From our other sites
The story
In a survey of 14- to 20-year-olds conducted by Wakamono Research Co., 82.0% of young people said they’ve never felt they “lost the parent lottery,” and 72.5% said they’ve never even fought with their parents. The term “parent lottery” (oyagacha) emerged as social media made it easier to glimpse other people’s home environments, likening one’s own family situation to a random draw in a gaming “gacha.” Yet the survey suggests most young people actually see their relationship with their parents in a positive light. On 5ch, opinions split between those who view the near-absence of a rebellious phase positively (“their values are so similar to their parents’ that they get along like friends”) and those who worry about what it means for the future (“maybe they’re just too apathetic to even have a reason to rebel”). Many commenters also pointed out that the “parent lottery” ultimately comes down mostly to genetics anyway.
Wakamono Research Co. (Suginami Ward, Tokyo) released the results of its nationwide survey on young people’s “honest feelings about their parents” on October 13.
As social media has made it increasingly common to see other families’ parent-child relationships and financial situations, opportunities to compare them with one’s own family have also grown. This gave rise to the term “parent gacha” (oyagacha), which likens a child’s inability to choose their own parents to a random draw in a gaming “gacha” machine. So how do today’s young people — the Reiwa generation — actually feel about their own parents?
18.0% of young people feel they “lost the parent lottery”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
No rebellious phase here. Even the guys still call their parents "Papa" and "Mama."
I'm pushing 50 and I never had a rebellious phase either.
It's not about praising them — it's about being there for them.
Honestly, it was a failure. Once these "parent-lottery losers" who never learned how harsh the world is grow up, enter society, and hit despair, they're the ones who end up joining "yami baito" crews (shady under-the-table "dark part-time jobs," often fronts for scams or robberies). If you don't teach kids how tough the world is while they're young, they pay for it later.
Glad you got raised on praise! Look what it gave us — Gen Z!
They've got that cynical, checked-out vibe — like they'd just casually end it one day without much fuss.
There's just this sense of helplessness hanging over them. Rather than rebel for no reason, they'd probably just quietly slip away instead.
I've heard it's actually better to go through a rebellious phase. Maybe there are two types: kids who genuinely get along with their parents and skip it, and kids who are just too listless to even bother fighting. And maybe it's the second type who end up breaking down once they're adults, or taking their own lives out of nowhere.
Isn't a rebellious phase caused by the stress of a generational gap (Showa vs. Heisei)? These days parents and kids share similar values and actually understand each other. They get along like friends. There's no motive to rebel.
My four cousins, all in their early 20s now — even though they're girls, apparently almost none of them had a rebellious phase. Well, all four grew up in upper-middle-class "little princess" households, so that probably explains it. And for what it's worth, all four are pretty, face and figure. Kids who start out near the top of society like that tend to stay cute even after they're out in the working world.
Oh, it exists. For middle schoolers, even though the open-class notice gives a full week's heads-up, fewer than 5 parents per class actually show up — and since teachers already know the kids won't even hand the notice over, the school just emails parents directly about observation day.
To begin with, if you're born into money, even working a part-time job gets you a lavish life and you can still get married easily. Once you're competing over a few million yen a year in salary, you've already lost.
Until I read "Rich Dad Poor Dad," I thought a college degree and a high salary were the pinnacle. I wish I'd read that book 20 years sooner — I could've climbed to the tier above that much earlier.
Still, that's way better off though. Most people can't even land the job they actually wanted, end up picking from whatever limited options are left, and then blame politics for why they're poor.
But honestly, even that comes down largely to the genetic lottery — which really is just another parent lottery. Studies apparently show income correlates more strongly with genetics the older you get: more for people in their 40s than their 30s, and more for people in their 30s than new grads. Ironic that genetics has a stronger pull on 40-somethings who've piled up decades of effort than on new grads who haven't put in any effort yet. There's less room to close the gap through effort than people think.
Until not that long ago, whether you joined a big corporation or a small one, starting salaries were all lined up around the low 200,000s yen a month, so there was no way for new grads' incomes to differ in the first place.
I've heard the flip side of that too — that kids who "win the parent lottery" are often diligent and sharp as children and get into better schools than their parents did, but by their 30s they tend to slide back down to roughly their parents' standard of living. In other words, genes beat education.
There's a new GTA-style crime game coming out soon, the kind of thing America's underclass eats up — and I'm convinced any adult over 30 who happily buys it is definitely part of the underclass too. And there seem to be more of them lately. Probably peer influence — they watch their friends do it and follow along.
Wasn't "carrier of the crime gene!" a line from Kyōshirō 2030? (a dystopian manga) As for me — I can't forget someone I liked even after the relationship quietly faded out and we stopped seeing each other, and I still can't forget them more than ten years later. That's exactly why, as a potential stalker-in-training, I can't work up any lighthearted interest in marriage or dating — it wouldn't be fair to a partner. And the fact that I even catch myself thinking "maybe she doesn't feel like it's really over either" — yeah, that alone is enough to get me flagged as seriously unwell. Though if I ever saw her looking happily married, I'd probably manage to feel genuinely glad for her, even while it tore my heart and head apart.
These days that's fine, though — all you need is a smartphone and the AI will teach you common sense. Some households just don't have any to begin with.
Someone who recognizes their own intelligence is low is probably actually pretty sharp. Besides, high intelligence doesn't guarantee happiness anyway.
Love has nothing to do with intelligence or status. Just being given love at all is happiness enough.
Girls with mommy issues.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_UzF4EXIAANI7n.jpg
I lost both my parents as a kid, but before that they raised me to be physically strong and sharp-minded, and thanks to that I made it through a master's degree on my own and landed a decent place in society.
Nothing but gratitude.
Made it into a little comic.
https://imgur.com/W3iLcef.jpeg
Handsome, wife's a beauty, cute kid — sounds like the best life.
Made it into a little comic.
https://imgur.com/nfvEtxY.jpeg
Background and Key Points of This Topic
“Parent gacha” is slang that spread alongside social media, likening a home environment one can’t choose for oneself to a random draw in a gaming lottery. These figures come from an independent survey by a private company, and the article doesn’t disclose details like the sampling method or the exact wording of the questions — worth keeping in mind. Within the thread, opinions split: some read the decline in rebellious phases as a sign of a good relationship, with parents’ and children’s values growing closer together, while others worried it signals that kids have lost even the will to rebel, potentially pointing to future suicide risk — and the survey results alone can’t settle which view is closer to reality. Several posts also argued it ultimately comes down mostly to genetics, but none cited a specific study or source, so that claim remains more of an anecdotal impression from an anonymous forum than anything verified.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Reiwa Era] 82.0% of Young People Say They’ve “Never Felt They Lost the Parent Lottery,” 72.5% “Never Fought With Their Parents” — Survey of Ages 14 to 20.”
Leave a Reply