[Editor's Note] Reality Damps Youthful Pride

The coddled kids of the latter part of the baby boom are now parents themselves. Faced with teenage children even more spoiled than themselves, they sometimes find themselves thinking: "If you aren't 110% determined and ready to suffer, don't have children!" Such thoughts are especially common after several consecutive late nights in the office.

On the one hand, the thoughts certainly ring true. Looking around, the late Baby Boomers who can take it easy and travel the world are either singles or DINKs (double-income no-kids couples). On the other, it's a little silly and unfair to blame kids for the suffering parents experience because we insist on interfering in their decisions. And yet-as citizens, don't we have a responsibility to bring children into the world, so that our society can continue to exist sustainably?

These kinds of mixed feelings went into the writing of our cover story on young people's dreams of settling down. As you can well imagine, there was a great deal of editorial back and forth on the article, and we discovered cross-generational differences even in attitudes towards the job market-especially with regard to the importance of work and of other people's judgments about what constitutes success.

In Generation Me, psychologist Jean Twenge enumerates the many differences between the Baby Boomers and their children. Her examples include a female student from a prestigious university getting her picture taken with the president while visiting the White House in beach sandals; a student rejecting the authority of the professor to correct his essay and declaring, "That's just your opinion"; a son responding to his father's request that he be polite with a snippy, "I'd rather be honest"; and a young woman stating at the time of her divorce, "I don't care what other people think of me"; as well as instances of the younger generation's excessive frankness-e.g. their lack of compunction about sharing personal matters, stories of drug use, or recollections of childhood abuse.

Twenge also notes that the Me generation is an optimistic one in spite of the difficult economic times in which it has lived. The outside world keeps placing ever more diverse and exacting demands upon an unmotivated younger generation. This sets up a worrisome dichotomy between self-centeredness and a world in which globalized competition is the norm. Must parents who've spoiled their children their entire lives now offer tough love, telling their kids that study isn't supposed to be fun, that the individual isn't that important, that relationships in the working world aren't as egalitarian as those in online chatrooms, that they can't do anything they like...?

Debates about the values of a given era can be endless. The government's policy orientation, on the other hand, is clear. It includes programs to encourage home ownership by helping young people buy housing, and to provide maternity leave in spite of resistance from various quarters. Faced with an ever-more-challenging global economy and an unshirkable responsibility to pass on what we have, what can Baby Boomer parents do other than provide the younger generation with every possible assistance and wait for their kids to make some choices?

This month's issue continues the theme of autonomy in "Getting Local Government Out of the Red," which discusses the innovative methods local governments have used to generate taxes and income in the six years since the passage of the Local Tax Code and the Charges and Fees Act. While the title may suggest local governments are using the kinds of random fees and apportionments seen in mainland China, the article instead reveals that they are employing a number of unusual but effective approaches.

This issue also features pieces on the efforts of Professor Lin Tzong-shyan, the "mango missionary," to revive the fortunes of Taiwanese mango growers; on contemporary Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-jen; and on the Shihchinyu Sanfang incense shop in Lukang that has passed the art of incense-making down through the generations. These individuals and institutions deserve a long round of applause for the huge contributions they have made while laboring far from the limelight.