A Teacher's Guide to Generation X Parents
How to work with well-meaning but demanding moms and dads.
Credit: Jessica Hische
Not long ago, administrators at a small private school in New York City were reorganizing two mixed-grade elementary classrooms. Looking at the third grade, they determined that one girl was particularly well suited to switch from one class to the other: She was adaptable and genial and loved working with teachers and friends. The administrators called the girl's mother, assuming she would be flattered.
Wrong. The mother was distraught: Her daughter had started at the school only last year! She would be leaving friends in the other classroom! She had enrolled her daughter in private school for its stability and intimacy -- not for disruption! The administrators didn't understand what had been happening at home!
The mother, in tears, needed to have a conference -- now. Educators were stunned. Who was this mother?
That would be me, and here's why: I am a Generation X parent, a member of a demographic that has been making teachers' and school administrators' jobs a pain in the butt for more than a decade.
The Pendulum Swings
Born between 1965 and 1979, Generation X counts for about 48 million people in the United States, a group that's a sociological sentence fragment compared with its predecessors, the baby boomers (1946–1964), and with Generation Y (1980–2001), which followed it.
But size, as they say, isn't everything -- as parents, I daresay you teachers have known who we are from day one. In preschool, we're the ones anxiously arranging developmentally appropriate playdates for our Siouxsie-and-the-Banshees-T-shirt-clad three-year-olds. In kindergarten, we're frantic that other parents' children are starting to read cat and rat, while our Ruby and Dylan are still having trouble identifying lowercase letters. We think the gold-star system and its ilk are archaic and punitive, and we want to have a meeting to present our suggestions for alternative achievement systems.
By grade school, we're demanding to know why the math program is not challenging enough for our child. We email our complaints about the seating chart. We openly deride the arts instruction and may rally other parents to the point of a coup d'état. By middle school, our kids have schedules and professional support staffs that resemble those of corporate lawyers. Look out, high school: We're coming.
Why are we so obnoxious, self-righteous, implacable? When I was working on a book about very young children and the marketing industry (Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds), I learned more than I'd ever wanted to know about Generation X as parents.
But the most important discovery was relearning a truism from Psychology 101: If you want to know what's unhealed from your own childhood, have children. Key to decoding our parental behavior is understanding that we are, albeit often unconsciously, doing for our children what no one did for us.
For starters, we are ferocious advocates for our kid. "One of the chief things I've noticed is the demand for power from these parents," says Betty Staley, program director of Waldorf high school teacher education at Rudolf Steiner College, in Fair Oaks, California. "They demand to be involved in making decisions for their kid -- even interviewing potential teachers -- regardless of what is good for the group."
A Neglected Generation
A little background here: Generation X, according to a 2004 study conducted by marketing-strategy and research firm Reach Advisors, "went through its all-important formative years as one of the least parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history." Little wonder: Half of all Gen Xers' parents are divorced. We were the first to be raised in record numbers in day care, and some 40 percent of us were latchkey kids.
We've been taking care of ourselves since we started going to school, and we don't trust authority figures, because they weren't trustworthy when we were growing up. Our parents didn't know what was going on at school, and our teachers didn't know what was going on at home. We're not going to let this happen to our children -- not even for a second. We'll do whatever we have to do to make sure our kids get what they need.
"They'll go over your head if they don't get the results they want from you," says Anita Thomas, who taught science in a public school in Beaufort, South Carolina. That makes sense, says Lisa Chamberlain, author of Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction. "Anything that smacks of bureaucratic red tape or protocol is an irritant," she explains. "We had to fend for ourselves, which is great if you're an entrepreneur, but not when you're a parent."
This also may explain why Gen X parents are so quick to whip together a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation to show you how to reorganize your classroom, even the entire school. Remember, we're the technology-revolution generation, and we're familiar with making presentations in front of venture capitalists.
That kind of know-it-all-ism makes sense, too. "Boomer parents assumed that since they had turned out fine, their kids would, too," continues Chamberlain. "Gen X doesn't have that assumption -- we've seen what it's like to have the rug pulled out from underneath us."
Indeed, economic collapse has punctuated every milestone of our adult lives. When we graduated from high school in the 1980s, Wall Street fell. When we graduated from college, the first Bush recession made jobs impossibly scarce. When we started having children, the Nasdaq crashed. When we finally bought our own homes, the housing bubble burst.
