Parents Failing to Impose Boundaries Spawned ‘Infantilised’ Millennial Generation

The failure of parents to impose rules on children has resulted in a generation of “infantilised” young people, for whom the only tolerable boundaries are their self-constructed “safe spaces”, according to sociologist Frank Furedi.

In his book, Why Borders Matter, the emeritus professor of the University of Kent at Canterbury said the age group sometimes referred to as the snowflake generation is the result of three to four generations of parents failing to transmit their values to their children through boundaries.

“Children develop by reacting against those lines, the boundaries that are set, and that is a very creative process to gain self-sufficiency and intellectual independence,” Furedi said, according to a Times report on Monday.

Growing up with this lack of boundaries, Professor Furedi said, has left young people “disorientated”, with nothing against which to measure their own values or others. As a result, millennial adults are now incapable of listening to the value judgements of others, leading to them lashing out and decrying claims of racism and hate, Prof Furedi said, particularly surrounding the transgender movement.

Without borders, they construct their own in the form of “safe spaces” where they can distance themselves from the opinions of people with whom they disagree. This fueled identity politics, Furedi said.

“The thing about identity politics is that every expression they use is actually a contradiction. They talk about diversity — that’s one of the key values of identity politics — but identity politics is totally hostile to a diversity of viewpoints. So if you argue a different narrative to what they are arguing that is seen as racist, as offensive, as hate,” the retired Kent academic said.

The failure to create borders and rules has also resulted in two other phenomena: a slowing of maturity and parents’ own “estrangement from adulthood” as they attempt to be their children’s friends.

Professor Furedi said that young people are “kicking against open doors” and as a result, “the whole developmental process becomes compromised, and you do end up with a situation where the transition from childhood to adolescence takes much, much longer than ever before and the transition from adolescence to adulthood also takes much longer”.

Recalling observing a man wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “I’m done with adulting”, the professor said that fathers are wearing the same t-shirts and listening to the same music as their sons. Mothers and daughters exhibit role reversals, where the daughter tells the mother what to wear.

“[There is] almost this conscious effort not to be a father to your child or a mother but to be their best friend, which is not what children need,” he remarked.

A study from September 2019 revealed that British millennials were the least happy out of all age groups, while another poll from August 2019 found that nine in ten Britons between the ages of 16 and 29 said that they felt their lives had no purpose or meaning.