WTF? Adult young daughters lives are a trainwreck?

They grew up watching The Kardashians

I wouldn't say it's the majority but it does appear to be mostly the daughters, the son's generally are much more settled and seem to have less problems over all.

"They grew up watching The Kardashians" seems like a throwaway comment on the surface, but I think it may be closer to the mark than people think. A lot of people grew up watching reality TV thinking it was indeed reality. Reality TV has been manipulated by editing and artificially induced drama since its inception. For young minds who grew up thinking that was how it was to be rich or desirable was extremely damaging.

I, thankfully, never got into Real World, Jersey Shore, or any of that. What little I do know is mostly through pop culture osmosis. I recall one article, which interviewed the staff physician describing the house the Jersey Shore lived in as "a herpes nest." Yet, we have a generation or two who grew up thinking that was how to be famous and desirable.

You can also look at the decriminalization of weed and psychedelics. These are absolutely gateway drugs. I started with joints, and enjoyed getting stoned and looked for bigger and better highs with more potent weed and drugs. Weed became acid. Acid became X. I tried shrooms once, but didn't get much. I've also done coke twice, but was so drunk and stoned that I don't know how much I got off that. However, when I was doing all of that, the quality was often a crap shoot and you always had to watch out for narcs. Now, weed is available everywhere and the gateway is more open than ever.

Finally, you have to look at the parents. Bad parenting, absentee parenting, parental conflicy all led to the poor upbringing of these children. If the parents had perhaps taken the time to understand and be understood by their children, then they could have been able to guide their children to better decisions and outcomes. Permissiveness creates a consequence-free environment. A lack of discipline and boundaries allows minds which do not know any better to go wild. "depression, anxiety, drug use, promiscuity, thug life..." is a predictable result.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy

Well…ask yourself this: how many of those train wreck girls are doin’ the sugar baby thing?

Now, if they were climbin’ on and off of a rick that would be helpin’ their mental health. But imagine some poor girl climbin’ on and off of Skifredo.

Well, not Skifredo because he’s a loser livin’ behind a Starbucks. But he also pretends to be a fourth-rate divorce lawyer with a degree from America’s worst law school. Somewhere there has got to be an actual fourth-rate divorce lawyer with a degree from America’s shittiest law school. And said lawyer probably has a sugar baby. Imagine what it is like to be said sugar baby.

Mystery solved. ROAR!!!

I started practicing family law in 1982 and have had a ringside seat in the changes to society since then. I still work full-time +, as I always have, but my one response to changes in society is to just spend all my money and save nothing. That is my view of the future of this country. THis country was founded by conservative, very religious people. At the beginning and continuing until about 50 years ago, people who emigrated here were usually people who had abilities, work ethic, and the desire to succeed, but were shut out by the powers that controlled their home-land. That has changed.

The loss of religion here killed society and I say this as someone who thinks religion and the belief in God is beyond fucked up. Religion controlled people and 99% of all people need to be controlled in some form. The loss of religion also killed the nuclear family, the successful foundation of virtually every successful society on earth throughout history. Here is the plain and simple fact people won't and don't mention: While not a guarantee, children raised in a traditional, nuclear family, with married parents, do best. 42 years I have yet to see a study that proves otherwise. The news media changed and works to cause strife, anger and bad feelings, so they can make a buck. I have more respect for the corner drug dealer than I do any journalist, because at least they are open about what they do. Almost 75% of Americans polled in the 1960s thought Walter Cronkite, a newsperson, was the most honest man in America in the 1960s and now news people are just fucking liars; all of them.

We now elect criminals like Biden and Trump, not people like George Bush 1, who had a history of serving the public starting with the being the youngest American aviator to ever been shot down in a war, throughout heading the CIA, Ambassador to China etc. We have despicable cunts like Ilhan Omer telling us what is to be an American and this fucking fraud George Santos in congress.

Immigration is the death knell here. We are letting people come here illegally to collect welfare. Immigration is like Vitamin A; without any you eventually die, take too much and you will die. We are dying as a country, name some other place on earth where foreigners are allowed to enter freely, collect benefits, vote. They aren't coming here to be Americans, just foreigners looking for a handout and they are killing this land.

