THE CRIMINALIZATION OF YOUTH CULTURE

As teenagers, baby boomers forged a reputation for being free spirits. As
parents, they are becoming increasingly authoritarian.

The constant here is that the protest generation is highly principled,
focused on ideology, as it always has been. It's just that, now that
boomers have babies on board, the principles have changed: Drugs no longer
are tolerable, teenagers no longer should be out late at night, students no
longer should be able to wear whatever they want.

Indeed, boomer parents are making the '90s look like the '50s.

"There is an irony in a way, these onetime recreational drug users are
coming down hard on the very things they used to do," quips generational
historian Neil Howe, 46. "A generation that used to trust no one over 30
new wants to teach morals to everyone under 30."

Cities and states are restricting everything from skateboarding to
boomboxes, and experts say boomers are the main political force behind this
criminalization of youth culture. A recent survey by the Public Agenda
policy institute in New York found that two-thirds of adult Americans
describe teenagers with such negative adjectives as "rude," "irresponsible"
and "wild."

Another survey, by Princeton Survey Research Associates, found that almost
three-quarters of Americans feel that young people with low educations, dim
job prospects and poor values are a greater risk to this country than any
threat from a foreign power.

"There seems to be a wide breach between teenagers and adults," states the
Public Agenda report, "with adults looking at teens-perferably, in their
minds, from a safe distance-with anxiety and disappointment, not at all
certain that this generation bodes well for their communities or for the
country."

The recent history of parenting has been marked by contradiction: Newfound
parental freedom (the notion that parents are people too and should enjoy
life) has coincided with evolving science about how profoundly childhood
affects adulthood.

While the '50s and '60s painted the quintessential picture of conservative
American family life (albeit with dysfunction lurking beneath the surface),
psychologists and historians point to th '70s as a modern low point, when
divorce became an easy out and popular culture held little regard for
children.

In the '70s, movies depicted children as monsters and prostitutes ("Pretty
Baby") and public school funding began to unravel. (Proposition 13 in
California limited taxation for school funding.) By the '80s, psychologists
were widely critical of the effects of divorce and the freewheeling
lifestyle of some parents of the '70s.

But by then it was too late for an entire generation of young people raised
in one-parent families with too little love. Some of those very children
grew up to be demonized in the popular media (they were dubbed "child
predators") as they discovered drugs, guns and new form of family life-gangs.

But when baby boomers began having children en masse in the mid-'80, things
changed.

Minivan placards announced "Baby on Board" as parents woke up to child
abuse, school funding and child care.

"There is a sense of trying to protect kids, shelter them, entertain them,"
says historian Howe.

"Young people really need certain parameters," says Sunny Cloud, a
47-year-old-testing kit for parents. "It helps them grow up with a sense of
responsibility and respect for laws in society."

With television ratings, music warning labels and the coming of the V-chip,
"there is a feeling that boomers are fighting the culture," says Howe. "But
in way, they own the culture."

Still, as boomers have used their muscle as leaders in politics and media
to reign in childhood freedoms, some prominent voices-many of them from
boomers themselves-say the new rules go too far. Others say the rules have
become a cop-out for good old discipline, and that the it-takes-a-village
mentality needs to be supplanted by a former generation's attitude: that
good parenting starts at home.

Baby boomers are "producing a generation of bratty and out-of-control
kids," argues Wade Horn, a 42-year-old family psychologist who is president
of the National Fatherhood Initiative in Garithersburg, Md., a suburb of
Washington. "They're good at laying down rules for other children, but not
very good at laying down rules for their own."

Horn also disputes the notion that boomer fathers are more in tune with
their children than fathers past. "When four out of 10 children don't even
have a father in the household, how can you be optimistic that we're doing
it better than any other generation?" Wade asks. "It's simply not true. In
no other period have fathers been more disconnected to their children,
except in times of war and deadly disease."

"I think the promise that most of us made to ourselves, that our generation
is going to be different, hasn't paid off in the parenting," says Paul
Mones, a 45-year-old attorney and father of two who lives in Santa Monica.
"We haven't been so successful at the real stuff of being a parent. What
size are your kids' shoes? Do you help them with their homework?"

Michaael A. Males, author of "The Scapegoat Generation: America's War on
Adolescents" (Common Courage Press, 1996), has made a career of pointing
out the irony in America's anti-teen sentiment. He reports that Americans
aged 35 and older account for more than 40% of emergency room visits
involving cocaine, and that from 1980 to 1995 there was a 76% rise in
violent crime arrests of those aged 30 to 45.

"Kids today are being raised by the most violent, drug-abusing parents in
history," Males says.

Mones, who has defended many teenage criminals in court, says he thinks the
source of teen violence is the home itself. "When you look at kids who
kill, you just have to scratch the surface to find homes with mental
illness, domestic violence and child abuse."

"It's naive," says Horn, "to think that school uniforms and curfews will
make teenagers behave."