alt Hacker NewsI'm GenX, but had kids a little late, so most of my kid's friends either 1. have Millennial parents or 2. are raised by their Boomer grandparents (parents not much in the picture). The differences in how these two sets of caretakers behave is astounding. Take a typical visit from the friend to my house to play with my kid:
The friends who are with their grandparents show up. Grandpa parks his car in my driveway, and walks the kid to my door. We greet, kid runs off to play, and we shoot the shit for a while, asking how things have been going, maybe Grandpa wants to check out the latest on my woodworking project, whatever. Then Grandpa says goodbye, I'll be back later, and heads out.
The friends who are with their Millennial parents show up. Dad parks his car waaaaay out by the curb, never even going on my property. Kid gets out of the car and walks himself to my door. Dad speeds away in his car, never even acknowledging us. Dad comes back to pick the kid up, same thing. Parks way far away, texts his kid, and the kid excuses himself and runs all the way out to the car. I don't even know the names of any of my kid's friends' Millennial parents!
This pattern repeats across N = about 6.
I'm a Millennial, and I do something much like this intentionally. I make it a point to explicitly put my kids into situations where they are responsible for themselves and are uncomfortable because of it.
The transition to adulthood was rough for me for several reasons, and looking back I think that was one of them - my parents always did things for me, but never expected me to do things on my own.
I almost certainly go overboard with this, but that's the nature of things.