Young America More Serious, Savant Says
By MARTHA FOLEY.
VIENNA, Aug. 5, (Universal)—The hard boiled parents of today, the men and women who a few years back were the flaming youth of America, are meeting retribution. Their children are growing up the best behaved, most conservative generation of a century.
That is the view of Prof. Alfred Adler, world-famous Viennese psychologist, as he looks back at America from his native city. He has just arrived here to be made an "honored citizen" of Vienna for his psychological work in America, where classes he taught at Columbia University broke all records in size.
The little girl who poutingly says, "Oh, mother, don't smoke so much," and the small boy who reproves his mother with: "That's your second cocktail this afternoon" are all signs of the younger times, according to Prof. Adler.
"This newest generation in America is breaking away from the materialism which bound the young people of a few years ago," he told Universal Service.
"The youth of today is more serious, more romantic. The older part of it is going in for religion, ethics and politics. These growing boys and girls have a greater social conscience than their predecessors.
"As a result, they detest the hardness, the cynicism and materialistic outlook of their parents. The pendulum has swung back again. Only this time it is Victorian romanticism which is on the side of youth.
"Children from pampered homes, especially, are looking askance at their parents. It is these youngsters who disapprove of smoking and drinking mothers. Psychologically that can be explained as their desire to keep a tight hold on their mothers. They want them to be feminine and close to them maternally."
The word feminine reminded the professor of something.
"Yes, and feminity is replacing feminism," he said. "The hair, the longer skirts, the more womanly ways of the girl today proves to the psychologist that feninism is dying. American woman will always have equality but it will be a different equality in which the home and the softness of feminine charm will have a bigger place."
[Syndicated version: "Modern Youth More Serious" (1930)]
MODERN YOUTH MORE SERIOUS
By PROF. ALFRED ADLER, Viennese Psychologist.
The hard-boiled parents of today, the men and women who a few years back were the flaming youth of America, are meeting retribution. Their children are growing up the best behaved, most conservative generation of a century. The little girl who poutingly says, "Oh, mother, don't smoke so much," and the small boy who reproves his mother with: "That's your second cocktail this afternoon," are all signs of the younger times.
The youth of today is more serious, more romantic. These growing boys and girls have a greater social conscience than their predecessors.
As a result, they detest the hardness, the cynicism and materialistic outlook of their parents. The pendulum has swung back again. Only this time it is Victorian romanticism which is on the side of youth.
Fuente: "Young America More Serious, Savant Says", Albany Times-Union, 5 August 1930, p. 2; Universal Service dispatch from Vienna (5 August) by Martha Foley. Transcribed from the page image at fultonhistory.com (Albany NY Times Union 1930 a, 1491), enlarged at 300 dpi; the platform OCR is very poor and has been corrected throughout against the image. A crease runs across the first column: "psychological" and "classes" are partly blotted but legible. "feminity" and "feninism" are so printed. The syndicated version reproduced after the dispatch is "Modern Youth More Serious", Coronado Eagle and Journal (Coronado, California), 17 September 1930 (California Digital Newspaper Collection, CJ19300917.2.27; also in La Jolla Light and La Jolla Journal, 18 September 1930, LJJ19300918.2.101), transcribed from the CDNC page image: it is the same text as the dispatch (inventory id AA1930-35), shortened (without the passages on pampered children and on femininity) and put in Adler's mouth, so it is not given a separate entry in this archive.