I have stopped counting the number of times that an academic colleague reminds me that “undergraduates are not what they used to be.” In private conversations, a significant minority of academic teachers have raised the concern that the age-old distinction between school children and university students was fast losing its meaning.
Back in 2003, Neil Howe and William Strauss, the authors of the study Millennials Go to College, advanced the thesis that this generation is far less mature and resilient than previous ones. They noted that the millennial generation is far more “closely tied to their parents” than the students that preceded them, and they also insist on a “secure and regulated environment.”
Howe and Strauss concluded that as a result, students today find it difficult to flourish in the relatively unstructured environment of higher education. The assessment that the millennials find it more troublesome to make the transition to independent living on campuses than previous generations is widely held by educators on both sides of the Atlantic.
A report last September from Britain’s Higher Education Policy Institute said that the normal experiences of university life now constitute serious challenges to the well-being of the current cohort of students. It noted that “students are vulnerable” because in most cases they are living away from home for the first time. It also pointed to the new challenges they faced such as “a different method of learning” and “living with people they have never met before.”
Related: Should Colleges Coddle the Whiners?
One of the most significant and yet rarely analyzed developments in campus culture has been its infantilization. Eric Posner, a leading legal scholar at the University of Chicago, declared that “students today are more like children than adults and need protection.” Posner contends that today’s university students are not ready for independence and require the moral guidance of their institutions.
In England, a group educators have criticized universities for treating their new students as if they were young adults. Sir Anthony Seldon, now head of Buckingham University, stated that ‘there is a belief among Vice Chancellors that young people are adults and can fend for themselves, but “18-year-olds today are a lot less robust and worldly wise.”
Most accounts of the unprecedented emotional fragility of university undergraduates claim that this development is the outcome of the expansion of student numbers. They suggest that many of these students come from diverse non-traditional backgrounds and lack the confidence and financial security of their more privileged predecessors. Catherine McAteer, the head of University College London’s student psychological services observed that the reason why a growing number of students require mental health support is because “students are now coming to university” who previously “would not have come.”
Some argue that first-generation students –undergraduates whose parents did not attend university – face unique problems attempting to fit into an alien, high-pressure environment. It is also asserted that since a significant proportion of first-generation students come from minority and socially deprived backgrounds they face a unique problem of adjusting to the traditional white middle- class campus environment.
Related: The New Age of Orthodoxy Overtakes the Campus
The principal problem faced by first-generation students is that their parents had little cultural capital to hand on to them and were, therefore, less prepared for university life than their more comfortably off peers. But unlike today, the problems they faced was not portrayed in psychological terms but in the language of culture and socio-economic deprivation.
Unfortunately, when first-generation students arrive on campus today, they are often treated as if they are likely to possess some emotional deficits. In the U.S. it is common for universities to organize special programs for integrating first-generation students. Diversity officers dealing with the first-generation often operate under the theory that this group faces a unique problem of being torn between family and university. They frequently contend that first-generation students suffer from guilt for leaving their family behind. The upshot of these theories is the belief that first-generation students need special dedicated psychological support.
Regrettably, the focus on psychology distracts attention from more constructive ways of preparing students from disadvantaged backgrounds to deal with the pressures of academic learning. The provision of academic support to help students gain intellectual confidence is probably the most useful way of helping students to make their way in the university.
Perversely the provision of psychological support as the default solution for helping first-generation students is likely to intensify their quest for validation. Instead of developing their power of resilience it may well heighten their sense of vulnerability. What universities need to do is not to cultivate the insecure identity of first-generation students but to provide them with the intellectual resources that will help them to gain confidence in their ability to achieve.
Related: Millennials Not Ready for the Job Market
In any case, it is far from evident if the link between emotional fragility and a student’s non-traditional background explains very much. Students from well-to-do backgrounds are no less likely than their poorer peers to talk the language of trauma and psychological distress. Indeed some of the most privileged campuses– Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Berkeley, Oberlin – have been in the forefront of campaigns that focus attention to the emotional harms suffered by students from a variety of alleged causes.
The reason why the current generation appears to behave differently from their predecessor has little to do with their socio-economic background. Rather the sense of emotional fragility expressed by some undergraduates is the outcome of the prevailing ethos of socialization that treats young people as children.
