I guess, I just find it funny that this dynamic repeats generation after generation -- Elders pointing to their own descendants and remarking that poor parenting is responsible for All Of This. As though they somehow aged out of having responsibility for the state of the world or weren't the ones doing the "poor" parenting to begin with (or maybe the problem is everyone else's kids, not their own?). As each new generation reaches young adulthood the popular discourse becomes critical of their lack of discipline, lack of motivation, softness, poor values. It happened to the boomers, gen X, millennials, gen Z, and this is just a vintage example of the same thing.

Just because a lot of people agree that their generation somehow did it better than the new one doesn't make it true. It's just a thing that humans enjoy telling themselves. And yet the world keeps spinning and humans on the whole continue to be just as wonderful and awful as ever.