Parenting & Family Quote by Thomas Foran

Foran’s line flatters youth without romanticizing it, and that’s the sly power move. He frames adolescent rebellion as “natural,” not ideological: resentment of authority isn’t a moral stance so much as a default setting. The parenthetical nudge - “if we could only remember how it is” - is the real payload. It’s an accusation dressed as empathy, suggesting adults don’t lack sympathy for young people; they lack memory, and memory is political. Forgetting becomes a way to justify the status quo, to treat youthful urgency as a phase rather than a pressure test the culture keeps failing.

The cadence mirrors a quick, breathless inventory: “resent… impatient… fix things up.” No grand theory, just impulses stacked like items in a backpack. That list does two things at once. It validates the emotional logic of young people (the world feels broken, so break the rules) while also hinting at why institutions find them threatening: impatience is the opposite of bureaucracy’s favorite virtue, process.

Context matters: this is the kind of observation you drop in an essay, a talk, or a piece of reportage when you’re trying to puncture the patronizing adult habit of diagnosing “kids these days.” Foran isn’t defending every youthful demand; he’s defending the engine behind them. The subtext is that societies don’t progress by rewarding patience - they progress when enough people stop waiting for permission.