Instead of being an icon of homegrown terrorism, John Walker Lindh may go down in history as a poster child for baby-boomer parenting—the legacy of a generation that could not just say no. Lindh grew up in Marin County, California, home of great wealth and great liberalism. Jeff Jacoby wrote in The Boston Globe how again and again Lindhs's parents "affirmed" his decisions: at 14, when he collected the nastiest hip-hop cds; at 16, when he decided to drop out of his alternative high school; and finally, when he became a Muslim after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, "grew a beard, and took to wearing long white robes and an oversized skullcap." Indeed, Jacoby writes, "his father was 'proud of John for pursuing an alternative course' and his mother told friends that it was 'good for a child to find a passion.'" The Lindhs even paid for John to move to Yemen to learn "pure" Arabic and then to Pakistan to join a madrassah of radical Muslims.

"Even when it was clear that their son was sinking into Islamist fanaticism," Jacoby writes,

they wouldn't pull back on the reins. When Osama bin Laden's terrorists bombed the USS Cole and killed 17 American servicemen, Walker e-mailed his father that the attack had been justified, since by docking the ship in Yemen, the United States had committed "an act of war." Lindh now says that the message "raised my concerns"—but that didn't stop him from wiring Walker another $1,200. After all, says Dad, "my days of molding him were over."

The Lindhs represent an extreme version of the baby-boomer permissiveness that is coming home to roost in a generation of teenagers and young adults who seem more troubled, more lost than previous generations. The case of John Walker Lindh raises the question of parental responsibility: to what extent are parents to blame when their children commit crimes, beat up their classmates, or turn away from the family's faith? It's the same question we asked after the shootings at Columbine High School. It's the same question we whisper to each other when we find out a friend's teenage daughter is pregnant.

The question is more complex than it seems. Parents can do all the "right" things and still end up with prodigal children. And for all the years social scientists have carried on the nature vs. nurture debate, we are no closer to a definitive answer. In the last ten years alone, research has suggested that peers, not parents, are the major influence on a child's moral development; that violent video games are the primary cause of school shootings; that passing out condoms in schools has led to a higher rate of sexual activity in teens. Blaming parents for the ills of our youth may seem too obvious and too easy a target, but just because a target is easy to hit doesn't always mean it's the wrong one.

Harsh reality TV

Last summer, my husband and I got hooked on a rerun of the 13-part pbs documentary series American High. The series followed a group of suburban Chicago high school students for a year to get a glimpse of the real life of today's teenagers and their interaction with their families. For us as parents, the insights were sobering.

My favorite kid was 17-year-old Morgan—who, I must admit, is the sort of guy I would tell my teenage daughter to avoid, if I had a teenage daughter. Morgan is loud, hyper, obnoxious, sarcastic, and hysterical. (In one episode, his dad inquires about Morgan's girlfriend. Morgan replies, "Come on. You're supposed to be this dysfunctional family who doesn't care about me.") On the surface, he looks and acts like he couldn't care less about anyone but himself. But behind the super-gelled hair, the enormous jeans, the attitude of complete disdain for life in general, Morgan is an intelligent, thoughtful boy who aches when he's no longer allowed to see his girlfriend, who teaches gymnastics to kids with Down Syndrome, who actually talks with his parents on a regular basis—and that is not true for most of these kids.

There is Pablo, whose mother came to the United States from Ecuador when Pablo was young. Watching his mother's third marriage fall apart, Pablo has become an angry, deeply troubled young man with a drug problem. He has a little sister, whom he wants desperately to save from his fate, and a substantial chip on his shoulder.

Then there is Anna, a sweet, intelligent, strikingly beautiful girl who seems destined for great things. But she, too, feels alienated and rejected by her parents, spending most of her senior year not speaking to her controlling father.

Allie, a senior whose parents are newly divorced, faces an uncertain future as she tries to recover from her own mistakes, including skipping out on most of her junior year. As she struggles to hold on to some kind of relationship with her father and his new wife, so she also battles daily with her mother, who is emotionally raw, still angry and confused by her husband's rejection.

Week after week, we watched as these young people butted heads with their parents, their friends, their teachers. All the rotten things teenagers do—lipping off to adults, manipulating their way out of trouble, slacking off whenever possible—were played out in front of our eyes. It was obvious why teenagers often get a bad name. But something else was painfully obvious as well. All the teenagers featured in American High craved an intimate, loving relationship with their parents. And nearly every one of the parents—whether consciously or unconsciously—prevented such a relationship from happening.

Pablo's heart was broken because, as he put it, "One of the things my mother sacrificed to make a new life after moving here was us. All I want is for her to be there for me." And indeed, Pablo's mother seems intent on pushing him away, forcing him to take more responsibility than he is ready for, and focusing her energies on her own struggles, not his.

