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The story
An article spotlighting the rise of young people who “quit a part-time job the moment they’re called out for a mistake” or “grew up almost never being scolded” has become a hot topic on 5ch’s News Express+ board. The piece, excerpted from the book Does Self-Esteem Really Have to Be High?, argues that “praise-based parenting and education” — widely adopted to boost the self-esteem of Japanese youth — may not actually be delivering the results it promised. In the thread, opinions clashed between those blaming young people’s own lack of resilience and those blaming poor teaching and management skills — or outright harassment — from supervisors, while a side debate broke out over generational confusion around the term “yutori generation” (the generation raised under Japan’s relaxed, pressure-free education policy).
Posted Sun, Sep 6, 7:31 AM
with online
“I got yelled at for a mistake at my part-time job, so I’m quitting.” “Even when I’m in the wrong, being called out for it just makes me angry.” More and more young people today are growing up having almost never been scolded, whether at school or at home. To raise the self-esteem of Japanese youth — said to be lower than that of their Western counterparts — many people have championed “praise-based parenting and education.” But does it actually raise self-esteem? This piece is excerpted and edited from the book Does Self-Esteem Really Have to Be High? (Chikuma Shobo), digging into “why praise alone doesn’t raise self-esteem.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
The usual.
Competent parents and bosses don't waste time yelling.
Could you actually be the one doing the teaching?
Sorry about that.
I worked my way up from team leader → chief → section manager.
Never once raised my voice.
With young folks, nothing beats naggy passive-aggressive digs.
Bright Noa once said, 'Is there a man alive who became a full-fledged adult without ever getting hit?' (a nod to the famous Gundam anime scene where Bright slaps his subordinates into shape)
That's true for jobs that don't require Japanese.
Bottom line, foreign workers get lumped into the 'useless' category…
If they're actually employed, that puts them in the 'useful' category, doesn't it.
What happens when that foreigner learns Japanese, becomes a manager, and ends up running the company?
Lower IQ, shorter too.
Gen Z was a failure,
but future generations will make good use of that.
Even with the shrinking teen/twenties population from the falling birthrate, suicides in that age bracket just hit a record high.
School refusal and welfare dependency among people in their 20s are also at record highs.
Japan ended up drowning in messed-up kids.
Gen Alpha, the generation after Z, already has record-high school refusal and suicide rates — that's the real crisis.
Parents are dual-income by default now too, outsourcing childcare from infancy, so attachment disorders are flaring up left and right.
The ones who survived on pure self-reliance are the ones running things now, so they don't truly get why mentoring, a comfortable workplace, or psychological safety even matter.
In a way they're victims too, though.
People in their 40s are probably the worst.
This generation's attitude at work is arrogant to the point it's hard to watch.
That makes zero sense, I'm cracking up.
Maybe it's the labor shortage, but they rush to develop us so hard that new hires burn out and quit early.
One of my fellow new hires quit after six months over it.
Also, the power harassment and sexual harassment from Bubble-era bosses over 40 is beyond awful.
"You don't even know that?"
"Useless."
"I'm only saying this once."
Those guys aren't even human.
They should just get laid off already and go work in some understaffed industry.
Burning out over that much?
What garbage capacity.
Guess living life for 'tabi-pa' (time-performance, i.e. optimizing everything for efficiency) leaves you with less memory.
Honestly I kind of feel bad for the younger generation getting crammed with so much.
Society keeps getting more sophisticated and systematized, but people can't keep up.
Or rather, we're already past the limit of what people can keep up with.
He started complaining 'it's hot' and ran back inside (true story).
I work outdoors, and these past few years the heat has felt downright murderous.
Five minutes is rough, no doubt.
Us old guys are just used to being outside.
True that.
At my workplace, five people died from heatstroke last year.
How many times are we gonna repeat this?
Well, there are more elderly people in Japan's population,
so it's inevitable the majority's voice gets louder.
Apparently this has been going on for at least 5,000 years.
If it were said quietly, fine, but if you get yelled at in front of everyone, leaving is just basic manners.
Exactly.
It's less that they obediently left because they were told to go home,
and more that they're taking responsibility for having let the mood get to the point of being told 'go home' in the first place — so they just leave.
They'll just get weeded out as usual, I'd guess.
You've never actually worked with Gen Z, have you.
Old man, just retire already.
Background and Key Points of Debate
The original article, excerpted from the book Does Self-Esteem Really Have to Be High?, centers on the claim that “praise-based parenting” doesn’t necessarily raise self-esteem. What stands out in the thread is that, rather than sticking to the intended topic — young people’s tolerance for being scolded — the discussion mostly devolved into a generational blame game over who’s really at fault. In response to posts that mistakenly equated the “yutori generation” with today’s youth, corrections pointed out that the actual yutori generation is now in their 30s and 40s and already holding management positions — showing how often this generational label gets mixed up. The thread also features competing views blaming the behavior of Ice Age-generation and Bubble-generation bosses on one hand, and young people’s own lack of resilience on the other, illustrating how hard it is to pin the issue on a single cause. The topic of self-esteem itself has long been studied in educational psychology, where it’s generally understood that the key factor isn’t a simple choice between “praising” and “scolding,” but rather the consistency of guidance and the quality of the relationship — a nuance barely touched on in the thread.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “‘I’m Quitting Just Because I Got Called Out at My Part-Time Job…’: The Rise of Young People Unused to Being Scolded, and the Cruel Reason ‘Praise-Based Parenting’ Backfires.”
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