The Desire Society

It is official, we have moved out of the 'need' society and we are now fully within the 'desire' one. There is still an age group around who will expound the virtues of buying what you need and not wanting/wasting such money on so many extravagances, but they are mostly over 50 now and the new society's standards are,

buy today for tomorrow there maybe something better.

So what does that mean to the children of today and their futures? How will that impact upon us as parents, and grand parents and how will this change the way children view the expectations they have of parents? I suspect the answer to that is beginning to be seen now, with phones costing upwards of £500 being in the hands of 10 year old, fashions which promote sexuality being worn by pre-pubescent and language changes taking the standard English into new dimensions.

Articles in numerous scientific journals record differences in the way children's brains are now being wired and they are putting this down to the change in the way we communicate as a species. No longer do we write a letter and wait for an answer, the correspondences are happening instantly and world wide. They don't have to wait any more to hear what so-and-so think, says or does and they alter the way they present themselves to the world accordingly. The innocence of childhood is gone and in many ways there is a return to the Victorian times when children began puberty and were married off at 13 years of age. When you consider Romeo and Juliet were less than 17 years old when they fell in love and then committed suicide, one can see there is a return to this, less than innocent time, a time before teenage and back to the historical times of child/puberty/adult. Let's face it, the teenage was a 1950s invention, a way of getting away from the horrors of the war, and a time when young people were fighting to gain an identity from underneath the oppression of a bankrupt nation, rationing and fear of being bombed. Teenage was a way of 'letting go' and moving into responsibility slowly. To them responsibility carried with it some uncomfortable truths; war, death, horror, hunger, being bombed out, grafting in dangerous places, the list goes on.

So, we are entering a new era and as parents we have to not only embrace this massive change, we have to make sure we instill into our children some of the values we had as children and as a family. We have to think what is really important to us and then involve our children in that so they can 'take part' and perhaps absorb some of that into their own social structure which is forming as we speak. 

To be influential in their lives we have to embrace the new technologies and be up to date, so we can, to some extent, speak their language, and not pass into the realms of those old people who know nothing because to enter that realm is a one way street and carries no respect from the Brave New World which is growing up around us and leaving some of us behind.