Anna was desperate to talk with her father, to seek his counsel on her future plans. But she felt burned by the pressure he put on her to succeed—well-intended though it might be. She believed he didn't listen when she did try to express her desires. We could almost see her shut down a little more each episode.

And Allie, whose face was already aged by stress and cigarettes, was actually kicked out of her mother's house for a time because, as her mother said, "I needed her to go away." That's a message a kid will take to heart in a minute, and it certainly wasn't lost on Allie, who continued to spiral into a pit of depression, fear, and self-doubt.

When the series ended, these kids were moving on to college, to summer jobs, to an unknown future. But only a select few seemed to approach that future with any sense of joy or excitement. For most, the promise of life on their own was appealing only in that it had to be better than life at home. Many of the parents seemed more than a little eager to get their kids out of the house. But the underlying message was not "I can't wait to see you spread your wings and take off." Rather, their attitudes—and in some cases their words—suggested feelings of "You have been a thorn in my side for 18 years. I can't wait to get you out from under me."

Sadly, the chasm between teenagers and their parents isn't limited to this handful of students. Anyone who has raised a teenager will tell you it's hard, hard work. But what we don't often recognize is that the teen years are pretty darn tough on teenagers, too. Research from the National Institute of Mental Health suggests that the teen years are second only to early childhood in terms of the amount of brain activity taking place.

As puberty hits, the hormonal shifts in the body signal all kinds of new connections in the brain. And just as toddlers respond to the busyness of their rapidly developing brains with tantrums, teenagers respond to their brain changes with sullenness, insecurity, and emotional outbursts. Add to that the constantly shifting cultural climate of middle school and high school, the transmogrification of the body from something small and manageable to something with big feet and big hips, the developmental desire for increased freedom, and the spiritual transition from the family's faith to a more personal belief (or nonbelief) and you've got a kid who needs help.

Terri Apter, a Cambridge social psychologist and author of The Myth of Maturity, points out that "[Parents] think their children are ready to fly the nest, when they are simply moving away temporarily and are all the more in need of support. Parents assume their daughters and sons want to push them away—when they simply need a different kind of closeness." Too often, parents allow their teens to set the emotional temperature of the relationship, believing that doing so will give their children the "space" they seem to crave. But what teenagers really crave is the consistent presence and support of the adults in their lives.

School lessons

It's not that adults haven't tried to do right by their children. But ironically, some of our best efforts have only contributed to the problem. Take America's schools, for example.

In the wake of Columbine, journalist Elinor Burkett spent a year at Prior Lake High School in the suburbs of Minneapolis. The resulting book, Another Planet, offers a scathing look at high school life. Like American High, Burkett's book paints a painful picture of youth culture run amok. But as she looks at the ways modern education has tried to rein in teenagers, Burkett makes no bones about the outright failure of the "system" to develop students who are ready for life after high school.

In Burkett's mind, the biggest culprit in the schools is the shift from classical learning to the emphasis on self-esteem that came about in the 1970s. The whole idea was to get rid of the perceived "Élite" class of students by eliminating intelligence testing and ability-based groupings, creating an "open society" that would allow underperforming students to thrive as they worked side by side with their more accomplished classmates. If students feel good about themselves, the thinking went, they'll live up to their potential, and every child has potential.

But over time, this well-meaning approach simply flattened the playing field so that everyone, from the kid who couldn't really read in tenth grade to the kid with the genius iq, ended up drifting along in complacency. Burkett says, "The feelings soothed weren't those of students locked out of the highest-level courses, but those of parents who no longer had to confront the reality that their children were not among the intellectual Élite. Their children neither craved nor needed that consolation. They knew who the smart kids were, and it didn't bother them in the least since, in the social geography of American schools, the ideal wasn't to be smart, but to be popular."

But the most heartfelt jeremiads against today's educational philosophy come not from critics like Burkett but from the students themselves. As a group of the school's most intelligent students gather in a classroom, their conversation turns to their disappointment in—and disdain for—the way they've been forced to conform. We often assume that the kids who hate school are those who are barely passing from grade to grade. But the real tragedy of this systemic failure is what it has done to the motivated students who come to school begging to be challenged and stimulated. One student, Katie Keough, complains, "How could anybody rise to my level when I have no idea what my level is because nobody ever forced me to find it? Instead, we're bored because we're pulled down to the level of the least intelligent and the least interested."

