Parents failing to enforce boundaries and being unwilling to chastise children has led to a generation of ‘infantilised millennials’, according to a sociology professor.
In his book, Why Borders Matter, Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at Kent University, says a lack of clear boundaries has created a childlike generation.
Not chastising children or using moral-based judgments ‘deprives them of a natural process’ of fighting against parental rules and boundaries, says Furedi.
He says children develop by reacting against boundaries given to them by parents and society, and over three or four generations those parameters have weakened.
This has led to millennials in their twenties acting the way they did in their teenage years and refusing to embrace adulthood, he explained in his book.
Millennials were born between 1980 and 1994, so the oldest of the generation are now 40 and the youngest are in their mid-twenties.
In his new book, Why Borders Matter, Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at Kent University, says a lack of clear boundaries has created a childlike generation
Why Borders Matter goes into the wider issue of a lack of boundaries in modern western society, including between animals and humans.
Furedi argues that an absence of borders has led to a lack of ‘clear guidance’ when it comes to everyday life issues, and deprived children of ‘something to push against’.
‘Children develop by reacting against those lines, the boundaries that are set, and that is a very creative process to gain self sufficiency and intellectual independence,’ he told The Times.
He said dismantling those boundaries has weakened the process of socialisation that parents use to transmit values to their children.
‘If what’s happening now is they are kicking against open doors, which is really what is going on, then the whole developmental process becomes compromised,’ he said.
‘This leads to a situation where the transition from childhood to adolescence takes much, much longer than ever before and the transition from adolescence to adulthood also takes much longer.’
Furedi said he once saw a man wearing a T-shirt saying ‘I’m done with adulting’ which he claims is an example of this inability of millennials to embrace adulthood.
‘Mothers take their 18-year-olds shopping and it’s their daughter that tells them what to wear, not the other way around,’ he told the Times.
Fathers are out wearing the same clothes as their sons and listening to the same music, he said, adding it leads to an almost ‘conscious effort not to be a father to your child or a mother but to be their best friend’.
‘They can make their best friend with their peers. They need somebody that can look up to, somebody that can inspire them. There is this estrangement from adulthood.’
The lack of borders has created a blurred line in today’s culture, he explained, a line that is also less clear between privacy and publicity, rules and freedom.
Part of this comes from the cultural devaluation of the act of judgement – saying this has led to a loss of clarity about moral boundaries.
This lost sense of borders has encouraged a permanent mood of identity crisis and if society is going to be ‘more open-minded’ things need to change, he said.
‘I have long argued the implications of grey areas in society and the insecurity that this brings for individuals,’ Furedi said.
He says children develop by reacting against boundaries given to them by parents and society and over three or four generations those walls have been weakened
‘Without the discipline of boundaries, there is little to guide people as they make their way in the world.’
The professor said the boundary in politics between public and private lives has been blurred as part of this dismantling of borders, fuelling identity politics.
He said this has led to a paradox in society where young people have been raised without facing the judgment of their parents of their actions so in turn they refuse to accept the same judgment in others.
Furedi said ‘safe spaces’, the idea that certain things shouldn’t be discussed for fear of upsetting or triggering people, is an example of them finding borders.
He says these spaces are just an opportunity for people to ban those with views who clash with their own and is part of identity politics.
‘The thing about identity politics is that every expression they use is actually a contradiction,’ he said.
‘They talk about diversity — that’s one of the key values of identity politics — but identity politics is totally hostile to a diversity of viewpoints.
‘So if you argue a different narrative to what they are arguing that is seen as racist, as offensive, as hate.’