Lastly, remember DeTocqueville. He was a young, French aristocrat who in 1835 and again in 1840, published his observations of America. His democracy in America is still valid. He observed us and learned about us. A few of his observations: There are many men of principle in both parties, but no party with principles. It is not an ever expanding list of "rights"; the "right" to education; the "right" to healthcare; the "right" to food and shelter. That's not freedom, thats dependency; those are not rights, those are the ratiosn of slavery; hay and a barn for human cattle. Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal as slaves, than unequal as free men. My favorite: The American Republic will endure until Congress discovers it can bribe the public, with the public's money" Fuck you Joe Biden.

The internet gives us all 'main character syndrome'. Some more than others lol. Young peoples' heads probably filled with so many fake instagram statuses that they feel like they are missing out on life. They are too young to realize that people only put their good side forward on social media, and most heavy social media users are depressed as fuck with the constant comparison to others. I only hope they learn one day to not compare themselves to others, but to their previous selves.

As a father of two daughters and I consider myself in the upper income range, I think the problem lies with your friends not their daughters. My oldest goes to an expensive private college (85k a year is a lot to me), her friends are driven to succeed not at all like the ones you describe. While it is true that as a parent you can do everything right and still have a kid fuck up, that is not the norm. You can generally tell what kind of tree you have by the fruit it bears.

If you’re complaining about “kids these days” you’re hanging around the wrong kids. I agree that society has gone to shit over the last few decades, and this is reflected in our children. But I am ever so grateful that by luck or design, my daughters and their friends are not anything like what the OP describes. So yes, I may have noticed the trend described by OP, but there are still a lot of really smart, successful, and well adjusted young women out there who shouldn’t be overlooked.

Pretty deep post from skibum for a strip club website, but I agree 100%

“The loss of religion here killed society and I say this as someone who thinks religion and the belief in God is beyond fucked up“

I happen to agree. I’m probably a hypocrite. I grew in a rather devout Catholic home. We absolutely never missed Mass on Sunday. I only stopped going to church in my 40’s because it seemed really stupid to go to strip club on Saturday night, leave at closing then turn around and try to get up for 9 am church

Religious fanatics may be responsible for a lot what’s wrong with the world, but overall churches did seem to contribute to the strength of the family.

Every generation has looked at the next generation with worry. Trends course correct, pendulums swing back. The current generation of under 18 girls have the idiotic gender identity politics weighing on them, but they'll ditch that as the grow into young women and come up with their own stupid obsessions.

Wringing your hands over the the next generation being lost is more an indication that you're old than of anything else.

My parents started making a lot of money when I was twelve and we moved to an upper middle-class neighborhood. A lot of the teens there were pretty spoiled. The parents were working all the time and not around a lot. The combination of unsupervised teens with extra spending money due to having rich parents led to much drug use. I never really fit in because I spent the first dozen years of my life being poorer and was less spoiled than them.

I will respectfully disagree with Drew, although until the past 30 years he was right about generational divides. We no longer course correct; we wipe out history and replace it with lies. We have the bullshit that any statue or recognition of a past event somehow conflates with support of the event, when it is merely acknowledging the event so that others may learn from it. The Viet Nam memorial doesn't make the war right, it reminds us of the war and all who died in it and for what? We cannot name anything after Robert E. Lee because back in the day when many people owned slaves, he too owned slaves? So we ignore the fact he was one of the greatest military tacticians in the history of the world; that he left West Point and did not serve the United States, because he was a Virginian and under our system, we are a collection of states and not a vast monolith like some other countries? Do we ignore that he was beloved by the men who he led and that their love was so intense they fought harder and willingly died for a cause that affected very few of them personally. Do we ignore Orwell who wrote: The past was erased. The erasure forgotten. The lie become the truth? That is what is happening now when we accept garbage and lies like the 1619 project which is based on zero facts as "history". Orwell warned us of this. Young people who grow up on t he internet have all the history at their hands, and they know nothing. They accept the lie that CRT is black history, when if you changed black to white it would look like the KKK handbook and is just part of the race baiting money machine. I knew who Harriet Tubman was when I was in second grade. I knew that Doctor Charles Drew was black; invented the process to create, store and save plasma; and that in a horrific twist died of blood loss due to injuries suffered when a white hospital wouldn't treat a black man by the 4th grade. If you are like me and believe the revolution began before Lexington/Concord (I peg the start date at 3/5/1770), you would be amazed that no one I have asked in the past 25 years knows the name Crispus Attucks. Not one white, black, or other person I have asked knows that the first American to die was a freeman, a whaler, of African and native American descent, named Crispus Attucks. We learn nothing in school. especially when taught by unionized teachers about anything any longer. They indoctrinate children to hate this country; to fear self-sufficiency; to fear freedom; to fear and hate those who think differently. Before the loudmouths here bitch at my last comment, my mother was a unionized teacher, who after 40 years quit when she was forced to stop making her class recite the pledge of allegiance daily.

