How Generational Gaps Started: an Introduction to The Conflict

We’re going to talk about Generation Gap, and to start my presentation we’re going to do a brief introduction in the history of these generation’s conflicts.

The Generational Gap is and was a term popularized in Western countries during the 1960s referring to diferences between people of a younger generation and their elders, especially between parents and children. Every generation has a point of view that is different from the previous generation, and the previous generation invariably does not agree to this point of view. A generation gap can be simply explained as the younger generation feeling that it is right, while the older generation assumes that the younger one is wrong.

Since the ending of 1940s and the beginning of 1950s the marked diferences between teenagers and parents started to arise. Altough some generational conflicts have always existed throughout History, it was in the 1960s that these generational gaps had become sharper, due to the fact of the radical change, especially in areas like, musical tastes, fashion, culture and politics. One of the ways that the young generation started to get some power and expose their opinion back in the 60s was mainly with songs like “My generation” by The Who, and “The Times They are changing” by Bob Dylan.

Nowadays the diferences of opinion between us, teenagers, and our parents have become a little different from what it was when our parents were our age. Youth today is also more disconnected from society on a number of fronts. We are less likely to read a newpaper, attend church, belong to a religion or an union, vote for president or identify with a political party than previously. Moreover, on all of these measures, the generation gap increased from 1985 to 1997.

As well, we don’t even know what we are fighting for, we are in the fresh teen years and we already have to worry about not getting a job and about the crisis that the world is passing through, I think it is frustrating for us and we don’t even know where to look for answers.

Our parents want us to study to graduate and undergraduate so that we can find a job and become someone in life, but with all these technological influences, I think we are getting a little bit distracted from that aim. And that is one of the reasons that leads to more arguments between us and our parents these days.

In many ways as a teenager myself, its hard to identify with my parents. I see the world with a different perspective on EVERYTHING, from what is acceptable to wear, to how long I should be allowed to watch TV, or how much time I should surf the net, or if I am allowed to have my own space.

I would like to say that there are really good films and series that represent the Generation Gap, like for exemple, a film from 2008 called “Generation Gap” wjich tells a story abut a boy, Dylan, who was sent to his grandfather’s house over the summer after he’s caught fighting at school. Dylan’s granddad makes it his mission to keep the boy busy with all the chores he can think of.

So, to conclude our presentation, we can understand that in order to overcome the generation gap, trust is important. This means that the person should trust another person to give positive feedback. The feedback in turn can help a person learn. However, no one likes a change and when differences occur between individuals, it leads to roadblocks and causes problems in the relationship. Trying to remove the roadblocks that could hinder the formation of a trusting relationship is the key to bridging the generation gap.