|
“Hold on a minute, my
daughter’s on the other line. She said it’s important.”
We’d been on the phone
for some time, mainly just catching up. Like me, my friend
discourages his kids from calling at work unless it’s urgent. Like
mine, I imagined his offspring have a different notion of urgency
than their Dad. I’ve had calls on everything from sick goldfish to
stolen (read “lost”) homework, but rarely anything that makes a blip
on my crisis scale. My wait on hold, I chuckled, probably had
something to do with a fatherly harangue on priorities.
Wrong.
“Brent, I’ve got to go.
A friend of hers just killed himself. Man, he was only 13.”
I felt like I’d been
kicked in the stomach. Thirteen. I didn’t know this boy, but the
idea that a youngster just beginning ... I couldn’t complete the
thought.
According to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate for persons
aged 15-24 jumped from 4.5 per 100,000 in 1950 to 13.2 in 1990.
During the same period, the suicide rate for females aged 15-24 rose
from 2.6 per 100,000 to 3.9; the rate for males went from 6.5 to a
hideous 22.0 per 100,000.
The obvious question is
“why?” Many causes have been suggested, including increased drug
and alcohol use, depression, family disruptions, peer pressure, and
lack of direction.
Perhaps Mike Emme,
co-founder of the teen-suicide prevention agency Light to Life,
summed it up best: “The word we’re getting from kids is a lot of it
is stress-related—the need for them to know exactly who they are
supposed to be and where they are going—the pressure of finding
one’s identity. Those were issues we really didn’t have to deal
with in my generation.”
It’s fair to disclose
that my professional qualifications in this area are approximately
zip, but Emme’s observation that older generations didn’t wrestle
with identity issues about nails it. My grandfather was born before
the Spanish-American War, served in World War I, and survived the
great depression and the civilian deprivations of World War II.
Many of his peers were crippled by polio or died of smallpox,
tuberculosis, whooping cough, or other maladies most of us know only
from history books. Forty percent of the population farmed, and did
so from dawn to dark. There were no child labor laws. Their
average life expectancy at birth was about 45 years, due partly to
an appalling child mortality rate.
There’s nothing like a
daily fight for survival to give one a sense of purpose. If an idle
mind is truly the Devil’s workshop, my grandfather’s generation
didn’t give ol’ Beelzebub much room to maneuver. They also
benefited from a spiritual grounding that we’re surrendering as we
transfer our faith to ourselves.
I don’t buy the patter
that today’s youth have it tougher than ever; it may just be the
abundance of goods and leisure they’ve inherited that robs them of
meaning. While there are certainly individuals and groups that are
struggling, each American generation since World War II has had more
free time and, by most standards, luxury, than the one before.
So what’s the solution?
It beats me. I have nothing but compassion for families that suffer
this wrenching loss and would be mortified if anything I’ve written
is taken as blame. I don’t believe anyone’s children are immune,
including mine.
I for one am not willing
to revert to the conditions my grandfather’s generation worked so
hard to overcome. But perhaps less really is more: less unearned
material things, less self-focus, less idle time. Short of
dismantling the indoor plumbing and sending them to work on a farm,
spiritual direction, prayer, and a little educational deprivation
might be the best things we can do for our children.
|
