Key Takeaways
Today’s kids have more language and support to talk about their feelings, thanks to shifts in parenting, schools, and mental health awareness.
Emotionally attuned parenting that balances empathy with clear limits helps kids build strong self-regulation and confidence.
While emotional awareness is a strength, kids also need guidance so feelings and diagnoses inform them, not define them.
As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, Zishan Khan Khan. MD has noticed Gen-Z and Gen Alpha are in their feelings … a lot.
“[They have] more language, tools, and permission to talk about those feelings than their parents or grandparents did,” says Dr. Khan, a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist with Mindpath Health. “Today’s kids grow up in a culture that names feelings, normalizes therapy, and expects adults to be emotionally attuned, so they practice emotional skills in ways that simply weren’t available to most previous generations.”
The reasons behind the shift are multifaceted. It’s impossible to point to one book, an Instagram-famous psychologist, a societal event (like the pandemic), or a celebrity moment as the inflection point of the changing conversation around mental health, therapy, and parenting styles. Mental health professionals say all of the above factors have contributed to an increase in emotional awareness in today’s kids.
But it has shifted. By and large, younger generations are better off for having more emotional skills than their parents and grandparents. Yet, it’s not without caveats. Mental health professionals discuss the reasons for the higher emotional awareness levels among today’s kids and young adults, as well as the many benefits (and a few pitfalls).
Generational Shifts
Discussions of generational norms can lead to sweeping generalizations (i.e., Millennials are avocado-toast-loving participation-trophy kids who killed American cheese). Still, societal and cultural developments can shape how we raise the next generation. Often, mental health professionals say, parents will parent as they were parented.
Boomers and Gen-X
Born between 1946 and 1964, Boomers were raised by parents who survived the World Wars and the Great Depression. These parents often imparted a survivalist mindset on their “Boomer” children.
“When you’re raised by parents who have experienced significant trauma, these parents tend to prioritize physical safety over emotional/mental safety, as their physical safety was not always promised,” says Alexandra Cromer, LPC with Thriveworks. “This shaped Boomers to view their realities as one-dimensional and to view reality as something that is a ‘universally accepted truth’ rather than what we know reality to be currently, a social construct and something that many don’t always agree on.”
Unfortunately, this view can make it difficult to evolve with the times or be open to tools like therapy.
“Boomers may have more difficulty identifying, expressing, and discussing emotions and/or mental health,” says Nissa Keyashian, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist and the author of Practicing Stillness. “They may also have more resistance towards seeking mental health care.”
Boomers went on to raise Gen X (Children born between 1965 and 1980), along with members of the Silent Generation.
“Many Gen X…also were likely not given a lot of emotional nurturance or taught to identify, express, process, and discuss emotions,” Dr. Keyashian says.
Still, Dr. Keyashian said the tide began to shift as Gen X grew up. School counselors became more normalized. Awareness of more attuned, emotionally responsive parenting styles began to enter the cultural conversation in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Millennials
Born between 1981 and 1996, Cromer says Millennials are split, in part because a wide variety of parents raised them (Gen X and Boomers).
“As parents, Gen X tended to use less corporal punishment, reflecting on aspects of their childhoods that they did not enjoy or approve of,” Cromer says. “Millennial identities were encouraged to be individualized due to their ready access to social media and the internet. Millennials, through their access to social media and the internet, originated ideas of social and emotional intelligence.”
Gen X and Millennials have gone on to raise Gen Z (1996 to 2012) and Gen Alpha (2013 to 2024), using their personal reflections, digital resources, and a wave of new parenting books to shift awareness of emotions and chip away at the stigma on mental health.
What Shifted Discussions of Emotional Awareness
As you can probably tell, we didn’t go from “children should be seen and not heard” to the emotional ABCs in a minute. It took decades. Generations, in fact. And it’s the product of several villages’ worth of research and of various societal shifts that have changed how we raise our children.
Parenting styles
They say that no child comes with an instruction manual, but parents have long looked to books for help. The narrative significantly shifted in the 1990s and 2000s.
“Parenting literature promoted attachment, emotional attunement, and cognitive stimulation,” says William Cheung Tsang, Psy.D., a neuropsychologist at Hackensack University Medical Center. “Examples of popular books include Parenting from the Inside Out by Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell, and Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. Most psychologists are aware of the works by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, but they began to move from academic contexts into households.”
More recently, The Whole Brain Child by Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson also supported attuned parenting.
Headlines and a rise in prioritization of a college degree also shifted parenting styles.
“Increased economic uncertainty, competitive college admissions, and media attention on child safety—from crime to the internet—fueled a more hands-on, vigilant style of parenting sometimes called ‘intensive parenting,’” Dr. Khan says. “The result is a parenting culture that, for many families, places a premium on understanding children’s inner worlds—not just managing outward behavior.”
