The Best of Friends
最好的朋友

The evidence for harmony may not be obvious in some families. But it seems that four out of five young people now get on with their parents, which is the opposite of the popularly held image of unhappy teenagers locked in their room after endless family quarrels.
在一些家庭中，和谐的证据可能并不明显。但现在似乎有五分之四的年轻人与父母相处融洽，这与人们普遍持有的，没完没了的家庭争吵后被锁在房间里的不快乐青少年印象完全相反。

An important new study into teenage attitudes surprisingly shows that their family life is more harmonious than it has ever been in the past. “We were surprised by just how positive today’s young people seen to be about their families,” said one member of the research team. “They’re expected to be rebellious and selfish but actually they have other things on their minds; they want a car and material goods, and they worry about whether school is serving them well. There’s more negotiation and discussion between parents and children, and children expect to take part in the family decision-making process. They don’t want to rock the boat.”
一项针对青少年态度的重要新研究出人意料地显示，他们的家庭生活比以往任何时候都更加和谐。“今天的年轻人对他们家庭的积极性我们感到非常吃惊，”研究小组的一名成员说，“大家以为他们叛逆、自私，但实际上他们有其他想法；他们想要一辆汽车和物资，他们担心学校是否为他们提供了良好的服务。父母和孩子之间有更多的协商和讨论，孩子们希望参与家庭决策过程。他们不想让事情变得一团糟。”

So it seems that this generation of parents is much more likely than parents of 30 years ago to theat their children as friends. “My parents are happy to discuss things with me and willing to listen to me,” says 17-years-old Daniel Lazall.” I always tell them when L’m going out clubbing. As long as they know what I’m doing, they’re fine with it.” Susan Crome, who is now 21, agrees. “Looking back on the last 10 years, there was a lot of what you could call negotiation. For example, as long as I’d done all my homework, I could go out on a Saturday night. But I think my grandparents were a lot stricter with my parents than that.”
因此，这一代父母似乎比30年前的父母更有可能把他们的孩子当作朋友。”17岁的丹尼尔·拉扎尔说：“我的父母很乐意和我讨论事情，也愿意听我说。我出去泡吧的时候总是告诉他们。只要他们知道我在做什么，他们就不会介意。”现年21岁的苏珊·克罗姆对此表示同意。“回顾过去10年，有很多你可以称之为协商的东西。例如，只要我做完了所有的家庭作业，我就可以在周六晚上出去。但我认为我的祖父母对我的父母比这严格得多。”

Maybe this positive view of family life should not be unexpected. It is possible that the idea of teenagers rebellion is not rooted in real facts. A researcher comments, “Our surprise that teenagers say they get along well with their parents comes because of a brief period in out social history when teenagers were regarded as different beings. But that idea of rebelling and breaking away from their parents really only happened during that one time in the 1960s when everyone rebelled. The normal situation throughout history has been a smooth change from helping out with the family business to taking it over.”
也许这种对家庭生活的积极看法并不出人意料，青少年叛逆的想法很可能不是基于事实。一位研究人员评论道， “青少年说他们与父母相处得很好，这让我们感到惊讶，是因为在社会历史的一个短暂时期，青少年被视为不同的个体。但这种叛逆和脱离父母的想法只发生在20世纪60年代的一个时期，当时每个人都叛逆。历史上的正常情况是从帮助家族企业到接管家族企业的平稳转变。”