You have full access to this open access article. The paper focuses on the question of how young people in the post-Soviet country of Kyrgyzstan deal with the structural and cultural demands of a society characterized by strong obligations of intergenerational solidarity and the normative pattern of submission under the authority of elders. We can then deduce what the hierarchical age order means for the well-being of young people. In Kyrgyzstan, children are expected to follow the guidelines of their parents.
Parents want to have a say in which course of study, which profession and even which partner their children choose. Over time these children fail to learn how to make decisions on their own Multi-generational families are the ideal Reynolds, and a statistically proven reality.
Relatively large numbers of children, the young age of marriage, early transition to parenthood and a high percentage of married people in society UN Women Country Office, underline the importance attached to the family. Such importance is not simply due to tradition. They are increasingly financing private schools of different quality and with very different financial requirements. Families are important as well when it comes to paying for private universities, and also for covering the sometimes considerable fees of state universities Braunmiller, ; Sabzalieva, While young people largely adopt this view of the family as a highly important source of support, several studies show that they would like to have more of a life of their own e.
In the strong position of the older generation, we assume two problems. Developmental psychologists call it a developmental task cf. Erikson, ; Havighurst, It must therefore be investigated to what extent this working out of a self might be difficult or unsatisfying for young people in Kyrgyzstan due to parental authority interrupting this process or preempting its result. Secondly, the society we are dealing with is in a state of rapid change: demands and inputs from outside, forms and techniques of production, and social values as a whole have changed dramatically in recent decades.
It is therefore problematic when a generation that has grown up under different conditions sets the standards for the future. We rely here on three predominantly qualitative studies that we have conducted on young children, adolescents and young adults in Kyrgyzstan. The studies show that there is no mere submissiveness in any age group.
