Hawa / Generation OMG

1. How has or will the experience of living through an economic crisis shape each of the generations mentioned in the article?

Economic crisis can have a postive and negative impact on the different generations.

The positive impact is mainly the values learnt from living through an economic crisis. Parents will see the need to cut back on costs. Seeing that their income have drastically decreased, they will spend more on basic necessities and less on luxury items. This means that parents learn to be more prudent shoppers to prevent unncessary spending. The economic crisis can affect children too. They may choose to work simple jobs in order to help the family earn, providing them with working experience and will make them more mature. According to the article, the economic crisis also affects the education experience of some youths since some youths choose two-year college courses instead of the usual four years in order to help their family save money. This shows that such a crisis can teach youths values like compassion and responsibility. The article also said that living through such a crisis makes youths more civic-minded.

However, there are negative impacts too. As parents face increasing levels of stress at work, they tend to get more frustrated and may resort to drinking in order to relieve stress. However, they fail to realise that alcohol only provides a short-term relief. Drinking can also create other problems within the household such as domestic violence etc. This may harm the mental growth of their children. This is especially so for those who are still in school. As they are at a stage whereby they are maturing into young adults, they do need the guidance from their parents. If their parents are constantly arguing or drunk and do not listen to their needs, their adolosence period will be a frustrating one as they do not have the support from their own parents. This may affect their moral values when they become adults (ie, if my parents drink, I can drink too. If my father beats my mum, I can do so too.)


2. It was said that "There is no simple cause-and-effect relationship in how economic adversity pushed a generation into any one kind of behaviour ... The impact depends on the context and the mood of the time and how children understand the spirit of the times."

In your opinion, how would young Singaporeans be shaped by the current recession? How would you be shaped by it? Justify your answers.

Young Singaporeans would be more thrifty shoppers. This is because their parents are more reluctant to fork out money to buy luxury goods. Hence, assuming they are considerate children, they will ask for less things (things meaning wants, rather than needs). Others may also get a part time job because they do not want to keep asking their parents for money. For example, most of my friends last year got a job after the OLevel exams to fund their expenditure during the three-month holiday. This demonstrates their independence, as they choose to earn their own spending money instead of asking their parents for it.