Generation X parents of highschoolers, do teens party less now than we did?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have two kids in high school, and I can't get over how "wholesome" teens seem to be now compared to how they used to be. When I was my kids' age, it seemed like a lot more kids drank, smoked, got high, dated/had sex, were out late on weekends going off with their friends, etc. Now it seems like that's relatively rare, when I tell my kids some of the things that I did at their ages, (and I wasn't a wild kid) they are pretty shocked. I know that there are some kids who still do some of the things that I mentioned, but they seem like their the "bad" kids, whereas when I was that age, it was pretty much the norm. Do other Generation X parents notice this as well?

yes. Gen X parent of grade 10 dd here. So much more wholesome than us but also more mature imo.

[Anonymous]

Gen Xer here with teens now. When I was in high school so many kids were drinking and having sex.

I know that sex, drugs and alcohol still happen but my 11th grader hasn't even been exposed to any of that at all. She's never been to a party where teens were drinking, she's never been to a mixed gender traditional "party." She hangs out mostly with a group of (seemingly) equally wholesome girls and occasionally with a small group of very nice but slightly nerdy guys (who she claims no one in her friend group is remotely attracted to "that way"). She did have her first kiss at a camp over the summer but she claims it was awful and that she just did it to be able to say that she had been kissed. Sounds like the boy felt the same and they laughed about it afterwards.

I was worried about having teens in this day thinking they would be getting a lot of pressure to do sexual things like BJs as I thought they didn't think of that as "sex," but so far, none of that has come up for our DD.

[Anonymous]

Y'all are nuts. Kids using weed in all forms as if it were a cigarette of our day. And drinking. All still there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And for the record, I AM in a position of authority, and I CAN tell the difference between a kid who is legitimately troubled and those who've just been conditioned by weak-ass adults who are afraid of upsetting them. You sound like the latter type. Can I suggest you buck up, learn to parent, and stop coddling so much? You're NOT doing them any favors.

It was administrators like you who contribute to the toxic school environment that are causing some of these kids to resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms like self-harm and suicidal ideation.

For years, administrators like you told us we were parenting our kid in the wrong way, that she needed more therapy and that she needed to "suck it up."
The culture you have has been institutionalized at the school.
We followed your advice for a couple of years, at the expense of our relationship with our own kid.
Then we started to listen to our kid.
She needed coddling because even stable environment we had at home wasn't neutralizing what she was experiencing in school.
And then we moved her to a better environment.
She is now in a place where administrators do not think like you. Her old school could not have been any more wrong about all the stuff they recommended.
She doesn't need therapy anymore because her daily poison was been removed and our relationship with her has improved greatly.
Best of all, she quit self-harm and suicidal ideation.

Our next door neighbor's kid continue to struggle at the school system that we left. Kid has been busted for drugs and has been in all sorts of trouble.
My heart goes out to that kid because he's probably feeling the same way my kid was.
Our kid might have turned out that way had she not been removed from administrators like you.

[Anonymous]

Lots of alcohol, weed and sex when I was in high school in the 80s. My 20yo didn't start any of that until college, other than drinking a couple of parties senior year. My HS junior seems to be on the same path. Very few parties or hanging out with friends on the weekends. Their weekdays are so packed with school and other activities that they just want to come home and chill on the weekend (and spend time on their screens). I think it's partly lack of opportunity/being overschedule, partly social media, and partly all the messaging they get about how they'll mess up their lives if they drink and drive, get busted at a party, get an STD, have sex without clear consent, get addicted to drugs, etc. There was NONE of that from my parents and a minimal amount at school when I was a teen.

[Anonymous]

I would have said yes to this -- I always thought my DD didn't go out as much as I did in HS (and she had the grades to show for it, so I suppose power to her!) I remember going downtown and to clubs to hear bands and dance a lot more in HS than she seemed to. Also going out to movies (they like to watch on an iPad at home )

But, then, prompted by the stories being published during the Kavanaugh hearings about the drinking scene and house parties at the time Kavanaugh was in HS, my DD and I were talking and we exchanged nearly identical (and scary) stories about raging house parties with lots of drinking and non-consensual sexual behavior.

So, some things have changed but a lot still hasn't, much to my dismay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have two kids in high school, and I can't get over how "wholesome" teens seem to be now compared to how they used to be. When I was my kids' age, it seemed like a lot more kids drank, smoked, got high, dated/had sex, were out late on weekends going off with their friends, etc. Now it seems like that's relatively rare, when I tell my kids some of the things that I did at their ages, (and I wasn't a wild kid) they are pretty shocked. I know that there are some kids who still do some of the things that I mentioned, but they seem like their the "bad" kids, whereas when I was that age, it was pretty much the norm. Do other Generation X parents notice this as well?

I can only speak for myself and my dh. We are gen X and we did not party or do the things you mentioned. Neither do our teens.

[Anonymous]

Definitely. I’m 46 with two in HS. And they— and their friends— are incredibly wholesome. I think there are several things going on.

I grew up in the rural South and cruised WalMart on Friday evenings. There was nothing to do. Having nothing to do is a great way to get into trouble. That isn’t a problem in the DMV.

Getting into college is so much harder and my kids workloads are incredible. And HSs no longer let kids phone in sports in ECs. They do them 15 hours a week. Kids just have less time to get in trouble.

We also live in a very education conscious area of the country. The peer pressure is to get into TJ or UVA or WM, not to drink and do drugs.

I think comprehensive sex education, drug and alcohol education etc., every year, for ES helps.