As for the self-esteem of teenagers, the vaunted aim of this whole movement, it too has suffered at the hands of adults. A student named Jake Anderson points to an unintended disparity: "If they're so worried about making less intelligent people feel bad, why don't they apply that same principle and eliminate the A Squad of the basketball team?" Reilly Liebhard, by far the school's brightest student, wraps the whole issue in a nutshell, saying, "The problem is that the school is so focused on protecting the egos of students that it breeds mediocrity. If you never let anyone fail, how can they not be afraid of failure?"

Burkett's barbs are not limited to teachers and administrators. Boomer parents are taken to task for undermining the school's efforts to hold kids accountable for the work they do, or fail to do. One teacher says, "[The parents] are this antiauthority generation and they're still mad at authority figures from when they were in high school. So now we're that authority and they have to protect dear little Muffy from the mean teachers who don't appreciate her." Burkett reports a parent calling a teacher to scold him for the way he treated her son. "When you wake him up in class, it's humiliating," the mother chided.

In talking with the teachers, Burkett finds a common thread of frustration in dealing with parents. One teacher is accused of ruining a child's life because she made the student redo an assignment. The school's attendance secretary has grown so accustomed to parents calling to lie about the reason for their child's absence that she has a well-established repertoire of sarcastic comebacks. Parents complain that a member of the history department has higher grading standards than the other teachers in the department. The teachers feel stymied by the contradictory message from parents: Make my kid smart enough to get into an Élite college, but don't make him work too hard to get there. Burkett believes changes in our schools can only come from parents who are willing to let teachers teach, even if that means their children receive poor grades now and then. She says, "In a world of local funding and control of education, schools have become a popularity contest, and who wants to provoke two thousand parents who will decide whether you'll have money for a new building?"

Passing on faith

Burkett's report makes it clear that we are failing our children academically. Tragically, we are failing them spiritually as well. Tony Jones is the minister to youth and young adults at Colonial Church of Edina in Minnesota, as well as the author of Postmodern Youth Ministry. For Jones, the failures of Christian parents are tantamount to neglect.

Jones tells of a father who came to him troubled about his son's college choice. When Jones suggested the father set some ground rules with the son, the father replied, "I don't have the kind of relationship with my son where I say no to him."

Sadly, this was not a unique conversation. Over and over, Jones meets with parents who can't understand why their kids are in trouble, but who refuse to set the necessary limits needed to solve those problems. Jones says, "The kids I minister to are the ones whose parents are disconnected for one reason or another. Parents say they don't understand their kids, but the kids tell me their parents don't ask about their lives because they don't really want to know if their kids smoke or drink. Parents choose naÏvetÉ because it allows them to pretend that their kids are perfect."

Jones says, "Columbine should have been the World Trade Center attack of family life. It should have been a wake-up call, but parents are still unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to raise children. They are unwilling to say no to their children, to say no to cable or a computer in their kid's room."

More to the point, far too many of the parents Jones sees fail to make time to invest in the spiritual lives of their children. Jones says, "I asked my kids what kind of spiritual disciplines they see in their families. One girl—one—said she and her parents read the Bible and pray together every morning. In the five years I've been at Colonial, this is the first kid to ever have an answer to that question. Parents have outsourced the discipleship of their kids to someone else."

This, too, sends a powerful message to children. When even their souls are a commodity to be shopped out to someone else, it's not surprising that teenagers feel their parents are too busy for them or unsure of their ability to parent. And teenagers can smell fear. As soon as they sense that they've gained control, as soon as they believe that adults are afraid to challenge them, it's human nature for them to push until they find the boundary. They may complain about the limits parents set on them, but several studies, including one from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, show that teens desperately need and want the sense of control and safety that healthy boundaries provide.

Growing grownups

For some reason, we have come to believe that our duties as parents cease, or at least decrease, once our children become teenagers. We invest a great deal of time and money in becoming "good" parents when our children are young. We read the books, take the classes, subscribe to the magazines. But once kids hit 13, parents tend to shift into autopilot. Maybe we figure that the decade-plus we've invested in them ought to be enough. Maybe it's because we're deservedly tired by the time our kids hit their teens. Or perhaps it's because we, like our kids, have come to believe the cultural myth that kids today are more sophisticated than we were as teens and that they are right when they tell us we don't get it. So slowly, without really meaning to, we become more passive, gradually relinquishing our role as parents. Sadly, this tends to happen just when our teenagers need us most.

In The Myth of Maturity, Apter focuses most of her research on late adolescents—18- to 24-year-olds. Yet her findings have much to tell us about our expectations of younger teens. She notes that because children now reach puberty significantly earlier than past generations—sometimes as early as nine—and seem more culturally savvy than we were as teens, we assume that they reach emotional maturity more quickly as well. But Apter notes, "Though they grow up more quickly, they do not so quickly become grown-up. Children may race into puberty, but they take longer than ever to reach adulthood."

