What’s Wrong With Kids These Days? Start With a Better Question

Jim Harris opens by admitting he has asked the question himself, despite working with young people professionally: what’s wrong with kids these days? He leans on an H.L. Mencken line about complex problems having answers that are clear, simple, and wrong, to make the point that this particular question tends to produce exactly that kind of answer. His proposed fix is less a solution than a better starting question, swapping what’s wrong with kids these days for what do kids need these days.

He points to John Gottman’s research on contempt in marriage, then uses that idea to illuminate a very different setting: how adults talk about young people. Contempt, as he describes it, is distinct from ordinary criticism because it carries a sense of looking down on the other person. He argues the first question tends to carry a similarly contemptuous tone, a nose to nose posture aimed at fixing or correcting. The second question invites something he calls a hip to hip posture instead, standing alongside a young person to understand their actual world, rather than standing opposite them trying to correct it.

To illustrate how easily each generation misjudges the next, he walks through a few lighthearted historical examples, a famous 1950s television performance considered too provocative to film below the waist, and a band name later generations were taught to fear as something sinister, both of which look almost quaint with distance. He pairs this with an informal observation from asking large audiences whether they would trade places with their own teenager growing up in today’s world. Almost no one raises a hand, and he personally believes today’s social context is more complicated than the one many parents grew up in.

He brings this down to a specific moment with his own teenage son, holding a boundary around a chore despite being told, in the moment, that he was being mean. His response, that the goal of parenting is not to raise happy children but functional adults, becomes the pivot into a broader framework: balancing acceptance of a child’s real differences and struggles against the genuine growth that only comes from facing consequence, failure, and responsibility. Too much accommodation, he argues, can weaken a young person, while too much pushing without understanding their unique needs can break them. He closes by returning to the reframed question one more time, not what’s wrong with this kid, but what does this kid need from me.