I think we were the product of liaissez faire parenting. Even if you want to free range/80s style parent in the DMV, you can’t without CPS getting involved. The expectation is that that you will monitor your kid 24/7. Helicopter parenting has become a thing.

I think technology makes it easier to keep tabs on your kids, stalk them on Find My Friends, coordinate with other parents, monitor social media and texts for problems, etc.

I think in the era of me too and social host liability, people take serving kids underage and sexual assault much more seriously.

We’ve also moved forward on identifying, treating and taking some of the stigma away from mental illness, learning disabilities, ADHD, etc. and teachers are more likely to point out these problems to parents and school systems have adapted to help kids achieve even with LDs. When we were kids, you adapted to the school. And if you couldn’t, too bad. So, kids get help and can have academic success. .

So yeah. I think kids are more wholesome. For a lot of reasons.

[Anonymous]

Is this thread a joke?

Have you not heard of the opioid crisis - which kills tens of thousands of young Americans annually? There’s nothing Gen X did that comes close. Plus every teen is vaping; pot is pretty much legal and heavily glorified by celebs and social media; SSRIs Xanax and Adderall are handed out like candy and glorified by celebs and social media.

[Anonymous]

RE: it’s harder to get into college, kids are studying more!

Hahaha. Painfully naive. Teens are drinking those soda water cans of booze like fish. Ripping 80 proof shots during “pregame”. They vape all day in middle, high and higher ed. If they’re rich, they’re snorting coke or around kids who do. Everyone’s got pill scripts; pain pills to stimulants to SSRIs. Vaping weed. Edibles. On and on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:They’re using pills instead. less messy and easier to hide.

You act like Gen X'ers did not pop pills.

We drank cough syrup with codeine

we sure did

Somehow I had the impression this was just something a group of idiot boys in my high school had come up with on their own. Color me surprised to discover it was an actual thing!

Although I think they were just drinking entire bottles of over-the-counter Robitussin, not the good stuff with the codeine.

How old are you cough syrup folks? Younger GenX? I don't remember cough syrup being a thing and I graduated HS in 1991. We had plenty of booze, pot, and other drugs...but not cough syrup

I graduated in '90 and remember the cough syrup thing - or more accurately robitussin., Never did it myself, but I heard about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous[b wrote:]I'm right at the border of gen x and millennial. I was born in 84, and while I know some kids were partying and experimenting it wasn't every kid and wasn't my friends and I. [/b]We just had no desire, we were not made to keep busy with homework and activities, we just found our own fun being teens before adulthood slapped us in the face. Call me what you want, I'm a nerd, I know it and own it. We had a life and had fun, the ones without a life will be those after the trouble from the partying/experimenting that they did.

The dying down of partying definitely seemed to start among the millenials. I remember in the 90's thinking that teens at that time, seemed a lot tamer than what they were when I was in HS 10 years earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My freshman son has no interest in dating. He is a well rounded kid, a good student, a good athlete, and he likes hanging out with friends, riding his skateboard. No interest in dating. My DD is in 8th grade and has not interest either. A lot of her friends are dating. She has guy friends, but that's it. She also likes hanging out with her friends and is busy with her sports/hobby. Both are good looking kids, I think DD is very beautiful, but I'm her mom. I didn't date either until the end of my senior year of HS. I had tons of friends and loved my social life. I was never interested in any boy until my first boyfriend at the end of my last year of HS. I think it depends on the kid. Also, both my kids are late bloomers in terms of puberty, so that might have something to do with it.

When you say he has no "interest in dating", does that mean that he has no interest in hooking up with girls or he's just not interested in having a girlfriend? I hear this sort of claim on DCUM, but find it hard to believe. A 14/15 year old who truly has no romantic/sexual urges seems like a biological abnormality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the consequences of wild behavior are so much worse now—I wasn’t wild at all in high school but get my FH and his brother and his best friend from high school together and they have some crazy stories. “Borrowing” a parent’s Porsche and driving to California without having licenses. A neighborhood being taken to the hospital via helicopter for alcohol poisoning. Fights, parties, more alcohol and drugs, etc.

My in-laws weren’t particularly attentive parents, DH was the third boy, but a lot of what happened back then the cops would just turn kids over to their parents, say it’s just kids being kids, and nobody who wasn’t there would even hear about it. Now there would be arrests, suspension, expulsion, news and social media.

I think this is mostly why, it was just different then.

When do you mean, by "back then"? I guess I'm gen X but I can't really relate to most gen X posts but I'm a 1980 baby. I didn't have a cell phone until my 2nd semester senior year of college! I feel neither GEN x nor millennial

Honestly I would say you are more of a millenial. Even among the generation Xers, I think the older ones partied harder than the younger ones. When the Kavanaugh confirmation issue was going on, I remember being surprised by how many posters on DCUM were truly shocked by the heavy partying high school culture that was being described. I think that's because most DCUMers are millenials or younger generation Xers. I'm a little bit younger than Kavanaugh, and the description of going to parties every weekend and getting wasted while in HS totally completely mirrored my own experience. I think this is something that began changing around the late 80's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Depending on age (1980 would be younger than me, for example) many of us came up on the heels of "the 60's" but before AIDS and Nancy Reagan kicked in. The drinking age in DC was 18 - you saw from the kavanaugh hearings what it was like to be a teen here. Just a different time, but I fear for kids who have never experimented getting into this stuff for the first time while in college.

But that describes pretty much all new college students now.