AL Daily had a link to the Detroit Free Press online, which ran David Crary’s AP book review . The book is getting some buzz – this morning CBC news was running an interview with Jean Twenge, the author of Generation Me, Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable than Ever Before. The publisher and the author have done a nice job with this site – a lot of information consolidated in one place. The theme of the book is that all those things that are supposed to boost self-esteem and make kids feel happy about themselves has created a generation of people with a sense of entitlement, persistently dissatisfied. People never feel as happy as they feel entitled to feel.
On that point, AL Daily has been running a link to Michael Shermer’s piece in Scientific American, “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” reviewing the more sensible books among the recent books about happiness. Happiness seems to be making publishers and bookstores happy.
Comments
2 responses to “I’m So Special”
I’ve been reading this book (Generation Me, by Jean M. Twenge). Although the author identifies some of the social, schooling and parenting issues that have led to a generation of “me first narcissists”, she also points out that she’s one of them. Sometimes the book feels more like a plea for understanding than anything else. It has certainly given me some insight into the education my kids received and some of the “school work” they brought home, particularly the “All about me” booklets they seemed do every year. As far as parenting goes, we seem to have been lucky enough to have avoided many of the excesses required to create a truly me-centred child… simply because we didn’t have enough money. Oh, and the book is quite funny, too. The author is often self-deprecating while being compassionately critical about her cohort.
I had some trouble the last two times I tried to comment.
It’s funny to me that after all of these centuries we aren’t better at raising our kids or teaching them. I blame people. Some just aren’t with it.
Best stay in and avoid them.