Kids More Stressed Out Than Ever Before, Survey Shows

i agree with you 100% nobody has wiped my kids butts but me and thats how i want it i am a stay at home mom of 2 little ones . we are not rich .we don't have fancy stuff in our home as a matter of fact we don't even oen the home we live in.we are renting a 3 bedroom apt.i don't have fancy clothes or other stuff but i'm okay with that if it means that i know my girls are safe.i raise my own kids and i'm proud of that . i am not knocking working moms as long as they make time to actually know their kids and not at the next soccer game either.at home where they can actually sit and spend quality time together every day

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Kids these days are just stressed out because there is so much pressure on us to do well. My parents, for example, began shoving the ideas of an Ivy League college down my throat when I was in the first grade. And there's so much talk about how the only good careers are doctors or lawyers because they make a lot of money. Kids start worrying about it at such young ages. My sister is twelve and she's worried that college won't accept her.
Times have changed. Parents don't let their children just go out to play anymore. It's too dangerous. There's a higher percentage of households where both parents work, and children have babysitters or siblings to rely on. And today's economic issues piled on top of all of the pressure doubles it. Times are hard. Everyone is stressed.

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Some stress for me comes when they try to do something good for me but it's really not. I tell them I don't want that but they go along with it. My mom never used to be around when I was younger but now shes around a lot but I dont want her around. My parents are divorced. They try and push me to get a scholarships for athletics I have no chance of getting.

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i agree with u on the let them be kids part but the part where u say that most of us don't know real stress is just not true.
my brother was in iraq and just before his deployment our dad was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer i ended up taking care of him and my kid (who was 9 months old at the time)by myself .it go to the point that i could not handle it alone and so he ended up in the nursing home where he spent the las year of his life worrying about my brother and wondering if he would come home alive or in a body bag.my dad died not knowing that and my brother came home alive but mentally ill from what he had experienced over there.so i think i know a little something about stress.

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Of course they are stressed. When I was a kid we went to school. did our homework and went ot to PLAY till supper. Today kids have 2-3 hours of homework, MCAS testing, single parent households, where are the bowling alleys or skating rinks? Kids are ducking bullets in the inner cities. They are all becoming latch key kids at 6 years old with no parental guidance. Really anyone who believes kids are not living in a more stressful environment than ever is living in a padded cell.

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"Permit the children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkjAghQmnXs

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I LOVE YOU............

----- JESUS

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wes - you hit it on the head

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these kids today have it made - give it a rest - this sesame street generation that are now parents today is the MAIN problem -

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folks, michael stipe put it best : "it's the end of the world as we know it." you are all distracted; you can't see the forest for the trees. Global biosphere collapse is imminent. floods, fire, famine ! disease, climate change, accumulation of waste. six and a half billion people and we are crowding out God's creation with our human artifices. we are the mange mites on mother earth. its no wonder kids are stressed. you should be too. soon, Gaia will strike the death blow, breathe a sigh of relief, and go on without us. too bad the catholic church crippled humanity for a millenium. otherwise, we just might have made it to disney's view of the future.

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I am 20 years old, Married, and I have a mortgage payment. I was enrolled in college from 2005 to 2009 and I graduated High School in 2007. Some "adults" would still consider me a "kid" and other adults never know how old I really am, they just assume that I'm at least 26 or so.
After reading this article, and then the comments in response to it... I realize how ignorant some people really are. Yes, "kids" today are stressed, and most likely they are more stressed now than they were a year or more ago. And they are definitely more stressed than their parents were when they were growing up. Over 50% of all students between the ages of 13 and 18 are 'latchkey kids.' Meaning, they come home to an empty house. School work is more difficult now than it was 3 years ago, and it is excruciatingly more difficult now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. In most cases, parents will not help their kids with school work because they don't understand it themselves. Parents demand respect from their children but often do not give respect in return. I have seen many cases where children were punished for doing what they thought was right and helpful, just because their parents thought they were trying to be smarta**es or disrescpectful. Kids today are forced to grow up quickly. They have jobs before they leave high school. As soon as they graduate high school they are encouraged and sometimes forced to go into college, most freshmen in college have no clue what they want to do in their lives. I have seen many students punished by their parents because they choose not to go straight into college. Parents tend to show the "I'm the parents, I know best, I know whats right for you" face while in truth they blame themselves for their own short comings and in the end they push their children to "be better than they were." In other words, they try to relive their lives through their children. Kids today are stressed, because between school, any and all extra curricular activities, their collegiate future, trying to "fix'' themselves so that they are better accepted, and their parents, they don't have the time to think about their health, having fun, and just being a kid in general.

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Wow, I love how people are saying it's jsut because we are "kids" that we are stressed. I don't see that as being the problem. In this age, children have to learn a lot more at a younger age than ever before. It's not just because we are going through puberty and want everything to be about us.

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Kids do have more stress than ever. Divorce, money probs, sex hormones flying, Mom and Dad argueing, no parent at home after school...(good way to get in trouble) Drinking at a young age, pot, drugs, shop lifting..on and on. At the extreme its called .."the Columbine Sydrome". Technology is both a curse and a boon to our society. Did you ever watch a young person texting..they take to the internet like a bear to honey. Our Govt has to help kids get to college without breaking their parents of their savings! Materialism in the extreme is a curse!

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JJ.....If more men would own up and support ther families so mom could be home with the kids this would be a much better society...

