Generation Gap – Why Does It Exist?

A topic which is at the tip of tongue of almost every youth today is also a topic heard at home, in-between friends etc. What’s this topic? Let me provide you with a hint. Your parents were born in the 90s and you in last part of 90s or in 20s.Did you get it? Yes, the widely spoken topic- generation gap. I bet everyone has heard about this. Yes and there’s no lie to it. Generation gap exists among the parents and their children in this century due to which lots of serious yet ignored problems have arisen.

Age is one big reason for the natural gap between generations. After a certain point of time, children feel that they are grownups and the parents feel that their grownups are still children, hence the creation of misunderstandings. Neither the parents nor the children see things from each other’s point of view. Even if age is the main one to blame behind generation gap, but the other reasons behind this gap are different mental thinking, and the fast changing world and its trends.

 The fast changing world and the rapid development in technology has increased the distance between the generations. Adolescence was achieved by both the generations in totally different cultures.

The main reasons behind this generation gap are:

1. Lack of understanding

Parents were born and brought up in different generation and their children in a different generation. A lot of things changed in this time period and hence there arises a problem of understanding by the parents. It is hard for them to believe that the beliefs which they had since their childhood are false in today’s world.

2. Lack of communication

Lack of understanding leads to lack of communication. Children don’t feel comfortable to communicate with their parents because somewhere they have this belief that their parents won’t understand it. Today’s generation suffers from depression, anxiety, insecure issues but these are new to our parents and hence they regard such things as useless.

3. Comparision

This is one of the main reasons behind the generation gap. Previously it was believed that comparison or you can say comparing a child to another child had positive effects as the former would then try to become like the latter by taking the comparison as a sort of inspiration but this is not the scene nowadays. Comparing too much breaks the confidence and enthusiasm inside a child.

4. Expecting too much

High hopes and expectations are kept by the parents nowadays and that affects the gap more. Parents want their children to be like as they had pictured them thus discouraging them from following their dreams and when you break a person’s dream, you indirectly kill the person. Parents forget that every child is unique and each has their own choices; not everyone can bag 90% and be a government official. Not everyone wants to marry the person arranged by their parents.

5. Mistakes are rarely tolerated.

Children make mistakes and grow, but if they are punished for the same it leads to a wider gap and serious consequences.

6. Intolerable nature of children

Not only the parents are at fault, even the children are at fault. Due to advancing technology and developmental culture all around, some children treat their parents as inferior people and rarely try to mend the relationship with their parents.

Mending this gap would take time, but at least it can be tried by the following ways-

1. Trying to listen to each other

2. Understanding each other.

3. Adapting new changes

4. Encouraging communication

5. Being friends with each other

All we have is the knowledge passed on to us by our elders, experiences we inculcate and hardly negate. But to bridge the generation gap, one needs to adapt to the new while retaining the goodness of the old.

Sonali Bendre