Generation gap or chasm?
What “reality” TV tells us about the way we interact with family members of different ages.
Television often portrays the generations as rival camps. Younger people are depicted as entitled and impatient; older people as controlling, inflexible, or out of touch.
These stereotypes make entertaining viewing, especially in the popular genre of "unscripted" or "reality" TV, but they reveal more about the demands of storytelling than about our families and communities.
A striking example is the Chinese reality series, My Little One, which documents the lives of female celebrities and their parents.
Recent episodes featuring 22-year-old retired Olympic diving champion, Zhang Jiaqi, and her mother, Xiao Yingjie, ignited a fierce national debate about parenting, independence, and the obligations of adult children towards their families.
Viewers saw Xiao Yingjie repeatedly criticise her daughter’s everyday habits, including her tidiness, clothes, diet, and care for her cats. In one scene, the mother admonished her daughter for failing to cut the tag off her pyjamas.
The program also revealed that Xiao had managed Zhang’s earnings and bank accounts, including access to the substantial amount of prize money earned while the athlete was a teenager.
Zhang, who began intensive diving training at six, said she often felt that she had been raised by her sporting team rather than her parents.
The scenes prompted widespread discussion in China about “criticism-based” or “toxic” parenting.
Some viewers interpreted the mother’s behaviour as controlling and emotionally damaging. Others saw a more complicated picture involving sacrifice, anxiety, and a traditional belief that strict criticism motivates children to succeed.
The controversy raises a question familiar to families everywhere: when does parental protection become interference?
An adult child may still value advice from their parents but want control over their money, work, and personal decisions. At the same time, parents may struggle to adjust after spending years making decisions for a child, particularly one who entered elite sport at an unusually young age.
Other television programs offer a more hopeful portrayal.
Australia’s Old People’s Home for Teenagers brings adolescents and older adults together through structured activities intended to reduce loneliness and challenge ageist assumptions.
The program has generated genuine friendships that continued after filming stopped.
Its companion series, Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds, was adapted from a British format that placed preschool children and retirement-community residents together.
A Griffith University study found that viewers were almost twice as likely as non-viewers to regard “intergenerational practice” – bringing together people of different ages – as extremely important to society. The programs also helped inspire community playgroups and other initiatives across Australia.
South Korea’s Grandpas Over Flowers similarly challenged expectations by sending actors in their seventies backpacking with a younger companion.
Rather than portraying older people merely as dependants, it presented them as adventurous, humorous, and capable, while showing generations cooperating through the inevitable difficulties of travel.
Do such programs reflect reality? Only partly. Participants know they are being filmed, producers select the situations, and editors shape many hours of footage into a dramatic narrative.
Conflict may be amplified, while a “heart-warming” format can make harmony appear easier to come by than it is in real life.
Nevertheless, these shows offer useful lessons, including:
- Listen without immediately correcting
- Respect an adult relative’s autonomy
- Ask about experiences instead of relying on generational stereotypes.
Perhaps the most important lesson for older people and their adult children or other younger relatives is to spend ordinary time together.
Understanding rarely comes from winning an argument; it grows through shared activity and the willingness to see the person rather than their age group.
Related reading: SCMP, ABC, Wikipedia, Griffith University, Sixthtone
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