With a recent study showing that today's college students are the most narcissistic and self-centered in decades, a small chorus of professionals is offering a bold response: We have no one to blame but ourselves."Things went too far," says psychologist Jean Twenge, lead author of the study and a professor at San Diego State University.
What she means is that parents overcorrected for the harshness of a previous generation that preferred children to be "seen and not heard." She points to the soccer trophies that coaches hand out to all team members just for showing up rather than to a few for outstanding athleticism, and to a song taught in a colleague's daughter's preschool to the tune of "Frère Jacques": "I am special/I am special/Look at me."
"If you're that child, it's not surprising that pretty soon you start to believe it," says Twenge, whose new book, "Generation Me," examines feelings of entitlement among young Americans...
This article (the rest of which is right here) was originally published in the Boston Globe.
