I agree with the vast majority of the post here re: kids and the educational system etc. In most cases, I believe it is the parents who are the most impacting on this whole scenario. We're generally talking about parents of school age children, not the young adults.

As a psychotherapist, performing in home social work, I have found that parents know that their kids are a mess, and are so because of relatively poor parenting skills. Here's the double bind, if I accept parenting skill education, then it says I'm a bad parent, but if I don't, I must then place blame either on my child, which as a product of me it makes me bad, or I can blame the system and not do anything, and in that way I am let off the hook. This happens among wealthy or poor families, in my experience.

Then those kids have kids and they utilize the same inept skills they experienced. And the cycle spirals downward. None of us are free from this, but it can be minimized if people stopped blaming everyone else for what they do, and simply took responsibility for their own actions. I believe the lawyers have had a huge impact on this type of thinking, and really don't want to acknowledge it-preferring to think that they are providing justice. But it's not just them, it's the entire system that penalizes responsibility and truth telling.