福建师范大学外国语学院 2001级1班　邱天华

When it comes to the problem of generation gap, various complaining voices come both from parents and children. For example, parents are discontented with their children’s style of doing things which may be out of parents’ control, while children cannot understand why parents tend to decide everything for them without asking whether they like it. Generally speaking, people ascribe generation gap to the lack of communication between parents and children or even the adolescent period of children, however, they fail to find the interior or substantial causes. There are economic roots of generation gap. And among them I believe that urbanization has strong effect on the problem of generation gap.

To start with, urbanization has deeply affected the way of family life. Instead of the peaceful and harmonious time spent with family members after one day’s work, people now, especially our parents, are generally busy with their work. On one hand, in  face of fierce competition, parents must do their utmost to retain their posts, to win chances of promotion and pay rise. Some of them even don’t have enough time to sleep well, to say nothing of spending enough time talking with their children eye to eye. On the other hand, most children bear heavy burdens which come, to a great extent, from parents. Parents tend to appraise their children by whether they’re good academically, whether they live the life as their parents have chosen for them. In this context, conflicts may arise and then disharmony will prevail, which will naturally cause generation gap.

In contrast, urbanization offers young people sundry new ways of communication, such as making pen friends, writing E-mail, surfing on the net and so on. All these methods are widely accepted by the youth all over the world. Communication between young people becomes easier and quicker than before. In this process, the traditional role of parents which used to be essential to the mental ties between children and parents has greatly overshadowed. Thus, generation gap occurs and is by no means easy to change.

Though the effect of urbanization on generation gap is great, people don’t need to be so pessimistic as to feel that there is no approach to narrowing the gap. The society has set on the road to promote the mutual understanding between parents and children. Parents and schools are now paying more attention to the building up of children’s psychological health and put less burdens on children’s shoulder, all of which are good to the mitigation of generation gap. We have enough reason to believe that the situation will become better and better.