Why Today's Parents Have No Business Giving Their Kids Advice

[johnlucas]

A VERY interesting article I found just now on the Huffington Post by Michael Price.
And it's TRUE! Hahahahahahaha!
And predictably the parents replying to the article are MAD!
DEFENSIVE! Woo! That means he hit 'em right between the eyes.

But there was one 55 year old woman in there who agreed with him after saying she took her 2 degrees off of her wall after 6 years of failing to find a job in her field.

Check this article out & let me know your views on it.

Why Today's Parents Have No Business Giving Their Kids Advice

The world isn't what it used to be.

Prior to Generation X you could get and maintain a well-paying job and stay there for 20-40 years. Those days are long gone. As we move from one generation to the next, parents pass along life advice to their children hoping to inspire them to achieve what they did and more. That was the model for parenting and it worked up until now.

The problem is the world moves much faster nowadays.

One minute a college major is hot, then it's not. One minute a career field is flowing with opportunity, the next minute it is in total disarray. Thirty years ago a parent would love for nothing more than for their child to grow up and pursue a career as a lawyer or a doctor. Thirty years ago those careers were hot. They were well paying and prestigious. This isn't necessarily the case anymore. Government regulation has cracked down on many fields of litigation making it impossible to earn as much as lawyers once did. This of course hasn't stopped our college education system from lying about today's financial opportunity as a lawyer. Over the past few years, new attorneys fresh out of law school have been filing class-action lawsuits left and right against universities that have posted fraudulent claims of income opportunity and employment placement rates. As for the field of medicine, despite the fear of Obamacare deterring students from pursuing careers as doctors, medical school enrollment has seen record growth in the past two years. Unfortunately for these students, they will soon find out once they complete their residency that everything that made being a doctor prestigious and profitable 20 years ago is slowly but surely fading away.

When you consider how fast the world evolves nowadays, parents just simply have no business giving their kids life advice anymore. Parents of millennials and the new generation rising behind them have no idea what the future of tomorrow, much less the future 10 years from now looks like. Many parents live and operate within the false reality that they know what's best for their kids. They pressure their children to pursue the routes they chose in life.

The only person that knows what's best for your kids is your kids. That may sound like a radical and ridiculous idea but think about it.

If you're in your 40s or 50s today, your mother may have been a stay-at-home mom and your father likely had a job working in an industry that was somehow deeply tied to manufacturing, oil or energy. Those were the hot career fields 50 years ago. Can you imagine how far back in the stone age this country would be had Generation X and the Baby Boomers taken the advice of their parents and traveled down their path? We'd be stuck in 1965 and America wouldn't be the world leader it is today.

Read the rest of the article at the Huffington Post link.
Why Today's Parents Have No Business Giving Their Kids Advice

John Lucas

[Brickbat]

1. It's like this guy thinks kids actually listen to their parents' advice.

As a journalist, author, entrepreneur and outspoken thought-leader for Millennials and youth,

This is why I have become the man I am today.

Thought-leaders are a dime a dozen.

Michael Price is an entrepreneur and author of What Next? The Millennial's Guide To Surviving and Thriving in the Real World endorsed by Barbara Corcoran of ABC's Shark Tank. An advocate of ideas for radical change, he has received critical acclaim for his lessons in education, career, entrepreneurship and personal finance.

A guy with a book and a website. Ho-hum.

[FLPanhandle]

3. LOL.

So true.

[KurtNYC]

15. critical acclaim from whom??

His writing style is juvenile and filled with empty redundancy, for example:

When you consider how fast the world evolves nowadays, parents just simply have no business giving their kids life advice anymore.

I see he did marketing for Verizon, as if a monopoly needs marketing.

[FLPanhandle]

2. Article assumes adults don't know that the world is changing and aren't living through those changes

As an adult with two teenage daughters, I'm well aware the world is not what it was when I was growing up.

This entire article assumes adults are stuck living in the past and not living in this changing world themselves.

[Kber]

5. It also assumes that the advice we parents give can't be timeless

My parents advised me to have respect for myself and others.

To tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

To honor and value your true friends when you need them and when they need you.

Is all this passé because careers are changing? Like that hasn't happened before?

This guys "wisdom" won't be relevant in 15 years. That's my advice.

[Brickbat]

6. Very good point.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

12. No kidding. Someone tell this clown life is more than your career.

[Taitertots]

4. I'm sick of getting advice that stopped being useful 20 years ago

I just smile, nod, and laugh to myself at how nice it would be if the world hadn't changed.

[tkmorris]

7. Yeah, no

[Arugula Latte]

8. I have been telling my son that he needs to stay flexible and have more than one major skill

and he has to look for opportunities and pave his own way 'cuz corporate America is more like an enemy than an ally.

[Marr]

9. You very rarely have any business giving anyone advice, period-- regardless of who you are.

[KurtNYC]

16. he is not "giving" it, he is selling it, hence the "business"

[frazzled]

10. It's always been this way

Do you think that those of us growing up in the 1960s wanted to hear advice from OUR parents? Frankly, the generation gap was far worse then than it is now. Contrary to this writer's beliefs, some of us do keep up with changes in the world.

As the parent of late twenties and early thirties children, I gave up giving them advice a long time ago. But they started, over the years since high school and college, to ask for advice sometimes, and in certain areas. We're always cautious to say, well, I don't know how it works today, and this is only what "I" would do, not necessarily what you may want to do, but ...

As a new grandparent, the temptation to give advice is burning hot: and I've avoided giving it like the plague, even though I think my advice might be helpful. But then I think: as long as it's not dangerous, let them figure out why the baby is fussy and deal with it in their own way. I didn't particularly want my mother or mother-in-law's advice when my kids were infants, and my kids don't want it either. But damn, we do know a thing or two!

[Warpy]

11. Even funnier is the financial advice coming to Boomers from Millennials

My favorite is "You should have put $2000/year aside from the time you were 20."

Uh, most of us didn't make much over $2000/year back then and we managed to live independently on it. I suppose Mr. Millennial hasn't ever been introduced to the concept of inflation, a rather glaring deficit in a financial adviser.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

13. My parents careers (1940's-1980's) saw more change than mine or a millennials has

Most of the advice they have given me was directly related to living in a changing and less stable world.

My mother points out that in 1950 she had a secretary, a copy writer/editor and a "runner" working for her. When she retired she had a computer with Microsoft Office on it and a direct line phone.

[REP]

14. "Your mother was a stay at home mom" Class privilege much?

Someone's class privilege is showing. My father sure as hell didn't have a career at one company that spanned 30 years, and we couldn't afford the luxury of a non-working adult. We couldn't afford non-working children; my brother and I had regular jobs when we were 13.