Fathers and Sons: The Politics of Youth

Extract

The concept of the “generation gap,” like so many notions used to explain the present dislocations in society, has gained wide currency because it is a fundamentally soothing idea. To troubled adults it conveys the implication that the alienation between themselves and their children is a wholly natural phenomenon, inevitable and therefore healthy. It relieves the parent from the need to worry. For the rebellious young themselves the term has ideological uses, again through the implication that what they do is natural and normal, inevitable and desirable.