Same Today as 4,000 Years Ago

Generational tension is not a phenomenon which erupted in the 1960s and 1970s. It is as old as the trouble Adam and Eve had with their two boys. Parents need to remember that. For example, when did this conversation occur?

An angry father asks his teenage son, "Where did you go?"

The boy, trying to sneak home late at night, answers, "Nowhere."

"Grow up," the father chides him.

"Stop hanging around the public squares, and wandering up and down the street. Go to school. Night and day you torture me. Night and day you waste your time having fun."

Was that sharp rebuke administered last night by an irate dad to a defiant juvenile? No, it comes from Sumerian clay tablets 4, 000 years old.