1 June 2014 | www.cpyu.org

YOUTH CULTURE HOT QUOTE

I do sometimes think that higher education is wasted on the young. It’s about the privelege of spending three years exercising your brain in something you are really interested in. If you’ve made the wrong decision it might not give you the best outcome. My message is that schools need to focus on helping students think about these decisions in a lot of detail and not rush them based on what your parents think or what your mates are doing.

JUNE 2014

THE CENTER FOR PARENT/ YOUTH UNDERSTANDING

Helping parents understand teenagers and their world

Welcome to June, a month that over the years has been traditionally known as a month for weddings. Perhaps you’ll be attending a wedding of a young couple this month. And if you are, you can be sure that the wedding you attend will be taking place on a larger marriage landscape that’s been changing and morphing pretty fast from the landscape you once may have gotten married on yourself.

Have you ever taken the time to ask your kids what they think about marriage? Chances are, they think about it quite a bit differently than you did when you were their age. Today’s young people are getting married later, and getting divorced more frequently. With cohabitation increasing at breakneck speed, a growing number of young people are opting out of marriage. Because of cultural negativity about marriage, bad examples, and experiencing the brokenness of their parents’ marriage, marriage is something many kids never consider. The boundaries regarding who can marry are changing as well, with conversations, debates, and legislation all addressing the growing reality of same-sex marriages. All in all, marriage – as an institution – is in trouble.

Perhaps the negative old marriage clichés have stuck enough to serve as a deterrent. You remember these clichés don’t you?

“Marriage is a great institution! But who wants to spend the rest of their life in an institution?” Or how about this one: “Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.”

It’s time that we send our kids a different message about the meaning of marriage. No, there aren’t any perfect marriages. The coming together of one broken person with another broken person can be pretty difficult at times. All of us married folks know that far too well. That’s certainly a realistic marriage message that we need to communicate to our kids. And while we’re together, it will at times be hard. It will be so hard, in fact, that there will be times when we feel like giving up. And, we will wonder about the decision we made to even get married in the first place. To make marriage work it takes work.

But even more important is our task to define just what marriage is. While God does indeed call some to the single life, He also said that it is not good for us to be alone. God made marriage and gave it to us as a gift. It’s a good thing! God also defined the parameters for His gift of marriage. It’s to be a life-long, covenantal, monogamous, exclusive heterosexual union between one man and one woman. Our kids need us to continually engage in show and tell when it comes to marriage. We need to tell them that marriage is not some kind of human invention. Instead, God made it for us and gave it to us.

Whether you are a parent who’s married, or single by choice or circumstance, you can and must talk to your kids about the goodness of God’s design for marriage. Our culture never stops talking to our kids about marriage. Neither should you.

Mary Curnock Cook, chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (in Britain), in a speech to head teachers, May, 2014

Marriage MattersWALT MUELLER, CPYU President

2 June 2014 | www.cpyu.org

QUICK STATS

MILLENIALS REDEFINING MONOGAMY Rolling Stone magazine recently ran an article about young people and their beliefs and behaviors related to sex. Alex Morris penned the piece, titled “Tales From the Millennials’ Sexual Revolution.” The article was both eye-opening and alarming. For example, Morris reports on the new trend towards polyamory. . . or the new monogamy. The trend here is to have one long-standing relationship along with a willingness to openly acknowledge that the long-standing relationship might not meet each partner’s emotional and sexual needs for all time. So, what the partners do is give each other the freedom to go outside of the partnership for sex, without forfeiting or ending the partnership. In other words, young twenty and thirty-somethings are redefining monogamy. The reality is that this is not a faithful monogamy at all. In fact, it is a sinful distortion of God’s design and order for sexuality. Talk about God’s design for sex and marriage with your kids.

Nearly 6 in 10 children from Britain have

used a social network despite older age limit

restrictions. (Knowthenet Opinium Survey)

Over half of today’s high

school students report cheating on an exam in

the last year. (Report Card on the Ethics

of American Youth from the

Josephson Institute)

TO

P 11

FROM THE NEWS:

1. Food

2. Clothing

3. Accessories/Personal

Care

4. Shoes

5. Car

6. Electronics/Gadgets

7. Video Games/Systems

8. Music/Movies

9. Events

10. Books/Magazines

11. Furniture

Teen Spending by Category

source:

Taking Stock with Teens,

Spring 2014

Piper Jaffray

Seeking a Love Partner by Jason Soucinek

3 June 2014 | www.cpyu.org

Lately, I’ve noticed our culture’s fascination with love and the love partner, or our constant search for one. You can see this play out in teenager’s lives as many make securing a romantic relationship an unhealthy priority. It seems like love has become a religion of sorts. And I am not the only one who thinks this. Ernest Becker, in his book The Denial of Death, spoke of the same idea. He essentially wrote that there has never been such a society that has an insignificant view of its future. As a result, there has never been a society that puts as much emphasis on finding true love and romance. The self-glorification that human beings need in our inner-most being is now found not in God, but in the love partner.

