Editorial: The modern family: Young people are increasingly cutting ties with their parents over differences in opinion
Young people are increasingly cutting ties with their parents over differences in opinion, revealing a crisis in consensus and empathy
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What has changed, according to experts, is a growing awareness of mental health, leading, in turn, to deeper appreciation of how toxic or abusive family relationships can affect psychological well-being. There has also been a corresponding rise in self-dependence; fewer children are now reliant on their parents for livelihood or property. However, the principal cause of estrangement — rifts based on political opinion and values — is a growing area of concern. In the course of its evolution, the family has found ingenious ways of fusing the political with the personal. What, then, has changed so fundamentally? The answer seems to be the prevailing — deepening — crisis in consensus. Individuality, it would seem, has birthed an inflexibility of opinion, so much so that a difference in views is now tantamount to a moral transgression. The fractured political constituency is encouraging these chasms within other institutions. Social media — that other fount of shrill opinion and false narratives — is equally dismissive of divergent points of view. There is another stubborn residue — the insularity of adults. For instance, it is possible that the young are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the reluctance of older relatives to acknowledge climate change and to make transformations in their lifestyles that are deemed necessary for the health of the planet.
What an embittered, opinionated but divided family — and the world? — needs are greater investments in conversation, empathy and consensus. Isolation — a social pathology that is spreading like a pathogen — breeds ignorance. Moreover, cutting ties goes against the evolutionary instincts of the human race. Deep down, mankind remains a sociable species. ‘Unfriending’ the family is unlikely to be a source of healing. The challenge across social settings is to debate differences without demonizing them.
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