Now in true PL fashion I am going to shave my pubes and head out to Desires, smoking weed the whole fucking 48 mile drive.

I think skibum and I are pretty close age-contemporaries, and have a similar take on the changes we’ve observed in the family and society over the last few decades. I don’t disagree about the struggles that many young women and men face today. Being one that grew up in a religious household, and even having a compartmentalized hobby life as an adult, I’ve always been fascinated by dancers, what brought them to do this work, self-esteem issues, etc. Some seem to be incredibly well-adjusted, very confident in their own skin, are purpose-driven, and will some day successfully move on from dancing. However, others are living closer to the edge, have substance abuse issues, loser boyfriends, etc. I knew a dancer a few yeas ago that seemed totally together to me, but committed suicide just a few months after I met her. I tend to develop long-term regulars, so I like to get to know dancers on a more personal level if they are OK with that. Those dancers that are moms usually seem to have their head on straight, but those that are younger and single tend to live a party-girl lifestyle as long as they can make it last. Hard to know how their mental health is doing under all of that.

I sincerely hope my perception is skewed by my advanced age because, holy shit, the issues I'm hearing from friends and coworkers are troubling.

"I need to find rehab for my daughter." "Daughters thug boyfriend threatened her with gun." "My daughter desperately needs mental help but all doctors are booked up for months" "Daughter hasn't spoken to me in two years and I don't know why."

Most describe and alphabet soup of psych issues thier children have.

Yea, I hope it's just because I'm an fuck and want them all off my lawn.

@Ski:“ Now in true PL fashion I am going to shave my pubes and head out to Desires, smoking weed the whole fucking 48 mile drive.”

Righteous!!!

Saw some recent news that America now leads the world with 23% of children are raised without fathers. This is kids that have no men in their life at all. Not divorce or baby daddy. No men in the kid's life at all.

It is ignorant in the extreme to wave off concern that today's young adults and youths are maladjusted. The signs that this is true are everywhere. How many kids at laundry detergent in your generation? Who remembers the stories from Band of Brothers about rejected military applicants committing suicide? Does anyone really think a hack like Ihlan Omar or AOC could have been elected to Congress even 30 years ago? (FWIW, I was not old enough to vote 30 years ago). Political Correctness had only begun to enter the public lexicon 30 years ago and it was roundly ridiculed: vertically-challenged, handicapable, non-sighted. Now it has mutated and grown into CRT and ESG.

Things keep getting worse because our politicians lack the will to enforce laws that already exist and the electorate lacks the will to hold them accountable (by denying them reelection). Our election laws as they are written may work, but they are not enforced so we don't know. To stop crime, you need to arrest, prosecute, and punish the offenders- white collar and street hoodlums. If the military cannot meet its recruitment goals, you have the draft. If you take out a loan, you pay it back. When you discover a foriegn espionage operation (TikTok), you shut it down. And who is the number 1 driving force behind open borders, ACAB/Defund, anti-military,

... loan forgiveness, and online influencers? Millennials and Gen Z. There are exceptions, as all generalizations are false, but go ahead and try to rebut the logic.

Life was simple in the 1950s. The sexual revolution hadn’t started. Most people married in their early twenties. Single parent households were rare. Most people were actively involved in an organized religion. All of this was true for all races.

There was no social media making people feel like failures. There was no shame in a wife who chose to stay home to raise a family. If you had a job, you could afford a small house, one car, one TV, food, and an annual vacation. For most people, that felt like prosperity.

Masculinity was a virtue. There were two genders. No one worried about climate change. We locked up criminals. We respected the police.

For most people, life made sense and there was a clear path to happiness. Get an education. Get a job. Marry. Buy a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs. Raise a family. Get involved in the community. Stay out of trouble. Stay connected to your extended family.

Now, we are told masculinity is toxic, single parents are to be admired, criminals need compassion, all whites are racist, and the key to happiness is to live like the Kardashians.

How’s that working out ?

From an early age wveryone is told they can make it as long as they want it and work hard. Then reality shows otherwise. Social media and reality TV portray inrealistic expectations and instant gratification.

When they're on their own they have early life crises from realizing everything they've been sold is a delusional lie.

Well I guess that’s it then. America is doomed, we’ll all be standing in bread lines for the gulag by 2025. Sell your house and build a bunker in the woods, THE END IS NIGHHHHHHHHH.

