If it was thought that millennial children were raised by overprotective parents, Generation Z is being raised by underprotective parents. It’s like the only thing you don’t want to do as a parent is be (using the derogatory words of the day) hovering, smothering, babbling, coddling, or sheltering. The insinuation is that it’s wrong to be overprotective, but it’s not wrong to be underprotective. .
Think about this in relation to Generation Z. In other words, consider the effect of an underprotective home environment in a day of sexting and Facebook, bullying in schools and internet porn, the cutting and connecting. When children need protection like never before, they encounter a parenting culture that is less protective than at any time in recent history.
The correct assumption about parenting is simple: children are immature and need parental maturity. Parents must be informed, involved and in charge. Children are not little adults; they are children. Consider how the following list of rules parents should follow regarding children and technology would be viewed by the average parent today:
1. Limit phone minutes, texts and online hours. Don’t let him take over their lives.
2. Never let them see a movie that you haven’t reviewed thoroughly, regardless of its rating.
3. Don’t let them sleep with their cell phones under their pillows or by their beds. Phones should be turned off at bedtime.
4. Have times of day they must turn off their phone and times when texting is not allowed, such as family vacations or family outings.
5. Don’t allow cell phones at the dinner table.
6. Tell your children not to share their passwords with their friends, even their best friends.
7. Keep all computer use in a public place.
8. Not allowing televisions in their bedrooms.
9. Don’t let them Facebook unless they like you.
10. Don’t let them join social media before the stated age.
Probably half of them would be considered almost unthinkable to the average parent of a Gen Z child, meaning that in the name of freedom and independence, Gen Z has grown up with the whole world in his vision. As a result, childhood slowly evaporates. Or, as author Neil Postman wrote, by gaining access to the previously hidden fruit of adult information, the child is expelled from the garden of childhood.
But the self-directed nature of Gen Z is not simply a byproduct of “helicopter” to “free-range” parenting. It’s about the changing nature of childhood itself.
James Emery White
Sources
James Emery White, meet Generation Z
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