As they grow up, children may diverge from parents’ dreams

Respect is key when adult children develop different values to their parents, writes Laura Waddell

Some stages of a child’s independence from their parents are both obvious and seismic. First steps, toddling out of protective arms and off to their own devices. Leaving school, perhaps heading to university. When a new term begins, it’s fitting that autumn leaves are in full show and a cooler breeze hangs in the air. Personal worlds change with the seasons, making way for a promise of something new around the corner. But changes that can be marked against a developmental chart or stored in a little box marked “first tooth” are only what’s on the surface.

The biggest leaps to independences are not so visible. They take place inside the chest and head, and in the granular changes that shift subtly over the course of years. They’re in loving someone other than those who raised us. Seeing oneself individually in the world. Ambitions and hopes that differ from the household of childhood. It’s in the nature of some to follow in footsteps. Others push the boundaries as far as they can go. Neither is necessarily better or worse; just different.

But increasingly the world races into unfamiliar territory. One only needs to turn on the news or feel the unnatural weather on one’s skin to sense that. What does it look like when a child’s natural striving for independence takes place in a world materially different from that of their parents?

Life lessons are valuable but sometimes they need updating. Methods of self-protection, honed in one era, don’t necessarily fit the next generation. Sometimes it’s difficult for parents hoping to shield their child from life’s cruelties to trust rules which have changed. That, for example, it’s now commonplace to talk openly about mental

health or sexuality. Many of us feel a small shock when we look at photographs of our parents taken around the age they had us. They leapt life milestones younger; they looked truly like adults, moustached and permed. I suspect a good deal of millennial-bashing comes from simple stupidity and malevolence, but a percentage is probably avoidance. How to come to terms with how quickly the world has moved on when, for comfortably pensioned boomers looking at holiday homes, their children’s generation can’t afford to take a mortgage on their first home? Much easier to put it down to lack of work effort.

I’m sometimes asked what young writers are writing about today. All kinds of things, but some are interested in generational differences, writing about their parents as they explore their own journeys to adulthood and liberation. It’s a ripe theme for today’s era of rapid social, political, and communicative change.

For families of migrants spanning different ages, there are specific challenges of building a life in a new place while at different stages of their lives. Writer Ocean Vuong built a critically esteemed reputation with his early, bold poetry, on themes of war’s legacy across generations, masculinity, and sonmother relationships. (It also sold very strongly – he has spoken movingly of how he was able to contribute financially to his family with the earnings.) Recently Vuong published his debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Fittingly, its cover bears autumn leaves as they float in the air. The author shares characteristics with the teen lead of the novel; both children born in Vietnam, evacuated with their maternal guardians, spending the latter half of childhood in America.