The socialization of young people has become increasingly reliant on therapeutic techniques that have the perverse effect of encouraging children and youth to interpret existential problems as psychological ones. The concern with children’s emotions has fostered a climate where many young people are continually educated to understand the challenges they face through the language of mental health. Not surprisingly, they often feel find it difficult to acquire the habit of independence and make the transition to forms of behavior associated with the exercise of autonomy.
The complex emotional tensions that are integral to the process of growing up are now discussed as stressful events with which children and young people cannot be expected to cope. Yet is through dealing with such emotional upheavals that young people learn to manage risks and gain an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Instead of being encouraged to acquire an aspiration for independence, many youngsters are subject to influences that promote childish behavior. The infantilization of young people is the unintended outcome of parenting practices that rely on levels of support and supervision that are more suitable for much younger children.
The relations of dependence that are nurtured through these practices serve to prolong adolescence to the point that many young people in their 20s do not perceive themselves as adults. Whereas in the past infantilization was classically associated with the phenomenon of maternal overprotection, today the prolongation of adolescence is culturally sanctioned. In the case of universities, it is institutionally enforced.
Socialization through validation
The erosion of the line that divides secondary from higher education is a trend that contradicts the ethos of academic teaching and the vocation associated with it. In theory, the ideals associated with the university remain widely affirmed, but in practice, they are often tested by the introduction of conventions that were formerly confined to secondary education. The adoption of paternalistic practices and the wider tendency towards the infantilization of campus life can in part be understood as an outcome of the difficulties that society has encountered in the socialization of young people.
For some time now it has been evident that parents and schools have been struggling with the transmission of values and rules of behavior to young people. In part, this problem was caused by the lack confidence of older generations in the values into which it was socialized. More broadly, Western society has become estranged from the values that used to inspire it in the past and found it difficult to provide its adult members with a compelling narrative for socialization.
The hesitant and defensive manner with which the task of socialization is pursued has created a demand for new ways of influencing children. The growing remission of child protection and the widening of the territory for parenting activities can be interpreted as an attempt to develop new methods for guiding children.
Lack of clarity about the transmission of values has led to a search for alternatives. The adoption of the practices of behavior management serves as one influential approach towards solving the problem of socialization. These psychological techniques of expert-directed behavior management have had an important influence on childrearing. From this standpoint, the role of parents is not so much to transmit values but to validate the feelings, attitudes and accomplishment of their children.
Though parents still do their best to transmit their beliefs and ideals to their children, there is a perceptible shift from instilling values to the provision of validation. Affirming children and raising their self-esteem is a project that is actively promoted by parents as well as schools. This emphasis on validation has run in tandem with the custom of a risk-averse regime of child-rearing. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has described this form of childrearing as that of “fearful parenting.” He claims that since the 1980s, children have been “protected as fragile,” which has the perverse consequence of undermining their capacity for resilience.
As I noted in my study, Paranoid Parenting, the (unintended) consequence of this regime of parenting has been to limit opportunities for the cultivation of independence and to extend the phase of dependence of young people on adult society. The extension of the phase of dependence is reinforced by the considerable difficulties that society has in providing young people with a persuasive account of what it means to be an adult. Instead of encouraging new undergraduates to embark on a life of independent study, universities have adopted a paternalistic ethos that treats them as biologically mature children. In this way, they have helped create a campus culture that discourages young people from embarking on the path to adulthood.
Millennials (or GenY) are generally thought to have been born mid-80s to mid-90s. iGen (or GenZ) are born mid-90s to now. They are today’s teens.
I recommend this book for a more in-depth approach to the cultural changes that contextualize why iGen are more fragile than generations before them.
For decades in the United States, there was a process of regulation through careful law analysis of how to allow people to work, and not abuse them as employees. How banks were no longer allowed to lend and then have to crawl back to the government for ‘bail out’ cash. Through numerous Wall St fluctuations, and money supply issues, and labor law upgrades, the citizens were given more and more rights without forcing the businesses from honestly losing money.
So it was a controlled ‘free market’ with decades of laws to guide businesses into abuse free environments. It also gave them the ability to fire when there is a real issue. Unions grew less and less valuable as law took hold.
Today, with lobbying allowed indirectly, politicians in the US taking money, campaign cash allowed to be collected and kept by the candidates… you have a NEW environment. Now, it is a government for the corporations, by the corporations. The regulation that prevented these abuses were abolished with the fake idea of a ‘better way’. Really it was based on paying off for policy changes.