The Good Fight
We can also be a little snotty. Another common teacher complaint is that Gen X parents rebel against worksheet-based homework, or kvetch that the curriculum isn't challenging, rich, or imaginative enough.
"A lot of Gen Xers have this artisanal affectation, which comes from having sought out the margins of mass culture in independent bookstores, record shops, politics," says Jeff Gordinier, editor at large of Details magazine and author of X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking. "For many Gen Xers, the education that defines us is the one we got for ourselves, outside of school."
As adults, however, we seem to want schools to do everything: provide our children with rigorous academic instruction, socialize them flawlessly, and offer them the rich cultural experiences we value so much. We're angry and disappointed when they fall short of our impossible expectations.
Poignantly, at the heart of all Gen X parental behavior is probably what it is for all neglected children. "Generation X is looking to teachers and schools to heal childhood wounds," observes Waldorf educator Betty Staley. It may not be fair, but it's true. We want you to pay attention to us, to take us seriously -- to give us your time.
In the end, the school administrators kept my daughter in her original classroom. But it wasn't because I'd threatened a tantrum. I had, they said, given them information that helped them make the decision in "her best interest." In other words, we listened to each other.
Solve for X
With all this context, knowing more or less why we act the way we do, here are a few tips on how to cope with our lot:
Listen to Us
As insufferable as we can be at first contact, listen to us first. We may look and act like adults, but there is a part of us that still feels like a neglected kid inside. Paying attention to our concerns may be a little more time consuming, but the effort will pay off. We're loyal allies, and we love to be helpful.
Include Us
Invite us to teach in the classroom for an afternoon. Or assign students free-choice homework one night a week, to be completed with a parent. Many Gen Xers are genuine intellectuals with interesting ideas and hobbies. We'd love to share them!
Put Us to Work
We share your passion for making schools more successful learning environments. Besides letting us help you in class or share a homework assignment with our kids, harness our energy by asking us to help plan a field trip or do background research or otherwise help you prepare a class project.
Give Us Limits
"I let parents know that I'm always willing to listen to their concerns, but that there are certain issues that are negotiable and others that just aren't," says Shelly Wolf Scott, an administrator at Brooklyn's Rivendell School. Parents are not allowed to alter their children's classroom placement, curriculum, or administrative decisions.
They are, however, permitted to offer information about their child that the school might not know and that could assist in making such decisions. "This group of parents seems to respond well to those boundaries," she says.
Work with Us
"Parents don't seem to know how incredibly carefully all teachers and administrators think about their children," says Lynn Levinson, assistant director of Upper School (and a parent of two) at the Maret School, in Washington, DC. "I always reassure them that I know how many conversations have revolved around these children and their classmates, so I know that it's the right decision, even if I'm not happy with it as a parent."
Susan Gregory Thomas has written for U.S. News & World Report and the Washington Post.
3 Movies That Shaped Gen-X Attitude
Credit: Everette Collection
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Jeff Spicoli may have been stoned, but even Mr. Hand could see he was bright. Where were his parents? Where were anyone's parents?
Credit: Everette Collection
The Breakfast Club
They were a group of troubled teenagers, and their authority figure was a self-absorbed, unprincipled high school principal. And baby boomers thought they needed to question authority?
Credit: Everette Collection
Heathers
Is this a dark comedy about intense hatred of fakery, subverting the system, and, ultimately, doing the right thing? Or is this just life in high school in the 1980s?
Comments (62)
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I must say i think i agree
I must say i think i agree with this article but i also think it would be great to have more parents like this. better an obnoxious parent than an absent parent. i rather have a parent that wants to be involved than one who doesnt care much about the happennings of their child school or class.
Children spend at least as
Children spend at least as much time around teachers as parents and the emotional state of those teachers have a direct impact on those children. Likewise, the social culture of the faculty acts as a model to the children's social culture. Harassing teachers to the point of bitterness and breakdown and politicizing schools to the point of backbiting and power-plays has a direct effect on the values and welfare of children. You wouldn't distract and verbally assault a pilot as he's landing your plane, why would you want to do that to a teacher as he/she is educating your child?
