What is Generation Gap? Free Essay Example

The number of times have you felt that your parents do not understand you, that they have no regard for you as a person? How often do you shake your head in disappointment and blame it on the ‘generation space’? Moms and dads! They are like aliens from another planet entirely! You and they remain in different camps; strangers required to live under the same roof Right? Wrong! There is a method of bridging what seems a yawning chasm. If you really want to enhance your relationship with your parents (and provide them a huge shock in the bargain!) try listening to them, treating them simply like you would listen to a valued good friend.

Rather of always whining, ‘You don’t understand me”, stop and believe. Do we ever attempt and comprehend them? Parents are under a great deal of stress, too. When we are worrying about our upcoming Math test, they are stressing over the manager in the workplace, and simply how they are going to pay for our braces.

Like us, they have days when somebody humiliates them at work. Sometimes, they do not know where the money for all the applications you send out to foreign universities is going to originate from. Your mommy may rarely have an opportunity to head out and enjoy herself. Your daddy’s coworkers may deride him due to the fact that he can not afford membership to a club.

Yes, odd though it might sound, moms and dads are human too. They may have dreams they have actually sacrificed because they desire you to understand yours.

As soon as you enter their shoes and attempt to take a look at things from their viewpoint, 2 fantastic things happen; one, you feel a brand-new regard for them, and 2, you will find that you can actually get your own method without heated arguments. Today, when you return from school or college, ask your mama or dad, “How did your day go today?” or “Tell me a little bit more about your job.” or “Is there anything I can do to help you around in your house? You’ll see the visible distinction it makes to the atmosphere in the house.

And each day, try to keep your promises – to do your homework, to clean your room and to write letters or telephone if you are living away from home. Seventy five per cent of the youngsters claimed that the teenage years were a time of stress and anxiety for them – anxiety about exams, jobs, parental expectations, peer pressure, love lives, the need to look good and dress smartly, and well, even the state of the nation. Generation gap means difference in attitude, or lack of understanding between younger and older generation.

This generation gap has always been there but these days it has reached to an explosive stage. The values and patterns of life have changed to a great extent. Today, everybody likes to live and behave in his own way. This attitude has widened the generation gap, which can never be filled. It is now destroying family life completely. The elders look after the children and make all sorts of sacrifices to bring them up. Naturally, they feel they have a right over them. They want their children to follow their instructions as they have certain expectations from them.

But the children, when they grow up, want a complete freedom in their thoughts and actions and unfortunately their thoughts and actions are just opposite to those expected by the elders. They revolt when any kind of restrictions are imposed on them. Consequently, the family breaks up and everything gets ruined. In India, we are yet in the initial stages, but the gap has appeared and it is going to grow bigger day by day. So it is not only the responsibility of the younger but also of the elders to fill this gap with their love, affection and trust.

The problem, in fact, has grown and intensified due to the rise in complexities of life. These complexities have arisen in the wake of modernism where everything allied to tradition, custom and the world was to be turned upside down. The problem arises mainly when parents forget how did they behave, what problems did they encounter and what feeling did they feel when they were children, especially teenagers. When the children enter the stormy teens the problem of generation gap comes out with greater intensity then ever. Children too fail to see their parents’ point of view and blindly stick to breaking rules.

For them, at this age, their friends suddenly become important dislodging the parents from the vantage point. This causes great anxiety to parents and the friction increases between the children and the parents. At this time, grandparents can play a constructive role in order to bridge the gap of thought, attitude, and way of life and approaches to it. Generation gap is not that serious a problem if families can learn to sit over dinner and talk or sit in the living rooms over a cup of hot comforting coffee and talk the things out, ironing the difference and sharing the experiences.

When this communication barrier is transcended and the ice broken, the problem does not remain that serious anymore. Talking it out calmly and coolly, with the idea of sorting things out, changing for each other and changing for better can be the most helpful instrument in bridging the generation gap. Family outings, vacations, tours, to picnic-outings, often with the family etc can be effective ways to initiate intimacy between parents and children. Watching movie and discussing them, putting forth the different viewpoints can be a beginning to inculcate the habit of a healthy dialogue between members of the family.

Such small things and steps can do wonders in initiating a healthy family atmosphere and reducing friction between two generations that are right in their own respects. Their only fault is that they are viewing the same object from opposite directions. Age, time and experience or the lack of it, forces them to do so. Generation Gap Summary: It is a fact of life that the generation gap or “clash” is something that has existed and will continue to exist as long as man exists on this earth. It is not restricted to certain parts of the world, to certain times of human history or to certain cultures.

That is why this “clash” is a fact of a life accepted by all generations, all over the world and through all time. Generation gap is a more modern term for the difference between generations, or milder than the extreme definition which calls this difference as the “clash” between the opinions, the attitudes and the behaviors of the younger and the older generations. The inevitable progress of time and technologies makes the introduction of new ideas, new believes, and new values unavoidable.

As a result this difference in the general outlook at life arises which is manifest in the difference of opinions and social values, in addition to the difference mannerism and behavior between young people and older people within the family as well as within the social contexts. Perhaps, the gap generation that exists now between the younger and older generation can best be indicated by the difference of ideas between the young people and the older people in the family, namely the grand parents and the aunts or uncles who might be much older than their nieces and nephews, as is the case in “such” societies.

Where bigamy is legal. The technological advances play a great rule in enlarging the gap as the younger generations are quicker to accept and adopt these technologies so that they consider the conservative and technologically suspicious elders of their families very old fashioned in their, tastes, opinions and out looks toward life. On the other hand, the older people despise the modern values which they call the” internet” and “globalization” values.

They consider the young generation shallow, lacking knowledge and moral depth. This difference can best be seen in the difference of interests and hobbies. The young people of today get their knowledge from the “internet”, and they hardly read other than light magazines, while the elders of their hard-earned, profound book based knowledge. The difference includes the moral and social values, as the different generations see notions such as marriage, love, happiness, decency, and decorum from different perspectives.