DOES MODERN YOUTH GET CHANCE?

Dunstan Times, Issue 3355, 3 January 1927, Page 7

DOES MODERN YOUTH GET CHANCE?

GRATITUDE OUT OF DATE. A defence of modern youth by a woman of 76, Mrs Creighton, widow of a former Bishop of London, was a striking feature of the Church Congress at Southport lately. Older people, she said, did not realise what a difficult time this was for youth, with disillusionment in the air. They must not believe they had a claim on the gratitude of the young, who asked, “why’ should 1 owe you gratitude? ioii brought me into the world for your own pleasure; i did not ask to come.” Mrs Creighton said that in the past children were looked upon as the property of their parents, and especial;v tneir fathers, and as existing for the good 01 their parents. Ail that was now changed. The modern despo in the family was the child, not tinfather. Barents were supposed to ex Ist for the good of their children, not children for the good of their parents, rhe war had precipitated the change. Men who had faced responsibility on the battlefield could not be expected to submit to parental rule. Whatever the elders might think about it, the young at present meant to be independent, and it was clear that the whole character of the relationshq between old and young was changing How were parents to meet this? Bar ents, whether father or mother, shoulo have an individual life of their own They should not, as they often gloriel in doing, live for their children. No form of. selfishness was so insidious a* family selfishness. The devotion of parents, especially, perhaps, of mothers, could be mere selfishness. It was often asserted that the attitude of the young at present, aim especially since the war, amounted to a revolution, that the individual par ent was powerless to resist the ten deucy of the age. Revolt was in the air. The young were determined to go their own way,(to defy authority. They should not try to shut their eyes to the greatness of the change which was taking place. To resist it would lie futile. They bad to seek the gooc, in it, to discover how the evil was to be avoided and work with the good. The elders were first in the field, and they must hand on what they learnt to the next generation. Bui tjio mistake was to hand it on as the final truth. The advantage of being the first in the field would be lost b> the leaders if they tried to make too much of it. They might believe that they had a ch|im on the gratitude of the young, but there was really no answer to the question, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, put by the young: “Why shfluld I owe you gratitude? You brought me into tht world for your own pleasure. I did not ask to come.” Gratitude shoulo never be demanded or expected. It was a, gracious gift. 0 At present there was a tendency to fuss much too much about the young. They were treated and spoken of as n they were a caste, even if they were not treated as untouchables. “We isolate them. We plan separ ate organisations of all kinds idi them, and we grieve when they refuse to fit into the organisations which we created. We watch and notice and criticise, but, although we may persuade ourselves to the contrary, that does not mean that we understand. We generalise from our imperfect observation, and so the young, like the working classes, or our domestics, or those we speak of as ‘the poor,’ really become a caste in our thinking. “Perhaps we elders, when we look back with regret to the cultured leisure, to the comfortable prosperity, to the well ordered homes of Victorian days, do not sufficiently realise wbai a difficult time this is being for the young. There is disillusionment in the air. Everything is being questioned. We see the immense need for hard, steady work, and some of the young ask. ‘Why should I work’ and others, ‘What is the good of any work? What purpose is there in life at all?’ and they go on to drown thought in a feverish rush after pleasure which leaves them still unsatisfied. “Yet there are plenty of signs of their capacity lor response to any real call, as quick and ready as was the response in those first days of the war. What they need is the inspiring call; the leader who will show them the great cause. We need prophets, and there seems to be no word from the Lord. “We elders must give what leadership we can; not so much by trying to point out special work to he done, or the need for hard work, as by the courage with which we do our own work, by the way in which we regard it, by our joy in it, by qur constant effort to press forward.”