So what is it that teens want when they elevate the idea of a girlfriend or boyfriend to this level? They want to rid themselves of their faults, rid themselves of feelings of nothingness, they want to be justified, they want to know their existence matters, they want redemption! Nothing less.

Ultimately, what teens are searching for is a relationship with their Creator. Make it your goal to point to this relationship and the one true love partner, Jesus Christ.

TRENDALERT

CPYU’S

TRENDS:

NeknominateThere’s a new dangerous youth culture trend that began

to surge in popularity earlier this year. It’s an online drinking game known as NekNominate. In the game, an individual films himself drinking a predetermined

amount of an alcoholic beverage and then uploading the footage to the Internet. The

person then nominates or dares two or three other people to top his feat. As the popularity of this one-upsmanship drinking game

has grown, participants have taken to drinking not only dangerously

high volumes of alcohol, but they have mixed the alcohol with more dangerous substances, including

things like motor oil. In addition, the participants show themselves

drinking while engaging in other dangerous activities. Parents, you need to be aware of this new trend. Not only

is it encouraging the spread of an already dangerous underage drinking culture, but it’s encouraging kids to

engage in behaviors that can and have been deadly.

LATEST RESEARCH:

alcohol and popular musicHere’s another reason to know what kind of music your kids are listening to, and then to talk to them about the messages in that music. New research from the Stanford Prevention Research

Center says that popular music that mentions alcohol brands may inspire kids to drink. Senior research scientist Lisa Henrickson says, “Alcohol brand names are quite prevalent in popular music.” She continues, “For example, hip-hop/rap lyrics favor luxury brands, such as Cristal and Hennessy, and brand references in rap music have increased fourfold over time,

from eight percent in 1979 to forty-four percent in 1997. It would be foolish to think that the alcohol industry is unaware of and uninvolved with alcohol-brand mentions in music. The strategy of associating products with hip culture and celebrities who are attractive to youth comes straight from a playbook written by the tobacco industry.” Parents, we recommend that you process and talk about music’s messages from a Christian perspective.

4 June 2014 | www.cpyu.org

© 2014 All rights reserved. The CPYU Parent Page is published monthly by the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, a nonprofit organization committed to building strong families by serving to bridge the cultural-generational gap between parents and teenagers.

Phone: (717) 361-8429 Fax: (717) 361-8964 email: cpyu@cpyu.org PO Box 414, Elizabethtown, PA 17022 | www.cpyu.org

PARENTING In order to really meet their needs, youth workers and parents need to fully understand the inner workings of adolescent guys. In Teenage Guys, author Steve Gerali unpacks the areas of development adolescent guys experience, providing illustrations culled from his years as a youth pastor and clinical therapist, as well as practical research findings to equip youth workers and parents to more effectively minister to teenage guys.Readers will get an unflinching view of what it means to be a teenage guy in the 21st century. In addition to concepts such as mentoring and rites of passage, Gerali’s extensive research also walks readers through cognitive, social and emotional development, as well as sexual maturation and faith formation. This reference guide will open your eyes to what’s going on inside and around teenage guys. You’ll be better equipped to help them walk through adolescence toward becoming mature, confident, Christian men.

FROM THE WORDCulture is morphing and changing at breakneck speed. And for those of us committed to living out our faith in every nook and cranny of life, the changes in culture bring a realization that the world is in many ways regressing rather than progressing. As a result, it’s easy for us to throw up our hands in lament thinking that everything is spinning out of control.This is particularly true for us as parents. We hope and pray that our kids won’t make bad decisions. Sadly, many opt to follow the voice of the culture as opposed to following the voice of God. When this happens, our faith is oftentimes shaken to the core. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we may even wind up questioning God.When this happens, it’s good to remember the words of David in Psalm 11: “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The answer you might expect would be an action plan. You know, a “do this” or “do that” type of response. But that’s not the answer that David. . . or we. . . get. Instead, God states the fact that should serve as a sure foundation in the midst of turmoil: “The Lord is in His holy temple, the Lord is on His heavenly throne.” In other words, God is. He is still God. He is sovereign. And no matter how bleak or dark things look, He is still in control.Remind yourself of this often. Our trust is in God and God alone. The world and everyone in it is broken. But our heavenly Father is still seated firmly on His throne and in control. What a comfort this is!

“When the foundations are being destroyed,

what can the righteous do? The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord is on His

heavenly throne.” Psalm 11:3-4

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