Youth's Fulfilment of Adult Prophecies

Abstract

The quickness of youth's response to social change makes parents and other adults nervous, and triggers the expectation that a change in youthful manners will lead inevitably to a change in morals. Since this expectation can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, adults can create the problems they seek to avoid if they communicate to their children their expectations of antisocial behaviour. To counterbalance the sanctions of a permissive society, youth needs adult confidence in its capacity to set its own limits. If adults have confidence in youth in a world of change, youth will have confidence in itself.