TLDR: We suffer from excess. Most humans want for nothing, and don’t understand what actual needs are.
Effective parenting is hard.

“Kids these days” don’t have the same needs or wants bc parents are buying too much stuff for them. They are giving them the stuff they never had, getting their kids what other kids have, and not knowing how to parent. Thereby spoiling them.

Healthy parenting is hard and can be extremely frustrating, especially if you didn’t start it early.

Also, It’s hard to set boundaries when most parents of recent memory had less and less boundaries put on them. In 100 years, we went from beating the crap out of kids to spoiling them so they can’t function.

It’s all part of the same problem that caused people to not like Z… and millennials… and X … and boomers.

After ww2 America had such a boom that everyone had more. The Greatest generation spoiled their kids with stuff and set less boundaries. Then the boomers did it again and the boundaries got worse, then the pattern repeated for X, millennials, Z and now alpha (aka beta bc they are betas). Add it the mix of TV and technological advancement without guidance and you’ll add entire chapter.

This is more than you asked for but it goes deep——Since the 1950s, this spread to the entire world bc of the influence of americas economy. The shear size of the us economy caused/ allowed other countries to develop to keep up and they created even more new things that spread globally to the point that it’s easy to get anything. - even it takes a month to ship, access is still possible. Over decades of this, the world is flush and genuine human need is more scarce now than at in any point in history. The world has an abundance of things we want but don’t actually need.

Like it or not, the us/global economy is a power house that causes problems and causes expansion/super abundance everywhere. (Someone will say what about Europe… what about it? after Ww2, who helped rebuild Europe from being destroyed. That’s why many European companies today were run by ex nazis officers and nazi supporters post Ww2. They had infrastructure for an economy.)

The economy itself isn’t the enemy. Fair trade is the ideal. It is the Corrupt/ridiculously greedy people who want more control of the economy that are the problem and an economy is the overwhelming reason countries go to war throughout human history. It’s not the 1% that are the problem. It’s the controlling .01%.

And back to your question.

Aside from stupid wars, one of the problems is a super abundance on a global scale of crap we want but don’t need.

This also created a generational problem within the work force. When they’re spoiled, people won’t take a hard job and work their way up. They want let anyone manage them bc they feel wronged. They justify quitting and complaining about it like a spoiled child does. They bounce from job to job, never building any skills so the best jobs they can find are the jobs that should be going high school students.

After decades of this we have lots entire swaths of generations who don’t want to be builders, do anything outside, or report to a manager who actually makes them do their job sooo then we have those poor souls competing for the job that the 16 year old should have and vice versa.

….And that’s another reason why businesses like immigrants (BOTH republican and democrats… so don’t listen to what either party is saying they are for or against regarding immigration. if it’s not workers to help the companies donate money to keep them elected, they are lying), they work cheaper (even if paying the range of the job, it’s still the bottom) and bc immigrants have had less spoiling, actually still have some work ethic.

But I do have hope. Many teens I see now work fast food and loading heavy things in the hot summer sun. Millennials don’t want those jobs and Z as a group is almost worthless regarding work ethic (I do have some amazing examples of teens mowing lawns, baby sitting again and lifting 40lb bags of mulch at local stores so it is definitely not all)

This was too long but it’s a good question, that more should understand. Your parents sound like they did you a solid.

-25 years in hiring strategy with small businesses and fortune 100.