Ffs

Society is falling apart. A lot of younger people feel a loss of control and nihilism. Everyone was told life would get better that each generation would be better off. No one ever dreamed of this.

I had a 4th grade teacher who claimed to be psychic. She got fired for scaring kids. But she predicted everything. A black president then another great depression like era

In the 1920s, Hemingway wrote about the lost generation, and nihilism was elevated to a social movement in the 70s. In the 50s we had McCarthyism and in the 80s the Gordon gecko generation came of age alongside AIDS. This doesn’t even get into the moral panics like ritualized abuse (70s), satanic music (80s), sex abuse recalled in “therapy” (90s), etc. every generation has its problems and over thought worries, and every generation has its old people wringing their hands over how THIS IS THE END.

Human beings have carried on for 500k+ years, and human society for 12k+ years, and barring an asteroid strike we will adjust and continue. Change makes people uncomfortable. Imagine what people in the 50‘s would have thought of ski’s awesome road-trip he has in mind for today: driving high as shit on the devils week, to consort with prostitutes in a den of iniquity. THE DEVILS WORK IS COMPLETE in Massachusetts, and now society shall fall!

But it won’t.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households." - Socrates

Life goes on. Old people been bitching about the younger generation since Adam.

I am very good friends with a very conservative family. Two daughters 27 and 29. Both have marketing degrees. Both cannot hold jobs for more than 3 months. Both live at home. Both have cars given by Dad. They have NO expenses.

When they "work" from home they are banking every penny. They also spend all day when they are "working" posting to IG and Tiktok. Some days they don't even pretend to work. When they get fired, the parents tell me they were the best employee the company had and are going to sue! They spend 6 months burning through the money they banked. It is spent on shopping and expensive nights out with friends. When the money is gone, they get another job.

To give you an idea of the maturity, the father usually uses connections to get them the job. That well is running dry with their sporadic work history. If you talk to them, they complain that "boys" do not call them and ask them out (BTW one is a 9 and the other a 7). I asked one how her career was coming along and she responded by telling me how many followers she has on social media channels (nowhere near an influencer). They are stuck in their teenage years. I expect my update in 3-4 years would be that nothing has changed except they are now an 8 and a 6.

Parents in general are enabling this behavior. They got into this mode with COVID work at home and now have no exit strategy. Get them out of the house and MAKE them fend for themselves.

And the need to get the hell off my lawn.

@Drew - no one is saying the world is ending you drama queen. With 100k overdose deaths, plunging birth rate and marriage rate. Epidemic of suicides and mental health issues...it's a bit of a reach to brush that off as old farts bitching. Something is broken.

^ I don’t know where you are, but both of my kids turned out great, and I see lots of terrific young people, all the time working in the businesses around here, most are happy energetic and doing just fine.

Sancho, Socrates never said that.

I will say one thing in defense of adult children living at home: even apartments in southwest Florida are not affordable. My neighbor sells apartment turn flooring services and another good friend is a maintenance super, both are talking about how unaffordable nice apartments are. Even the shitty apartments are barely affordable. The midrange apartments are booked out months in advance.

as far as goldmonger's friends, families in that situation should charge their children rent and utilities and force them to share in the chores. At the very least, they need to be held to be responsible and contributing members of the household. Coddling them does no good to anyone.

Drew, like most liberals, is incapable of having balanced and carefully nuanced conversations. Most intelligent people I speak with agree that the bar has been lowered so far that it is hard to envision how we might recover. There was a story in the news about a teacher who was hospitalized in an attack by a ninth grader - a girl! Another about an SRO breaking up a fight who was body-slammed by a student watching the fight. There is no rational argument to demonstrate on a right-track/wrong-track debate, we are definitely on the wrong-track. Lone Wolf is dead-on when he said something is broken.

@twentyfuve - my kid turned out great and I know many young adults that are kicking ass too. Not sure what your point is.

"the bar has been lowered so far that it is hard to envision how we might recover" - gamma

And I'M the drama queen, LOL.

Yeah Gamma, really balanced and nuanced. Keep wringing your hands, white supremacist grandma.

"Sancho, Socrates never said that."

