Dr. Phil Has No Idea How to "Fix" Generation Y

Dr. Phil McGraw is a retired psychologist, known for making many appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show and hosting his own show, Dr. Phil. Dr. McGraw has come under fire over the years for his psychological approach, which is viewed as being far too simplistic and usually ineffective. Just to make things even more complicated, he has received criticism for his own show over the years because of how he has recruited guests occasionally. Of course, just to put the icing on the cake, despite him being an outspoken critic of all pornography, whether it be softcore or hardcore, his son Jay married one of the Dahm triplets, one of the 3 Playmates of the Month in the December 1998 issue of Playboy.

Clearly, Dr. McGraw is not the best psychologist in the world, nor was he capable of raising a son with the same values as him.

Here though, I need to discuss Dr. McGraw's latest shortcoming which has been getting constant attention on his show. McGraw has long criticized "Generation Y" (or as I prefer, the Nintendo Generation) for having an inflated sense of entitlement and lack of ambition. Despite McGraw usually blaming parents for badly raising children, lately McGraw has been criticizing 15-25 year olds for their own behavior without consideration that times have changed. The most noteworthy case on his show has been "The Dr. Phil Family," a family originally at odds over the oldest daughter misbehaving, doing drugs, and having unprotected sex in high school. Since McGraw originally featured the family on the show, the daughter has gotten progressively worse, having 2 children with unknown fathers, losing custody of both children, and being addicted to meth at one point. Being hypocritical, McGraw has never blamed her parents for raising her to be a bad child, rather focusing on having her correct her own actions.

That in itself is part of McGraw's inability to understand Generation Y. McGraw criticizes our generation for being too self-entitled and unambitious, yet he expects a product of that generation to solve their own problems after being raised by the hippie generation.

The main problem with my generation is our parents. Our parents grew up in a time of uncertainty; a war was being fought in Vietnam for seemingly no reason, the President could no longer be trusted, violence was erupting over race, and women were fighting a losing battle for equality. Growing up in that era, our parents instilled us with their values, just as their parents had done for them. Except this time, we would learn to mistrust the government and all authority figures, accept casual sex as teenagers, and know that marijuana usage would not face severe consequences.

In short, Dr. McGraw blames parents for misbehaving children, but once the kids start being sexually active it's all their fault. Makes perfect sense.