The Tragic Cycle of Generational Wisdom Loss
Across the vast sweep of human history, one pattern stubbornly persists: each new generation believes it sees more clearly than the one before. In pursuit of progress, new ways are forged—but often at the cost of discarding the treasures of the past along with their mistakes. What should be a careful pruning too frequently becomes a wild swing of the axe.
This dilemma is nowhere more vivid than in parenting.
Boomer Parents: Tough Love Rooted in Survival
Baby Boomer parents (born 1946–1964) were heirs to the survival ethos forged by the Great Depression and World War II. Raised by parents who intimately knew scarcity, fear, and hardship, Boomers absorbed a profound, often unspoken lesson: life is hard, and resilience is essential.
The parenting they received reflected this reality. Independence, toughness, self-reliance, and respect for authority were primary values. Children played freely outdoors, solved disputes, faced consequences without parental intervention, and grew sturdy through healthy doses of frustration and failure. Life’s difficulties were seen not as tragedies to be avoided but as training grounds for maturity.
Even as cultural figures like Dr. Spock (not Mr. Spock!) introduced more flexibility, urging parents to trust their instincts and show affection, the underlying structure of toughness remained. In the Boomer childhood, love was often practical, not performative. Safety meant more than coddling: it meant preparing for a future where life could be unfair.
The Pendulum Swings: From Toughness to Tenderness
But resilience bred rebellion. As Boomers came of age during the 1960s and 70s, they rejected the rigid structures of authority. Movements for civil rights, feminism, and anti-war activism challenged obedience, conformity, and the silencing of emotion. Self-expression, autonomy, and emotional honesty became the new guiding stars.
Parenting shifted accordingly. Where previous generations emphasized discipline, the emphasis moved to nurturing self-esteem. Protecting the child’s emotional world became as important as protecting their physical well-being.
The insights of this movement were real and necessary. Children are emotional beings, not just future adults. Abuse, neglect, and authoritarian parenting had left scars that needed recognition and healing.
But, as often happens, the correction became an overcorrection.
Therapeutic Culture: The Cult of Self-Esteem
By the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of therapeutic culture enshrined self-esteem as the cornerstone of healthy development. Praise was seen as the fertilizer of flourishing, and criticism was viewed as potentially traumatic. Parenting advice centered around positive reinforcement, affirmation, and emotional validation.
Participation trophies proliferated. “Everyone’s a winner” became a familiar mantra. Failure wasn’t to be learned from; it was to be prevented.
In seeking to protect children’s feelings, some parents unwittingly deprived them of the chance to build authentic self-worth—the kind that comes not from endless praise but from encountering difficulty, persevering, and discovering inner strength.
The Age of Fear: Helicopter and Snowplow Parenting
By the 1990s and 2000s, societal anxiety escalated. Rising fears of crime, economic instability, and academic competition transformed parenting again. The term “helicopter parent” emerged: parents hovering constantly, managing their children’s challenges, and shielding them from adversity.
Today, “snowplow parenting” goes even further: Obstacles are cleared before a child encounters them. Failure, frustration, and disappointment—once considered necessary for growth—are treated as threats to be eliminated.
Children are meticulously scheduled, constantly supervised, and rarely left to navigate life’s inevitable bumps unaided. The result is a generation often praised for their emotional intelligence but sometimes ill-equipped to face hardship without crumbling.
The Arc: From Resilience to Fragility
The arc across generations tells a clear but sobering story:
- From survival toughness born of global catastrophe…
- To rebellion against authoritarianism and emotional repression…
- To therapeutic culture and the elevation of self-esteem…
- To hypervigilance and risk aversion born of collective anxiety.
What began as a survival strategy hardened into toughness, softened into emotional attunement, and mutated into overprotection.
The Perennial Truths of Raising a Human Being
Despite the cultural shifts and historical forces, certain truths about raising a child endure beyond trends:
- A child needs to feel safe, seen, and loved.
- A child needs both support and challenge.
- A child needs freedom to explore and a framework of structure to return to.
These are not relics of a past age. They are perennial principles, recognized by every culture that has fostered healthy, flourishing human beings. When parenting loses this balance—when it leans entirely toward toughness or entirely toward tenderness—children suffer the consequences.
The Tragedy of Generational Amnesia
It is not wrong to critique the past. Each generation should reexamine what it has inherited. But true evolution is not mere rejection; it is refinement. The real tragedy is that in our righteous fervor to right the wrongs of those who came before, we too often discard their hard-won wisdom alongside their flaws.
We risk undermining their strength in our rush to protect our children’s feelings. In our zeal to foster independence, we risk forsaking emotional intimacy. In seeking progress, we may sever ourselves from the roots that nourish real growth.
What Would True Evolution Look Like?
Imagine a generation that corrected the mistakes of its ancestors without losing the treasures they earned. It would require:
- Humility: the ability to acknowledge that we might not know better, only differently.
- Reverence: a willingness to honor what worked, not just rage against what didn’t.
- Discernment: the wisdom to distinguish what was essential from what was excessive.
Evolution, not revolution.
To truly advance, we must carry forward the best of the past even as we shed what no longer serves. We must learn to hold tenderness and toughness in the same hand, to affirm the heart without coddling the spirit.
The Baby and the Bathwater
Parenting is but one arena where this generational cycle plays out. Politics, education, and spirituality all mirror the same pendulum swing between rigid adherence and reckless rejection.
Actual progress requires a more measured rhythm: a listening backward and a looking forward. A recognition that the past, like the present, was made by imperfect people striving toward wisdom—and sometimes stumbling upon it.
If we fail to do this, we will continue the tragic cycle of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and wondering, generation after generation, why we are still so thirsty.
The Enneagram World of the Child was written precisely to help interrupt this cycle. Rather than offering another set of rules or strategies, it invites parents to understand the subtle emotional blueprints that shape a child’s early development. It acknowledges that resilience, sensitivity, toughness, and tenderness all have their place in a child’s growth.
By weaving timeless wisdom with modern psychological insight, the book seeks to preserve the treasures of the past—resilience, adaptability, strength—while honoring the essential gifts of emotional awareness and connection.
It is a call to parent not from the extremes of fear or ideology but from a deep, compassionate understanding of who the child truly is—and who they are still becoming.
John Harper is a longtime teacher, guide, and human development student whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. He is the author of The Enneagram World of the Child: Nurturing Resilience and Self-Compassion in Early Life, available on Amazon.