Despite our assumption that teens are desperate to become adults, it will be years before they truly become independent. Apter cites one study which reports that 58 percent of young adults between the ages of 22 and 24 are living with their parents. In the meantime, Apter makes clear, the process of growing up, of becoming independent, is psychologically wrenching. She writes, "[Young people] fear that in creating this new distance between themselves and their families, between childhood and adulthood, they will never again be protected by their parents' emotional holding. In the early stages of this transition from adolescence to adulthood, the ambivalence (both wanting to leave and panicking at being away) is often intolerable … A young adult continues to be dependent on his parents' love, admiration, and approval to define and stabilize his sense of self." If this is true for 20-year-olds, how much more true is it for 15-year-olds?

If we do get involved in their lives, we try to be their friends, to be the sympathetic listening ear we think they want. But in Jones's experience kids don't simply want adult sympathy, they want adult help. He says, "I've got a girl in my group, Emily, whose friend is Jewish. This friend thinks Emily is cramming her faith in her face. When Emily comes to me, she's not looking for sympathy. She's asking me what to do. I do her a real injustice if I don't give her my opinion."

In a broader sense, the church has done its own damage to today's youth. Jones believes that the church has sold kids short emotionally and intellectually. Like the quagmire of public education so clearly on display in Burkett's book, many modern youth programs have become little more than social clubs centered on wacky games and mini-worship services that are like microcosms of high school, complete with the cool kids leading praise choruses and the fringe kids goofing off in the back row. Youth leaders, like so many of their fellow pastors, have to deal with the pressure to create a seeker-sensitive environment that can still offer the depth even established Christians need to grow. And they have to accomplish all this with few adults to help. Don't believe we've left our kids to fend for themselves? Ask your youth pastor how easy it is to find adult volunteers.

Jones is convinced that kids are more than willing to ask tough questions and have them answered. "We can't dumb down the faith for kids," says Jones. "We can and should teach them about worship, the creeds, the doctrine of justification. We need to inhabit the narrative of the Scriptures. The richness and fullness of the Bible needs to be recovered, not boiled down to 'Jesus is your best friend.'" Just as the students at Prior Lake High School admitted they wished their teachers had been tougher on them, Jones finds that his students thrive when they are challenged to think about the deeper issues of faith.

The church has also failed to prepare parents for the arduous task of raising Christian children. As part of the confirmation process for eighth graders, Jones holds a class for the parents, answering any questions they have. He says he's been surprised at how little these adults know about the basics of the faith. "We go through the Apostle's Creed and I tell parents how I've explained it to their kids. When I get to the part about the holy catholic and apostolic church and I explain what that means, I've had parents—people raised in our church—say, 'I always wondered why we talked about Catholics.' I find that parents have the same questions as the kids. Small groups are great, but adults need to be taught the depth of the gospel."

Few churches emphasize accountability, especially within the family. We tend to hold the contemporary cultural values of discretion and privacy over the Christian values of helping our brothers and sisters live out the faith. Jones tells a story that's all too rare. He and his wife are part of a small group. One of the other men in the group was an investment banker who spent several days a week on the road, leaving his wife at home with three small children. One Sunday, the woman showed up at the small group meeting exhausted and emotionally spent. She explained that her husband had just returned from one trip and was at his office preparing for another the next day. Jones and the other men in the group hopped in a car, drove to the banker's office, and took him out for coffee where they confronted him as his brothers in Christ, asking him to consider the toll his work was taking on his family. The man has since switched to a less time-consuming job. The willingness of these men to involve themselves in someone else's business might seem shocking to some, but it is precisely the kind of loving conversation we need to be willing to have with one another if we want families to thrive.

If we want to see our young people stand up to the immense pressures they face each day, we must equip them with our belief that they are capable of doing so. That means helping them identify their gifts and talents and helping them nurture those gifts. It means remaining emotionally present in their lives even when they seem to be pushing us away, not shying away from their tough questions, looking beyond their seeming disrespect, their hyperactivity, their baggy pants, and seeing children who still need the guidance and love of caring adults.

Carla Barnhill is the editor of Christian Parenting Today magazine.

Discussed in this Essay:

» American High, directed by R. J. Cutler (pbs, 2001).

» Another Planet: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High School, by Elinor Burkett (HarperCollins, 2001).

» The Myth of Maturity: What Teenagers Need from Parents to Become Adults, by Terri Apter (Norton, 2001).

» Postmodern Youth Ministry: Exploring Cultural Shift, Creating Holistic Connections, Cultivating Authentic Community, by Tony Jones (Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2001).

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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