Harsh critique offers good advice
Ben Sasse is a brave man. In his new book, “The Vanishing American Adult,” the Republican senator from Nebraska makes it clear that he has had enough of our nonsense and that we all need to shape up.
Sasse rips into an increasingly hedonistic and shallow culture that he says is producing a generation of ignorant, passive adults who don’t read, have no grasp of American civics, don’t embrace work and don’t know how to do much of anything. He says that’s because their meek helicopter parents have both applauded and waited on the little darlings for far too long, to the peril of our shared future.
“Our kids simply don’t know what an adult is ■ anymore — or how to become one,” Sasse writes. “Many don’t see a reason even to try. Perhaps more problematic, the older generations have forgotten that we need to plan to teach them. It’s our fault more than it is theirs.” I don’t quite buy it. America is a country where nearly one in three children live in poverty; presumably millions are part of families that never had the money for the pricey micromanaging Sasse cites — tutoring for standardized tests, music and dance lessons, select soccer, martial arts. So it seems Sasse’s book is intended as a warning siren only for those with incomes in the top 20 percent.
Sasse — a past president of Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska, with a doctorate in history and a background more varied than many others in the Senate — should be too smart to miss the plight of the working poor.
But his overarching point is a good one: Teenagers “need direction about how to acquire the habits essential for navigating adulthood and experiences that introduce and instill those habits.”
His vision for how to accomplish those goals makes up the text and bulleted lists at the end of most chapters. Many suggestions are inarguable.
Sasse points to his 14-year-old daughter’s time working on a ranch as Exhibit A for his belief that manual labor is important for all teens to experience. Consuming less, knowing the difference between needs and wants, and reducing reliance on the internet — and all glowing screens — are important lessons for adults to model.
Although Sasse holds a day job as a U.S. senator, he avoids policy prescriptions of any kind, preferring to challenge parents and sidestep partisanship.