Learned something new today! Looks like this quote was actually from Kenneth John Freeman in 1907. Those kids came out OK I think

Few comments on stuff above…

When I graduated college I had worked through out that time and saved a significant amount for a college kid. Got married a year later lived in an apartment for 2 years then paid cash for a lot which was enough to work as a down payment to build a house and avoid PMI. Moved back in with my parents while the house was being built to save money. Interest rates then were higher than they are today. If I were to build the same house today it would cost triple. Lots in my area aren’t a whole lot more expensive than they were then.

With the money I saved back then compared to todays costs I don’t see how I could pull it off, or if I could I wouldn’t be getting much lesser of a house. My siblings fear how my nieces and nephews will be able to pull it off and I’m not even talking about their work ethic, just financially.

As for the girls like Goldmonger was talking about, they just need to marry rich. It works! One of my siblings has a niece on their spouses side who graduated college with some bullshit religious studies masters degree, about $140,000 dollars in student loan debt, sat at home on her moms couch for a year because every job she could get was “beneath her.” Met a pharmacist and is getting married. She’ll never work a day in her life again and will be knocked up a week after the wedding. Her debt will be that guys problem now. She is very pretty though so at least he’s getting a hot wife.

@shailynn - I know another that is marrying or at least mistressing into money. She is 25 with an IT degree. Got a job and within a month moved in with the 66 year old president/owner of her company. She is now a vice president. No pun intended. She showed me her office, which connects to the president's office. Impressive. I could not help but notice the oversized leather sofa.

As Jordan Peterson says, this is a generation that speaks about what they deserve but doesn’t realize they also have responsibilities. It’s the responsibilities to our family, friends, employer, and community that gives purpose to life.

I work at a very big tech company, many 10's of thousands of employees. I am surrounded by women in their 20's. They are super fucking smart, hold CS or math bachelor's degrees at a minimum, and a big chunk have advanced degrees. They make a ton of money, and are very motivated. Some of the are also hardasses that nobody crosses up. I went to grad school with a cohort of 200, about 1/3 female, and at the time all were in their mid-late 20's. Today they are vp's, svp's, and ceos. A few started small lifestyle companies overseas and live modestly but windsurf or do yoga or whatever everyday. Hell, I meet strippers giving me handjobs who have their shit together: saving money, investing, buying real estate.

Sure you can always find some twit with a feminist media studies degree who won't get a job, acts like they're living in a rap video, sits on their parents' couch, has a mess of diagnoses, yadda yadda. But I bet your sample is more of a one off than the groups of women I'm around.

The young ladies of today are just fine.

They do need to drop all the gender pronoun horseshit, though.

OP seems to live in Arizona. If around Phoenix/Scottsdale I would just share that I’ve observed some really bad life choices from people in that area - over spending, ridiculously nice cars which presumably many are borrowing heavily to finance, over emphasis on quick fixes to improve looks via plastic surgery. Emphasis on side hustles, quick buck, etc. The area has drawn more and more people with similarly shallow values which leads to a shit ton of bad choices being made by the adults which get passed along to the kids.

Lots if generalizations here and these same dynamics exist everywhere - I’m just saying that I perceive the concentration to be way higher there based on my 20+ visits over the years and some good friends that live there.

Wild swings in housing values have led to people to thinking they have a lot of money via equity.

For those saying everyone thing will work out because every generation has it's flaws, Empires do fall. Egypt, Greek, Rome, China, etc. We're not immune to this.

But young women do seem to be doing better than young men currently. Currently I think there are more female candidates for lawyers and medical doctors. Women want to be the type of men they admire.

Just because women may be financially or professionally successful doesn't mean they are fine. There's still the matter of family life and it's something too many successful women miss out on.

45% of women ages 25 to 44 are expected to be single and childless by year 2030. This up from 41% in 2018.

Yup they are very fucked up bc they are never made to take responsibility never allowed to fail and must maintain an upper class lifestyle weather or not the can afford it. Entitled and irresponsible.

There were two phases of feminism.

The first phase fought to get women all the rights, options, and opportunities that men had. That succeeded by the 1970s. It opened up career options.

The second phase told women that they could only be happy if they had successful careers, that there was something called the patriarchy that conspired to keep them down, that hooking up with lots of men was a healthy thing, and that women who chose to stay at home were second class citizens. That view has caused great misery.

Kids these days are fine. Just like many said, just when you think there is no hope, you will meet some kids that think they are going to change the world (and I hope most of them do). My wife teaches seniors in High School, and there are some very impressive kids, many of which have overcome signicant odds against them. There are also some kids that have zero work ethic and have lived a very priveledged life. Focus on the positive.

^an interesting question is: how many of the former and latter types are recent immigrants?