Have Baby Boomers Prepared Generation Y to Act Responsibly?

I am among the last of the Baby Boomers. According to some statisticians, The Baby Boomers are those who were born between 1946 and 1964 -- the period of time between the end of World War II and the beginning of Viet Nam. As I approach middle age I wonder what happened to Generation Y, the generation that was spawned by mine.

Mine was the generation of rebellion, experimentation and discovery. We protested policy, danced to rock and roll and became the desired target of advertisers because we had money and loved to spend it.

We saw heroes killed, presidents fall, and Americans put on trial. We promoted free love, experimented with drugs and broke with traditions. We Baby Boomers were the first generation to watch television, let our hair grow and question authority. We watched men walk on the moon and saw their brothers and sisters explode upon take-off from Earth as well as on their return.

In the novel "Moondust" by Andrew Smith, it is written that "Baby Boomers have the unique distinction of pissing off both their parents' and their children's generations." I agree that this would have been a possibility if we would have been parents to our children instead of their friends. Most of us simply pissed off, or at least disappointed, the generation of our parents. At the same time we've simply failed the generation of our offspring.

Yes, we wanted our children to have it better than we did when we were growing up. In our attempts to give them the things we never had, we gave them instead an overwhelming feeling of entitlement. We protected them from adversity and criticism and as a result, they can not deal with either. We made excuses for their lapses in judgment and failure to follow the rules. Because of that, our children don't know the importance of accepting responsibility or what constitutes character. When they got in trouble at school, the Baby Boomer parents marched right into the school and chastised principals and teachers for having the nerve to accuse or discipline our children. This created children that exhibit no respect for others.