Parents want to provide advice because they want to protect you from making the same mistakes they made or that someone they know made. However, many parents and teenagers don’t understand one another because of age differences and how things change from generation to generation. Parents have a lot of responsibility in raising their children, and most parents are very stern because of this responsibility. There are many reasons why you should always listen to your parents: parents know us better than anyone; no one has a better opportunity to understand what you need than your parents. On the other hand, parents’ parents won’t understand certain situations because what they have experienced then can be different now.

Listening to your parents’ advice can make situations better or worse. It can get better, as the parent is better able to understand the child as an individual; the more they can individualize the information, the better. Advice can worsen as the circumstances that require the advice become less and less familiar to the parent, and they are forced to apply old models to new worlds of problems and opportunities.

Let’s take a frequent occasion for parents to give advice: Romance. While some parents have experienced love and romance, some parents have had a direct, arranged marriage. Lessons learned in one generation about the risks of treachery, and surprising decency can still be applied, if they are used thoughtfully.  In these types of situations, take into consideration if they have experienced the scenario or not.

Then there is the world of work. Can one generation effectively advise the next about on-the-job behavior? The workplace is not what it was a generation ago. The word career barley has the same meaning compared to the last few decades. Parents would try to tell a young person what to do in a troubling situation, but the actions from that decade are different now. In my opinion, when it comes to specific conditions, it’s beneficial to ask parents for advice if they have experience. Then you should compare it to see if you taking this advice would be different in this generation. 

Taking advice from parents doesn’t mean you have to follow it, it means you can learn multiple perspectives which can help you decide on your own. Can a parent, or any person of a previous generation, know how to recognize and teach those commonalities? Sometimes yes and sometimes no.