Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled | Hacker News Reader

Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled

online.wsj.com

9 pointsmahipal18 comments

"But on the other hand, when a child calls an adult Mr. or Ms., it helps him recognize that status is earned by age and experience. It's also a reminder to respect your elders."

The absurdity of reading how young people feel so entitled from an article written by someone who thinks age influences status in mind boggling.

Status is a function of achievement. Experience is a rough proxy for achievement, so I can accept that they might be referencing the same thing here.

But if you ask me how your earn status, age doesn't factor in. I don't care how many hours you've put in on this planet. You earn my respect by doing things, and the best way to earn my highest respects is by doing something great.

Among adults, what you're talking about makes sense. But I don't know many children who have earned much status.

Exactly. A prime example of this is in the school system with respect to teachers and how kids tend to treat them.

I know three, one aged 16 now and two aged only 11, they impress the hell out of me.

The one holds his own in a community where the average age is at least three times his own and half the people there never clued in to his age, he's been there since he was 12 or so, the other two are so smart and wise for their age that the adults around them look like they're the children.

Here's to Angus, Jeremy & Raffi, if you find this comment in 20 years or so, know that I'm insanely proud of you guys, I'm pretty sure you will go very far.

"Because everything is child-centered today, we're depriving children of adults," he says. "If they never see us as adults being adults, how will they deal with important matters when it is their world?"

My parents always kept the 'adult' things to themselves (usually in Spanish, which they neglected to teach me or my siblings). It was basically a disaster and I've been spending the years since high school educating myself on tons of those adult things that I never learned from them. I just hope I can avoid the same mistakes with my children.

Black kettles and pots come to mind.

While I cannot be sure that Jeffrey Zaslow is a Boomer or Gen Xer (the fuzzy dates around those eras makes it difficult to decide), this accusation of entitlement seems to be a Boomer message.

We're talking about a generation that, although its members had much less material amenities than us, they had an easier time getting ahead. Try buying a house as a young person now. When my dad was my age, he could support a family on his salary.

And given that the Boomers (and early Gen Xers) have just wrecked the world economy, I think there's more than a little hypocrisy here.

If the later Gen Xers and Gen Yers have a sense of entitlement, it's because they do as their elders do.

I'm sorry but this...

Is a myth.

First, mortage rates haven't gone up they've been going down for 28 years (though in fairness they shot up before that): http://mortgage-x.com/trends.htm. If you're a Gen Xer your father was having to contend with rates double what you'd pay today.

As for career you could probably move up the ranks faster but that's because it was a much steeper climb. Think about it. You're talking about an era where there was no Excel. There had to be people who actually did those calculations by hand.

As for money the average income of an American household has not only gone up but has gone up sharply...

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006/08/15/average-incom...

(The graph is in inflation adjusted dollars)

While the cost of goods has gone down due to technology improvements. The cost of a Gallon of Milk in 1967 was double what it is now (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fa...)

The average house size has doubled since 1950 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525283). Yet the average price only went up about 60% (http://www.lesjones.com/2008/11/25/inflation-adjusted-us-hou...)

The reason most people have less money these days is because there's so much more to spend it on. VHS didn't even exist until 1976 much less computers, xboxes, iTunes, etc... U.S. population went up around 46% between 1967 and 2006 yet the number of new car registrations grew by 139% (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fa...)

Gen Xers and beyond have a much higher quality of life, even in a recession, than their grandparents did and to say otherwise is an example of the very self involvement that's being criticized here.

Oh, and P.S., Jeffrey Zaslow was born in 1958 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Zaslow) so there's no chance he is a Gen Xer and it has nothing to do with fuzzy dates and everything to do with you being too lazy to do a simple Google Search

Gen Xers and beyond have a much higher quality of life, even in a recession, than their grandparents did and to say otherwise is an example of the very self involvement that's being criticized here.

Humans readily adapt to changed circumstances [1]. It's not "self involvement", it's just human nature.

Also, above a certain threshold[2] absolute wealth is less important to people than relative wealth in terms of happiness. Hence "having more stuff than their grandparents" doesn't make people feel any happier because their peers all also have more stuff.

[1] For example, people who win the lottery are really happy at the time but six months later have reverted to the baseline level of happiness they had before the win.

[2] ie: having enough to survive reasonably well.

Self involvement is human nature. It's our nature to be concerned with ourselves because it was an evolutionary imperative to our ancestors. That's why we, as evolved people living in a modern society, have to force ourselves to put things in perspective.

The very existence of the phrase "put things in perspective" proves the point that our instinct is to over inflate those challenges that we face.

Correlation is not causation :P. Mr. Rogers is more likely just another symptom of the "everybody is special" culture underlying this. Personally, I think it's less to do with upbringing and "positive self-esteem" and more to do with a (globalised western) culture of celebrity and narcissism. Less Mr. Rogers than American Idol, in my opinion.

If it's because of Mr Rogers, how do you explain the same phenomenon in countries which didn't have Mr Rogers?

In my experience of traveling to many non-US countries, I didn't really encounter the same kind of attitude. Which countries do you find also have the 'same phenomenon'?

Seems reasonably prevalent in Australia and the UK.

A TV show can’t possibly have that kind of influence. It might be a symptom, it might transport and maybe even amplify the current zeitgeist, I don’t believe it can cause large scale changes in society.

The thesis of the article is that treating children as special without them first working hard to deserve or earn it leads to narcissism. The example of Mr Rogers is added for sensationalism. A similar message might be found in other countries where this phenomenon also exists.

All of these articles bemoaning "kids these days" are starting to get really tiresome.

I wonder if every generation of youths / young adults promise to themselves that they wont spout these pointless truisms "kids these day" when they are older.

They do, and then they forget it later and start ranting about how kids today are so screwed up.

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