Young People: How to Understand and Relate to Them
Margaret Mead
American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead speaks about communicating with the younger generation. Mead defines three primary factors that make communication difficult: the always fraught relationship between adolescents and parents, the perennial changes that society experiences generation after generation, and the particular generation gap of those born before and those born after the second World War. She argues that because of the new generation gap “it is no longer possible to understand things through one’s own experience,” that is, parents can no longer easily relate their own adolescent experiences to those of their children. Mead emphasizes the importance of not trying to “narrow” the generation gap, but rather learning to talk over it. The lecture is followed with questions from the audience. Recorded April 25, 1972 at The 92nd Street Y, New York.
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