Al Mohler has a column today reviewing a book I hadn’t heard of – The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization by Diane West.
The book is spot on based on my personal observations as a teacher. Kids rule the roost. They have rights equal to those of adults. They get to say anything to anyone and what they have to say (at anytime and anyplace) is valuable commentary. They are not reprimanded by their parents and heaven help the person who decides they should be. The change began in the 50’s and West says that now it’s not only permanent but perhaps irreversible.
As West observes, “It is hard to overstate the significance of this change more than half a century ago. It is this fundamental rearrangement of life’s building blocks that put successive decades on an entirely new footing from all that had come before. To say the tide had turned is to imply a temporary, cyclical shift. What had occurred — replacing the child’s duty to his parent with the parent’s duty to his child — has so far turned out to be permanent.”
Gonna add this one to my wish list!
Diane West has a blog if you are interested. Wide range of topics.
Jack Of All Trades 