Family Values

I'd like to read this article again in ten years, and in twenty. I wonder how the kids of today's broken homes will raise their children, and what their kids' angst will be based on.

Because there will always be angst. And the author is correct that divorce is a particularly compelling motivator for teen turmoil, but it's not the only motivator. The disconnect between parents and kids is as old as time itself.

I wonder, too, if today's children of divorce will be more sensitive to their own children's needs. What happens when today's children are stuck in their own unhappy marriages? Will they do more to work out their marriages than their parents did, trying to preserve the nuclear unit at any cost? Will they choose to live without love and with constant arguments, just to avoid divorce? Will they take their kids' feelings into account? Will their kids appreciate their efforts?

And where, in a discussion of this generation, are the too-pampered, never-blamed, "my kid doesn't lose" kids? The bratty children who don't listen to teachers and who only play on soccer teams that don't keep score? Are they the opposite of the abandoned youth, or are they one and the same - do kids without boundaries feel abandoned, too?