As a bemused parent to two adolescents I can tell you that the future generation is utterly baffling

Older people have been moaning about younger people since Aristotle, but it does seem the generation gap has widened in recent decades – due partly to bewildering advances in technology, but also because the rise of the 'X Factor' follow-your-dream mantra

I'm now in my 50s and my children are enduring teen traumas I experienced 40 years ago. In that time the world has changed beyond all recognition – and in many ways, so have kids (Shutterstock)

My wife and I are unquestionably the worst parents in the world. We weren’t aware of this somewhat disheartening information, but all the evidence is in. Consider the facts:

1. Daughter, 14, wanted a new backpack for her forthcoming Duke of Edinburgh’s Award trip, preferably handmade and delivered by Zoella. Instead, because it’s a one-off trip, we got one off Freecycle.

2. Son, 11, keeps attempting to explain the bewildering intricacies of the latest computer game he’s designing but this makes our eyes roll up in our heads and ask idiotic questions like: “Is it a bit like Pong then?”

3. My wife and I have been invited to a family bash in Liverpool, which means leaving the kids with grandparents overnight for the first time in many years. That means Daughter, 14, will probably get that Zoella backpack and Son, 11, the £300 drawing tablet he desperately needs as much as I needed that Rothmans Football Annual 1978-79.

Childcare was never this much hassle when I was a kid. We were left outside the pub with Coke and crisps for weeks, being dug out of snowdrifts come spring. Our babysitters were sulky teen goths with home-made tattoos; we’ve never left our kids with strangers in their lives, apart from family – who are, admittedly, a bit strange.

Then from the age of 10 I was baby-sitting my own uncle who, to be fair, was five years younger than me. (Large Irish family. It’s complicated.)

Older people have been moaning about younger people since Aristotle and there’s nothing new about the generation gap, but it does seem that gap has widened in recent decades – due partly to bewildering advances in technology, but also because the rise of the X Factor follow-your-dream mantra has burdened young people with such... expectations.

Young people now seem to think if they post a couple of vacuous vlogs or sub-Sheeran whine-fests online they’ll immediately get a billion-pound publishing or record deal. Annoyingly, this sometimes happens. So why bother to get a boring, repetitive job (ie all jobs) when you’re on a “journey” to the stars?

When I was at school, in careers we were informed two options were available – the army or youth training scheme. We had to watch every episode of Boys from the Blackstuff as preparation for the outside world and when about to go into a maths exam were given additional motivation by a teacher who excitedly announced: “Good news, everyone! We’ve just been informed that whoever gets the highest grade in maths has an apprenticeship waiting for them at the local sausage factory!”

I never did get maths O-Level. Nor my sausage-making apprenticeship. Yet try telling that to young people today and they don’t believe you.

It doesn’t help that the media keep churning out guff telling them they’ve had it harder than any other generation, including presumably the ones wiped out by the Somme, the Black Death or dinosaurs (I never got history O-Level, either).

The generation gap in my family is wider than most because we had kids later in life. My son was born when I was 39; I’m now in my 50s and my children are enduring teen traumas I experienced 40 years ago. In that time the world has changed beyond all recognition – and in many ways, so have kids.

Despite all the talk about kids growing up quicker than ever, in some ways they are far more sensible than we were (all right – are). When I was my daughter’s age I was watching Crass at Todmorden Town Hall, drinking cider and sniffing glue; she’s lunching in Hampstead and has never touched alcohol, fags or even lighter fuel, for God’s sake. I suppose this does make her more mature than I was at 14, but you take my point.

Perhaps it’s also a question of where you were raised. I grew up in the mean back streets of Hebden Bridge, where we’d spend endless hours playing football and cricket, climbing onto factory roofs to retrieve footballs and cricket balls, lining up terrified girls beneath rudimentary ramps to jump over them on Grifters, Evel Knievel-style. My wife grew up in Kirkby, on the biggest council estate this side of Alpha Centauri, surrounded by derelict flats, burning oil drums and rabid wolves: a long way from Islington, it must be said.

In our case, there’s another complication: my wife and I were raised in single-parent families, she by her father, me by a teenage mum. Money was tight and so, like all parents, we want our children to have the material things we never had – except of course most of them (iPhones, tablets, laptops) we never had because they didn’t exist, not even in the most demented visions of Raymond Baxter (that’s the Tomorrow’s World presenter for all you millennials out there).

Somewhat rashly, in order to assuage our guilt about our forthcoming night away, which we haven’t had the courage to mention yet, my wife and I purchase flights to Australia for Christmas. Excitedly we rush to inform Daughter, 14, who frowns as darkly as only a 14-year-old girl can frown.

“But what about my mocks?”

Wife and I look at each other. What the hell are mocks? Daughter, 14, informs us they’re mock GCSEs, which apparently she and her friends consider important.

I do worry about young people today. And now I have something else to feel guilty about. But then, parents feeling guilty? That’s something that will never change.