Youth through different generations

Made by Alicia D’Hondt, Charise Opdenakker, Zoë Verougstraete

How did young people experience their youth in the past, and how do they now? Did young people experience the end of their youth at a different age or time than now?
These were questions we asked ourselves. To get a (limited) picture of this, we interviewed three generations of the same sex: a grandma, mother and (grand)daughter. We asked them about their childhood experiences and how they experienced the end of their youth (or thought it would be).

We made ‘draw my life’ videos based on their answers.

Differences and similarities

Free Time

The first difference we noticed was how parents deal with their children in their free time.
The grandmother’s parents didn’t do any special activities with their children. She spent most of her time with her siblings or friends. The only thing they did together was work on the farm.
When we look at the two generations below, we see a difference. They did or are doing activities with their parents in their spare time. These activities are quite similar. For example, they went swimming or cycling together.
We do see that all three generations had hobbies in their free time. We see no change in that area.

The experience of the end of youth

All three of them experienced the end of their youth differently. When the grandmother had her first child, it felt like her youth stopped. She was around the age of twenty-three. Conversely, the mother told us that events like leaving home, having children or marrying a man didn’t affect her ‘end of youth’. When we asked her when she felt her youth was over, she answered: “When someone called me madam.”. Her daughter, who is nine years old and still in her youth, thinks her youth will end when she turns twenty. This is because she thinks she will surely know what she wants to do by then.

Conclusion

From these stories, we see that the youth of these three individuals from three generations has similarities and differences. All three generations did or do hobbies in their free time. But the way they spend their free time with their parents has changed. In the most recent generations, we see that the parents do more activities with their children. As a similarity, both first generations left their parental home after graduating college.

But what about the experience at the end of their youth? All three of them experienced, or think they will experience, this in a different way. There is no one-sided event that announces the end of their youth. But we do see that the age at which the grandmother felt her youth was over almost corresponds to the age at which the granddaughter thinks she will be an adult.