Generational Differences Regarding Educational Career and Personal Aspirations of Adolescents

The young people perceive themselves as a group apart from the established older generation. This isolation of age groups has led to a teenage sub-culture wherein parents lose some influence and peer opinions become highly valued. Adolescents spend so much time with members of their own age groups in schools and colleges that it is not surprising to find values and customs drawn from peers rather than parents. The ideas, attitudes and feelings of adolescents are usually based upon the volatile mixture of adult maturity and juvenile innocence. For this reason, the views of adolescents often conflict with those of their elders.

However, this just concern of parents is perceived by their adolescent children as an imposition of adult standards. They view their parents’ ideas and values as outdated and prefer not to discuss their peer-group activities with parents. The two generations drift apart in terms of communication. This communication gap is another important contributor to the generation gap. The parents prefer to make some future plans regarding the educational career of their children and force them to achieve the goal without knowing the real capacity of their children. This leads to generation gap.