So you have two people with young kids, they are over extended on student loan debt, credit card debt, and allowed to take out loans that surpasses their means and ability.
The banks can hand off the mortgages to other institutions so they don’t care about the long term outcome of those loans.
So you have over burden of debt. You have allowed increases in interest rates, which means they are never going to pay this off. You have employers who want you without benefits. You have health care insurance groups dealing with socialized medicine ideas in a system designed from the ground up as a capitalistic structure. So now the Congress allows middle class economic people to pay $500 – $1700 per person, while the non-working people drain the resources for the system.
Those are mortgage payments, people.
The Congress allowed all this for the student loans, the banks, the colleges, the mortgages, the labor law rules. On top of all this, representatives were not there to ‘fight’ against reformed education. While America had the best educational level in the World at one time, groups were allowed to pass reform policy in public education and now kids can’t use math, scientific method, don’t understand history of any kind, and can’t use analytical thinking. In this wake of a perfect storm, we are fighting things that Congress and local political figures allowed to pass.
By the way, when you exit out of college, you may have $200,000 in student loan debt, no ability to get a job as previously implied, and employers who take advantage of people who have NO sense of personal budgeting and the value of a dollar.
Luckily there there is a huge number of anti-anxiety and anti-depression pills available and mostly not regulated, to allow the parents to drift to sleep and ignore their kids.
WE can do something about this, but it means PARENTS and adults promoting financial control of our lives as parents, teaching REAL math, science, and analytical thinking. Standing up for the kids against the garbage politics within public schools via PTA gatherings. Forcing the kids to know that they are NOT learning, so they can monitor it and then report it back to the parents.
Sign up for Khan Academy today for (no cost) and promote them. I don’t have any affiliation with them.
You know, I’ve yet to read a compelling argument that Millennials are emotionally fragile. However, I’ve read many compelling arguments that the claim they are “fragile” or “entitled” is a good way to avoid doing actual analysis of their complaints.
What complaints are those? That they should be protected from any words or actions to which they take offense?
I recall an essay from a Yale student which mentioned how a associate master’s e-mail regarding Halloween costumes apparently was so devastating to students that they were missing classes, not completing homework, not sleeping, not eating, and even having breakdowns. How is that not emotionally fragile behavior?
When you grow-up (and I use that word advisedly) thinking that you ‘deserve’ to be happy…that you deserve to be validated…that your effort deserves to be recognized & rewarded…that you should never feel offended, put-off, or criticized…that you should never hear a discouraging word (all day!), or encounter a micro-aggressive glance, or discomfiting anything — well, then, life will either be an escalating series of horrible, no good, very bad disasters…OR…Mom & Dad (or the State or the School) will intervene to smooth the kicky blankie , kiss what hurts, and make everything all better.
While punishing, with great avidity, all those who transgress.
How we have arrived at this idiot place would take (will take) multiple dissertations pointing towards the destruction of fundamental Judeo-Christian / American / Western values… the advent of Marxist social policies…the growth of the Welfare State… the Leftist conversion of the Universities… the infection of post-modern relativism/deconstructionism…. the Self-Esteem Movement…. the erosion of standards…. the exponential growth of Victim Culture… the Cultural Revolution of the 60’s & 70’s… the list is endless.
But the result is the same.
The creation of a population which feels, in their heart of hearts, that whatever ill happens to beset them– it’s someone else’s fault AND it needs to be resolved by the State. The creation, in other words, of a nation of infants looking for parents in a country which has become convinced that the Government is that parent to which they long to cling. Self-Reliance/Accountability be damned!
I want my Maypo! And I want it…. NOW!
(Not quite Doorsian…. but close.)
Well said. People like to blame “socio-economic” reasons for underperformance, like it’s society’s fault if a person can’t get or keep a good job, or they get divorced, or have children outside of marriage, or struggle under a mountain of debt. It’s not about rich or poor; it’s about right and wrong. The idea that first-generation college students’ parents don’t have enough “cultural capital” for their children feel safe and confidence in a high-pressure campus environment is total psycho-babble. If parents who never went to college teach their children study skills, respect for others, and a strong work ethic, those students will do just fine.
