The
Catholic Weekly
Online
Sydney
23 November 2003
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Sydney welcomes its newest cardinal
Not to be missed
Help for Jenny, Luke
Take heart from teenagers
Caritas stays put
Irishtown revisited
The company they keep
Pregnant pause: Making room for the little person
Editorial: Young hopefuls
Letters: Quiet revolutionary
Conversation: Fr Michael Anghel, parish priest and grandfather of three - Priest
made rite choice
Chance or Hand of God?
Presto, adagio, it’s art Caravaggio
The last retreat
Virtual boost to learning
‘Big kids’ meet ‘littlies’
Teacher, student in De La Salle double history win
Prize for playground plan
Gospel values alive in L’Arche
Take heart from teenagers
Australia should take heart from the optimism of today’s teenagers, despite divorce being at an all time high, the marriage rate the lowest in a century and the birthrate plummeting, says social researcher Hugh Mackay.
He has told a Canberra conference of the Australian Council of Social Services he is confident Australia is on the cusp of major cultural change, claiming today’s teenagers are the most community-minded he has seen.
Armed with their mobile phones and their internet connections, today’s teenagers are “the most tribal generation of Australians” he has come across.
They have formed a strong reliance on each other, unlike the adults who responded to the stresses of the 21st century by retreating from society.
Older Australians are overwrought with anxiety, he says, reeling from the effects of the sexual revolution, the economic revolution, the information technology revolution and “a revolution in the way we define ourselves”.
Mr Mackay says the divorce rate has quadrupled to 42 per cent in the past 30 years.
By contrast, the proportion of people married by their 30th birthday has plunged from 76 per cent to 36 per cent.
Australia was producing its smallest-ever generation of children, with the birth rate languishing at 1.7 babies per woman.
A quarter of the population will be over 65 when this generation grows up.
The average household has shrunk from 3.3 people to 2.6.
Half of all homes house just one or two people, and single households are the fastest growing.