Is more childhood independence the answer?

#151

Post by dudul »

polishdude20 wrote: post #64
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #19

My generation (early GenX) may be the last one to grow up in an environment that didn't systematically screw young people at every possible turn. We didn't have a constant presence of adults and had space to work out issues on our own. We were able to travel for miles in most directions without being barraged by No Trespassing signs - each of them backed up by disproportionate penalties and an ever present risk of li…

Could be because your generation went out, explored the world without boundaries and have found that it's scary? Then, imbued with this fear, tried to protect their children at all costs. Maybe the coddled generation will raise non-coddled children since they will be unaware of the dangers out there.

Now I'm raging because I can't remember the name of it, but there is a theory claiming that generations are cyclical with 4 different cohorts, from the heros to the lazy, and etc. I'm sure someone here will no what I'm vaguely talking about :)

Edit: Strauss–Howe generational theory

Re: Young adults and mental health: Is more childhood independence the answer?

#152

Post by cpsns »

dymk wrote: post #113
swader999 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. Smoking is a very social habit at least. Whose to say the isolation and depression from phones/social media is less harmful?

How is smoking a social habit? I see people stepping away from groups to go smoke elsewhere.

Back when more people smoked you'd see smokers congregate and chat while smoking, often smoke breaks would be coordinated. It still happens, but less often because fewer smoke, especially in professional environments.

That said it's pretty rare I ever see a single smoker off by themselves, unless they've gone out of their way to be alone.

Re: Young adults and mental health: Is more childhood independence the answer?

#153

Post by cpsns »

Lanz wrote: post #48

The infantilization of an entire generation and the extension of adolescence into the 20s is a disaster for mental health. It's hard to find meaning if you remain immature. Without meaning, what's the point in living?

Find meaning? A whole lot of younger people (myself included) don't believe there is such a thing at all. As I enter my 30s I'm more convinced than ever "meaning" is a nonsense concept.

I am sure one could accuse me of being immature because of my view on this, but that simply isn't the case. My adolescence was unfortunately cut short, not extended.

> what's the point in living?

I've been trying to answer this for years now, but I have never found one I find satisfactory.

Re: Young adults and mental health: Is more childhood independence the answer?

#154

Post by remarkEon »

jasonhansel wrote: post #9

> Chentsova Dutton said America has an international reputation for prizing autonomy, but her study opened her eyes to a more complicated picture. American parents tend to be overprotective when children are young, acting as if kids are going to live at home for a long time, like parents do in Italy. Yet they also expect children to live away from home fairly early for college, like families do in Germany. The result…

I'm wondering how true this is in the United States if you don't restrict yourself to big cities when considering parenting behavior.

I grew up in a mid-sized midwestern city (millennial) and we were definitely very free to do whatever we wanted (within reason) as kids, and we were actually expected to come home every change we got from college. Might be the right balance (assuming that kids have to go to college, which isn't true).

Re: Young adults and mental health: Is more childhood independence the answer?

#155

Post by yucky »

s5300 wrote: post #88
yucky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. They're too broke to move away from home, but their mental health is bad because they were coddled while they were at home and now they're no longer at home and struggling, but also more of them live at home later in life than in generations past? Is it possible maybe the problem is they are just a bit too entitled on average, and when things don't go perfectly they can't cope? That's been my experience…

>> but damn if 20-somethings aren't emotionally fragile at a level the world has never seen before. And they're also all in therapy too and super in touch with their feelings and emotions which is supposed to help They’ve probably seen enough older people drink themselves to literal death, along with other types of deaths of despair, & make a conscious choice to not want to end up that way. Whether or not it will wor…

Fewer people are "drinking themselves to death" now than in previous generations, so that can't be it.

Maybe the issue is that they literally have had it too good, and were too coddled, and now they can't handle regular life. If that's the case, what is the solution? Treat kids worse, make them face more adversity like previous generations did?

Re: Young adults and mental health: Is more childhood independence the answer?

#156

Post by sircastor »

We have an exchange student who mentioned to me that in her home country teenagers enjoy a lot more freedom in terms of their independence than kids do here. She's very independent, well-adjusted, and mature. I think there's a lot to childhood independence.

On the other hand, I'm worry about my natural-born kid a lot. And while I'd like to let him explore, I'm not willing to risk custody of my child or government oversight of my parenting just to prove a point. I hope I can find that magical balance point where random strangers will just be impressed with a young kid doing mature things, rather than rush to authorities because no good parent would allow their child to do that...

Re: Young adults and mental health: Is more childhood independence the answer?

#157

Post by lotsofpulp »

bostonwalker wrote: post #90

> Clinical psychologist Camilo Ortiz, a professor at Long Island University-Post, began noticing a few years ago that some of his young patients, mostly children being treated for anxiety, would “fold very quickly” at the first sign of adversity This is a perfect description of someone I met recently on a road trip with friends. From our first encounter he came off as feeling miserable and sorry for himself. He didn’…

> Instead of confronting him and hurting his feelings we let him keep driving and we would shoulder check for him. Very dangerous and we knew it.

Sounds like you guys also folded. The mentally and emotionally resilient thing to do would have been to not endanger multiple lives for the sake of this anxious person’s pride.

Re: Young adults and mental health: Is more childhood independence the answer?

#158

Post by williamtrask »

Dalewyn wrote: post #129
hjgjhyuhy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. In our modern societies we have more means of communication than ever, yet we’re also more lonely than ever before. Urbanization has also disrupted people’s social lives very much. Raising children is hard when your parents live far away and all your friends are too busy to help, even with state-funded childcare. Different generations used to live together and help each other. Underpaid nurses and nannies ar…

>In our modern societies we have more means of communication than ever, yet we’re also more lonely than ever before. I really wonder if most people are just worthlessly incompetent at forms of communication other than face-to-face interactions. The narrative is that the covid lockdowns made people more socially isolated, and to some extent I don't disagree, but the narrative goes on to paint an image of "noone to see…

As someone who was homeschooled, loves being fully remote, and has worked as such for several years (and pined for it long before) I don’t think we can yet equate video chats with real conversation.

Conversation isn’t a data transfer. It’s a joint function of two people. Anything other than the real thing is messing with that function in weird ways.

Re: Young adults and mental health: Is more childhood independence the answer?

#159

Post by remarkEon »

jim-jim-jim wrote: post #43

This is mostly about parenting, but the point about conflict struck me. I've found that lots of people out there seemingly can't handle disagreement at all, and attribute a fundamental moral failure to their conversation partner if they don't see eye to eye. And most of these people are incredibly unhappy. I would be too if I couldn't trust anybody other than my perfect clone. It's an antiquated idea, but explicit cl…

>I've found that lots of people out there seemingly can't handle disagreement at all, and attribute a fundamental moral failure to their conversation partner if they don't see eye to eye.

This is because we don't let kids fight each other on the playground anymore. No, I'm serious. For a lot of young people the first time they encounter real conflict that isn't adjudicated by some superior is when they're experiencing adulthood for the first time. This is a bit of a self serving comment because I got into a lot of fights as a kid, but I consider it a required experience for boys to get punched in the mouth once or twice (and also throw some punches of your own), less so for girls but imo still important. Not doing so warps people's perceptions of what violence is and we end up with really contrived and bewildering phrases like "silence is violence" and so on. Those people end up unable to determine an appropriate escalation (or deescalation) path, and this leads to your second point.

I strongly suspect the inability to independently resolve conflict can and does lead to mental health issues.

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