The classroom model seems to presuppose a certain trust in the teachers who are responsible for your children. This goes beyond safety and socialization. Children spend at least as much time around teachers as they do around parents and the psychological/emotional states of those teachers have a direct impact on their students whether they want it to or not. Similarly, the faculty culture of a school serves as a model for the social culture of the students again, even if unconsciously. It is not wise to harass and pressure teachers to the point of bitterness and breakdown, this has a direct, adverse affect on the health of the child.
This article amounts to a
This article amounts to a prolonged tantrum about unresolved childhood issues! There is no seeking for a common ground. The article describes vividly the interaction between Gen X parent and the teacher/school, but where is the child in this dialogue? Where is space for the child to grow and learn outside the shadow of the long ago neglected child/parent? And the "practical tips" for teachers at the end are at its core therapeutic active listening skills. All this for the parents? Shouldn't we be applying active listening skills to our children and students? This article is not about education. It's more about the author's wounded child than anything else. Let's shift the focus back to education.
Not a Gen-X parent/teacher
I don't agree with the above administrator's comments. I am weary of teachers applauding this simplistic attitude toward parents. It may sting when they say things they claim they'd recant after, but trying to see it from parents' points of view is essential. Going the extra mile to reach a partnership is worth it, since these parents are very helpful in carrying out the learning that needs to be continued/buttressed at home.
Non-Boomer parents
[quote]Gen X'ers are not the children of baby boomers. I am the outer edge of Gen X, being born in 1965, my parents were part of the so-called, Silent Generation (children during WWII). I'm not sure that half of that generation is divorced although it is the first generation where larger numbers women were beginning to work outside of the home (which contributed to latchkey status for children). Some dispute exists about whether Millennials (Gen Y), the schoolchildren you are talking about today, are by and large children of Baby Boomers or Gen Xer's or both. If Gen Y begins as the author notes in 1980, people as old as 30 are in this generational cohort (certainly these are not the children of Gen Xers). So today's school children are the products of three generations at least (Baby Boom, X and Y). So, while the psychological underpinnings of the author's thesis are interesting, their usefulness as a working theory is questionable. One might do better to consider the client/customer model and business language adopted by many educators (certainly in Eastern cities) as a contributing factor.[/quote]
As a Gen-Xer, I find today’s parents to be self-entitled and irresponsible — worse than the kids.
Am I atypical? Perhaps.
My parents were Depression kids and not self-centered Boomers, so I find more in common with the principles of that age set than my own.
Likewise with Xers with non-Boomer parents.
FWIW.
I'm all about commmunicating
I'm all about commmunicating with parents in order for the success of their child. But, I wish some parents knew the diffeence between being an advocate for their child from being someone who does everything for their child. I've seen students who can't tackle the simplest task or figure out the simplest things because they are so use to it being "handled" for them by their parent. They get used to not having to think for themselves because they don't have to. When childrn stop learning to take responsibility for their actions, investing in hard work in order for it to pay off, or living in the real world, our society hurts just that much more. Parents need to make their child find their own voice, fight their own battles, and sometimes take their lumps when they've done something wrong. Ultimately, I beleive parents mean well but some are killing their children's inner strengths by trying to control all aspects of their child's life. If it's all due to that parent's own children issues, well how fair is that?
Be Careful
I'm all about working with parents and taking their input to make a situation bettr for their child. But,I wish that some parents knew the difference between being an advocate for their child from being the parent who does everything for their child and not letting the child speak for themself or take their deserved punishments or live in the real world. Sometimes, the only thing a student will learn is how the squeaky wheel will get the grease. They don't learn about taking responsibility, how hard work can pay off, and about honesty. Why should they? Their parent will take care of it all.
What?
Oh my goodness, these are my children! But we did not neglect them, and we as their parents are still married (35 years so far). Not a week goes by that one of our children does not call us to complain about how our Grandchildren are being treated in school. I shudder when I hear how our generation X children have blasted the Principal and argued with the Teacher about their children's education.
Our gen X children were born in 1977 and 1979. Our oldest grandchildren are 11 years old. Oh I am so sorry for all the things they have said and done to people working in the school system. I would never have thought of questioning the educational system the way our children do.
I apologise to all the educators who have suffered, and will continue to suffer, the abuse of our generation X children.
I agree with you. While it is great to have self-awareness about who you are and why you act the way that you do it is not enough. You need to use that knowledge to do something about it. Parents have moved from one extreme to the other. This is going to lead to more trouble. As generation x we had the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them. This is something that MANY of today's kids are missing and it is really doing them a disservice.