Economy Poll: Adults Are More Anxious Than Ever, but Teens Are Upbeat

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/economy-poll-adults-are-more-anxious-than-ever-but-teens-are-upbeat/279848/



In the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll, an overwhelming majority of American adults say it was better to be either a child or a parent when they were young rather than now. Over two-thirds believe that when today's kids grow up, they will enjoy less financial security than adults today. And another two-thirds say today's children face more challenges than opportunities. On all of these questions, the anxiety crosses lines of gender, race, and class.

Teenagers, responding to a separate survey, were noticeably more upbeat about their prospects — and even adults were more optimistic about kids in their families and neighborhoods than in the country overall. And Americans across racial and class differences delivered a generally favorable assessment of the opportunities available to children to receive a quality education, good health care, and equal treatment regardless of their race or gender.

Yet this comprehensive look at attitudes about the state of childhood in America conveys a widespread sense that families today face complex and interconnected challenges rooted in an economy that typically requires earnings from two parents — and leaves them too little time to shape their children's values, especially against the tug of an inescapable media and online culture. Parents are "letting technology raise their kids," says Chris Hupp, a 29-year-old bartender from San Antonio who responded to the survey. "Back then, a family could sustain itself on one income. Now both parents have to work, and the kids end up raising themselves … and that leads kids to make poor decisions."

These are anxieties that have waxed and waned through American life since women started moving heavily into the workforce after 1960. But the poll leaves little doubt that the Great Recession and its grueling aftermath have sharpened these worries. Some respondents focused more on economic pressures, others on cultural and media influences, but both sets of concerns led most to the same place: a sense that family life is under enormous strain. For kids today, worries Connie Rivera, a security guard and a parent from the Bronx, N.Y., it's a challenge "just trying to stay afloat. It's a competing world …. They're going to have to settle for less."

[Eleanors38]

1. If kids are upbeat, then I'm glad. That's the way it should be.

[liberal_at_heart]

2. My 15 yr old is upbeat. My 18 yr old is not. I guess it all depends on how close you are to having

to make your own way in life.