The Four Loves

p. 42

“We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation.  I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters’ side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than those of children to parents.  Who has not been the embarrassed guest at family meals where the mother or father treated their grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered to any other young people, would simply have terminated the acquaintance?  Dogmatic assertions on matters which the children understand and their elders don’t, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions, ridicule of things the young take seriously—sometimes of their religion—insulting references to their friends, all provide an easy answer to the question ‘Why are they always out?  Why do they like every house better than their home?’”