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Yes, so puberty does have a role in stress. But, um, y'know, not every single "kid" is unaware of that. Aries hit it right on the head: parents today push their children way too much to be better than they were. The worst thing my parents have ever said to me was "Look at the other kids." I was four. Not only do I have to become better than they were when they were children, but I also have to be better than everyone else. And I'm not going to lie. I'm an excellent student, and I take pride in the fact that I have manners and respect for my parents. What for? Because I care. It's not all about us; I learned that when I was four.
Ninety percent of my friends are honor students, and every single one of them have some kind of issue with their parents, and trust me, people, we care. Most of the time, we just ignore it and deal with it because, c'mon, we love our parents and we have to! But stress IS a problem, and most of it comes from school, which leads back to parents and expectations.
I don't think I'm all that stressed out, I suppose, compared to others (I'm only able to live my own life after all), and I'm not trying to say that kids today are more stressed than they were last year (well, I am, but that's because I'm a sophomore and I need to decide on my career path, hahaha). My point is that kids do care about more things than you think they do.
And another thing: some of us kids may be babied and spoiled at home, but there still are some children who have to grow up with spanking and whatnot. I myself have never been spanked; I was whipped, slapped, smacked, whatever. My parents' explanation was, "It's all for your own good." And guess what, I can understand that! I know, you must all be shocked. I don't hate my parents for what they did (past tense because I've learnt all the tricks to avoid getting punished now), but those of you who encourage that kind of behavior better be prepared for the plethora of mental/emotional problems (and whatever else) that follows after. Not every child can deal with that, y'know. I take my cue from all seven of my siblings.

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We live in a world where ability and contribution take the second place to bought credentials and personal ambition. Our children know that the world we live in is unjust, and they feel their values slipping away long before the get out of High School. That is stress. The generation of my parents not only provided no future for my generation, they are living fat off of the futures of the next generation. America's wealth belongs to the 60-and-over crowd. So, combine the unequal distribution of wealth with the artificial ranking of persons in the social scheme (and throw in the pressures created by immigration), and you have the new teenager. They have no hope. I expect the sixties all over again, but with a greater animosity than before. Personally, I hope these kids burn the White House to the ground.

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It is so Sad and So Wrong that we
have allowed a minority of people to DICTATE our lives. There is NO excuse for all the filth and sex and violence that was Mainstreamed to our Children to have been allowed. Politicians did nothing to stop it.....Parents did nothing to stop it...schools did nothing to stop it and the news people did nothing to stop it.....and Hollywood did Everything to corrupt it. Many people in Hollywood and creators of violent games made millions of dollars off of the filth they produced and are the Most Responsible for the condition of our Children and our Countries sufferings. They Have the burden of the responsibility of the deaths and murders and rapes that they glorified on the big screen that so many of our Young Children watched and imitated.....
Yes.....Our Children have suffered a greater stress and confusion then any generation before 20 years ago. And there was NO reason for us to have allowed it.

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(Super Quick Disclaimer: I've got four friends sitting around me while I write this, so if there's any scattering of topic...well...pardon us. Everyone has something to say about this!)

Hell yes, we're more stressed out than ever before. And if you say otherwise, there's a good chance you're not in the age range designated by this survey, and are therefore not at liberty to talk about standards which don't apply to you anymore.

I have watched my friends grow since the fourth grade, and now, in the twelfth grade (finally), I can testify to the overall change in demeanour. Maybe it's because the people I count as friends are compulsively academic achievers, or maybe it's because we actually WANT to go to a good college...I don't know.

But regardless of who you are, whether your disposition is academic or apathetic, there is still too much stress these days.

School alone is a killer (especially when you are taking the hardest classes possible so as to gain admission into the aforementioned "good college"). It starts younger and younger, too.

Don't even get me started on work, either. I require money to pay off my car, gas, and insurance...mind you, this car is required for me to get to extracurricular activities, since my parents are both working and can't take me anywhere. And remember: extracurricular activities make the difference between Harvard and the local community college! :/

Speaking of extracurriculars...who the devil in junior high and high school has enough hours in the day to manage volunteering, National Honour Society, church, at least one sport, at least one instrument, and MAYBE (God/Allah/Science forbid) a social life?

It makes me so sad to see even little kids, as early as first grade, stressing about time management. Personally, I miss the days of colouring and maybe one worksheet a night for homework, but the truth of it is: kids are being required to work harder than ever before in order to become viable competitors in the growing world market.

Elizabeth (a number of comments back) was right: we just have too much to do in too little time. To maintain my 4.00+ GPA requires 5 HOURS of homework EVERY NIGHT, with anywhere between 3 and 7 hours each weekend. Insanity? Yes please.

Look, I know every generation has had its relative measures of stress...so no, grandma, I don't have to walk five miles to school in the freezing subzero temperatures to get a good education, but I DO have to worry about colleges shoving prerequisites down my throat, and I DO have a lot of AP and honours classes to manage workloads from, and I DO have three, sometimes four different types of standardised tests that I'm required to take in order to "succeed" at life.

Getting cold feet about growing up yet, kids?

My main point is this (you can thank me later for concluding this shabby rampage):

Stress, regardless of your age and status, is prominent in the lives of American teens and kids. Our stresses may vary, depending on our individual goals and dispositions, but the fact is that we are ALL impacted by things that happen in our country on a daily basis. No adult has the right to say that we don't have anything to worry about; our priorities are different from yours. Remember that.

Now if you'll excuse me, we here have a 20-page paper to write about the American economy's adaptation to and the results from shifting world powers between 1930 and 1945.

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Berna, The morality of the world is best demonstrated by easing the suffering of those who suffer, NOT by indoctrinating children to resist those very natural inclinations that we all have engaged in. How is it natural to pervert the understanding of young adults? Sex is natural. Exploitation of the powerless is not natural. This is not an issue about moral perception. It is an issue about hard reality: HUNGER...

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