This style is often labeled as “gentle parenting,” though it is often misconstrued as permissive rather than authoritative, which Dr. Khan says is generally the author’s intent.
“When practiced properly, gentle or emotionally-driven parenting is actually a modern form of authoritative parenting,” he says, “It is warm, responsive, and emotionally attuned, with clear and consistent boundaries.”
Dr. Khan says that authoritative parenting suggests teaching kids to label and validate feelings (“You’re really disappointed and angry that we have to leave the park”) while still holding limits (“But it’s still time to go”). Permissive parenting would skip the last part.
“They use co-regulation—staying calm and present through meltdowns—so kids learn, in their bodies, that big feelings can be survived and soothed,” Dr. Khan says. “They invite repair after conflict, modeling apologies, reflection, and problem-solving…when parents combine empathy with structure, children tend to develop stronger emotional vocabulary, better self-regulation, and more secure attachment.”
Breaking the stigma on therapy
Cultural events and shifts have continued over time and have factored into the increase in emotional awareness among kids.
“Gen Z and [Gen] Alpha…are dealing with their own challenges, including the trauma of growing up in the age of school shootings, social media, as well as going through the COVID pandemic during their childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood,” Dr. Keyashian says.
Yet, anchored in an upbringing that taught emotional awareness, these generations are more likely to reach out for help. But that’s not all.
The experts we spoke with say parents are playing a role in raising emotionally aware kids by shifting their styles. But celebrities also played a role in normalizing mental health discussions and therapy. Dr. Tsang still remembers where he was when Michael Phelps publicly discussed depression and suicidal thoughts after the Olympics. Simone Biles, Demi Lovato, Lady Gaga, Naomi Osaka, and Chappell Roan are among the legions of recognisable names who haven’t struggled in silence.
“Rather than the past notion of ‘pushing through,’ these celebrities helped to reduce stigma on mental health in conjunction with seeking therapy to navigate life transitions and self-identity,” Dr. Tsang shares. “This has underscored how stress is a universal experience and that it is normal to seek professional support.”
Phelps is among the celebrities to partner with telehealth services (Phelps partnered with Talkspace), but even local therapists have begun offering telehealth, especially amid pandemic restrictions.
“Telehealth and app-based therapy…mitigates barriers to access, benefiting those during the COVID pandemic restrictions and those with financial, transportation, and provider availability limitations,” Dr. Tsang says. “We can directly see how the Gen Z/Alpha generation benefits from this. Today, therapy is framed less as a last resort and more as a developmental support. Compared to Gen X, the younger generations have been growing up seeing mental health as part of general health.”
In therapy, Dr. Tsang says people of any age learn to “identify, differentiate, and label internal feelings and mental states.” The goal is to learn how feelings and states link to triggers, interpretations, and behaviors, and make shifts.
Schools get involved
Social and emotional awareness isn’t just rising online, in literature, and at home. Schools are on board, too.
“Social-emotional learning programs in schools are designed to help children learn about their feelings and how they impact themselves and others in a developmentally appropriate setting,” Cromer says. “These programs promote awareness and open, clear communication about feelings and any barriers that a child might experience in managing these feelings.”
Cromer adds that these programs are often instructional and interactive, so children of all ages can learn and cope in healthy ways.
Are There Pitfalls?
For the most part, experts emphasize that emotional awareness has benefits, and they’re happy to see kids have more of it.
“Social-emotional awareness enables children and adolescents to better cope with stress, manage interpersonal relationships, and navigate life transitions as they learn about values and self-identity,” Dr. Tsang says.
But there are some potential drawbacks.
“Young people are at risk of organizing identity around diagnostic language,” Dr. Tsang says. “For example, if someone frequently expresses being ‘an anxious person,’ this can shape a narrative and identity that becomes resistant to treatment.”
Older generations aren’t immune to this risk, but Dr. Tsang says Gen Z and Gen Alpha have grown up on social media.
“Social media… has the downside of constant exposure to symptoms and ‘pop’ diagnostic content…thinking algorithms on IG and TikTok,” Dr. Tsang says. “Along with this over-identification could be the “now what?” moment.”
Dr. Tsang says people can become uncomfortable with symptoms improving, feeling they’ve lost their identity.
“As clinicians, parents, and educators, the goal is to help kids use emotional awareness as a tool, not as a definition of their worth or their entire identity,” Dr. Khan says. That means teaching them that feelings are information, not instructions. Diagnoses are tools for treatment, not labels that limit who they can become.”
And he suggests teaching kids that feelings aren’t static. They aren’t forever. That’s OK.
“Growth often means their relationship to their feelings changes over time, and that is something to be curious about, not afraid of,” Dr. Khan says.
Read the original article on Parents
