The perrengues of the parents of the Z and Alpha generations – 06/05/2023 – Vera Iaconelli

Today it is said that “the best thing about adolescence is that it ends”, but there was a time when this period was not considered problematic. The passage from childhood to adult life took place in a more or less merciless push and it was only in the 20th century that things changed. With the extended waiting times and preparation for entering a world with little absorption capacity for young people, adolescence has become endless and a source of apprehension for parents. The thing took on such proportions that, in the first tantrum of the child at two years old, the parents already ask themselves how they will face the adolescent crises.

Fathers and mothers of generations Z and Alpha form, in turn, a generation marked by false expectations regarding their functions. Among them: not frustrating, not contradicting, not letting them suffer, not hampering talents, explaining everything —making sure the child understands the reasons for the limits— and pleasing the children at all costs has been the education primer that the media sells.

For those who embrace this impossible cause, the whole process of separating and emancipating children generates an insurmountable contradiction. From childhood tantrums to the slamming of a teenager’s door, the path to independence does not go hand in hand with the quest to please the children.

Against this false mindset, what is actually expected of adults is that they are firm enough to endure being hated and hating for imposing the demands that they have to impose without this resulting in excessive guilt or unacceptable demonstrations of that hatred. For this, they have to give up the narcissistic reward that babies and young children usually offer to caregivers. No matter how flawed the parents are in those early days, the child will hardly be able to recognize this and will tend to adore them far beyond their merits.

It’s not easy to see that passionate look turn into a withering look or turned in the sockets. So, we can have an idea of ​​how the function of separating —which involves taking caregivers out of the idealized place— violates the expectations of current parents and leaves them frustrated and fearful, assuming that if they made more effort with them, it would be different.

But the real goal is for children to learn to hate us without disrespecting us and for them to know that our love doesn’t end there. The same goes for acknowledging our hatred for them—which has no right to violent expression. When you aspire to sweep this under the rug, you will only have guilt, communication difficulties and cycles of anger and frustration.

Adolescence is a period that can renew the elderly and bring them closer to the present, to new ways of thinking. But for that, adults can’t be too amazed with digital natives, with ChatGPTs and other technologies to come. The idea here is that we can approach children with enough openness and curiosity so that they feel confident to share what is specific to their generation.

As the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Darius Leskaukas reminds us in an essay on Zoomers (“Generation Z – everyday living with an auxiliary ego”), there is a real attachment between young people and the media, since they function from an early age as true auxiliary egos. In this sense, technologies, which answer, record and mediate everything, compete with the function of parents.

But about desire, love and the history that brought us into the world, virtuality has nothing to say. Therefore, fathers and mothers, however little they understand about virtuality, will only become anachronistic if they are not able to recognize their value, which is in the exact measure of being only human.

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