"Parents who wonder where the younger generation is going should remember where it came from"
About this Quote
The barb lands because it sounds like friendly advice while quietly indicting the speaker. Ewing’s line flips a familiar adult complaint - kids are going to hell, culture is collapsing, manners are dead - into a neat piece of accountability: if you dislike the direction, check the origin story. The younger generation didn’t hatch in a vacuum; it was raised, taught, and modeled into being. That’s the moral judo here: the target of the sentence is not “kids today,” but the parents congratulating themselves for being observers instead of participants.
The phrasing matters. “Wonder where ... is going” suggests anxious spectatorship, as if youth is a train leaving the station and adults are left helpless on the platform. Ewing counters with “remember where it came from,” yanking parents back into the causal chain. It’s not a call to sentimental nostalgia; it’s a reminder that values are transmitted less through lectures than through lived example: how adults handle work, money, conflict, prejudice, and pleasure becomes the curriculum.
Contextually, Ewing wrote across a century obsessed with generational panic - from jazz to rock to television to whatever came next. His point remains durable because the pattern repeats: adults blame “influences” (media, peers, schools) to avoid the more uncomfortable influence in the room. The quote’s intent is corrective, but its subtext is sharper: the strongest criticism of youth often doubles as an unintended self-portrait of the people who raised them.
The phrasing matters. “Wonder where ... is going” suggests anxious spectatorship, as if youth is a train leaving the station and adults are left helpless on the platform. Ewing counters with “remember where it came from,” yanking parents back into the causal chain. It’s not a call to sentimental nostalgia; it’s a reminder that values are transmitted less through lectures than through lived example: how adults handle work, money, conflict, prejudice, and pleasure becomes the curriculum.
Contextually, Ewing wrote across a century obsessed with generational panic - from jazz to rock to television to whatever came next. His point remains durable because the pattern repeats: adults blame “influences” (media, peers, schools) to avoid the more uncomfortable influence in the room. The quote’s intent is corrective, but its subtext is sharper: the strongest criticism of youth often doubles as an unintended self-portrait of the people who raised them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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