There is an entire body of work called Family Constellation work or epigenetics that would prove you wrong. It is well known and researched at this point in time that people, genetically, carry their ancestors and the way they lived. It is NEVER about right or wrong. It is more about what has come before you. This article is weak to me though and looked at only from one perspective; that of people who were first time college students. What about every other kid whose family did come from a college educated family?
You’ve mentioned every cause except the right one: daycare. This generation is the first to be in daycare from cradle to college. Mothers of all socio-economic levels are forced to warehouse their children from early ages. The children have no free time: every interaction is supervised and police (lest there be lawsuits). Children do not have the opportunity to work out problems for themselves, get into schoolyard arguments or fights, or even work creatively alone. Every second is controlled. Authority figures are immediately available to intervene in every interaction.
Add to this the actual separation anxiety that toddlers and small children have when mommy or daddy pulls away from the daycare at 6am (very often) leaving the children all day, until 5 or 6 pm.
What we are seeing at the universities is the result of institutionalized care being foisted on the children of all social classes with no money for a parent to be at home raising the child.
When we were children, we were at home with our mothers, allowed outside to play (when we got old enough) and, often, did not have to come home for hours, checking in at dinner time after a full day of dealing with other kids, fighting, arguing, learning how to negotiate, creating, riding bikes. With no parents around and no paid authority figures around. We learned that there wasn’t always going to be someone to solve problems for you. We grew up.
This generation has had none of that. They expect intervention with every altercation, every argument, every hurtful issue. Add this to what the high schools are actually teaching–a deadly mix of political correctness and zero-tolerance for any typical kid fighting–and you get college students who can’t negotiate anything without a paid authority figure settling the problems for them.
Quit blaming the parents. This is on the institutions.
I’m sorry, but I have to respectfully disagree with blaming daycare entirely. My husband and I were born in the late 1950’s, but had our children late and therefore, the parents of our children’s friends were at least 10 years younger than us. There was a distinctly different style of parenting that I observed with these folks than what we used, as we did not believe it was necessary to be our children’s “friends” and that bad behavior and bad choices were going to have consequences and which we instituted. That’s the way we were brought up. Of course, we were the meanest parents in the world, but both of my kids are well-adjusted and have had much more adversity growing up than their friends did, who appear to be not as well adjusted.
If parents leave the parenting to the institutions, as they appear to all do nowadays, of COURSE there are going to be problems. You had these children, it is YOUR responsibility to parent them NOT the daycares and schools! Take that responsibility
I agree about the dangers of letting daycares and schools raise our children. Single mothers do not have a choice. But there are lots of married moms who simply don’t want to be around their kids all day. And it often involves scaling back one’s lifestyle to live on one income. My husband and I made the decision to give our children a full-time mom, and we’ve never regretted it. We see double-income friends with larger homes, Facebook pages peppered with exotic vacation photos, etc. But it’s worth sacrificing some stuff to have resilient, compassionate, friendly kids who love each other, respect and obey adults, have an “others” focus, do their own laundry and help around the house, do well in school, aren’t stressed out, and are fun to be around. Not only that, they love little kids and all three want to be parents someday. Not intending to self-aggrandize here; just saying that they enjoy all the well-documented benefits of a parental upbringing. And that’s, as they say, priceless. I just wish more people would raise their own children instead of expecting day care, schools, and churches to do it for them.
“…every interaction is supervised and policed (lest there be lawsuits).”
I think Renaissance caught the problem right here. Daycare facilities are simply mirroring the deficiencies of parents who have been taught only about the dangers to their offspring and are terrified of being seen as ‘negligent’. That’s pretty ironic. In avoiding the Scylla of laxity they have crashed upon the Charybdis of infantilization.
Toddlers are spoon fed organic mush lest they choke on lumps or be poisoned by pesticides. Infants are restricted to playpens or walkers lest they fall and the carers be accused of abuse. Potty training and other basic self-care is delayed until 3 or 4 or even 5.
The result is children who are cognitively, physically, and socially underdeveloped compared to previous generations. They are as unblemished–and mindless–as china dolls or potted plants. And, as we are seeing, they turn into terrible parents in due course, perpetuating and extending the damage to children.
Hear hear! Perfectly seen & said (says this 57 year old).
Millennials aren’t really fragile. It’s just that political factions have found they can suppress freedom of speech by pretending this is the case.