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Childhood and Growing up Essay: Titles & Examples

The picture introduces the main ideas of a growing up essay.

What are the challenges of growing up? This question is thought-provoking and exciting to answer. Each person has their unique experience, and for many the process of growing up is not easy. Some live in poverty, others have complex family relationships. A childhood and growing up essay allows you to discover your new sides and see how well you know yourself.

This article is a writing guide for an essay about growing up. It contains creative essay titles on the topic, together with writing prompts and short essay examples. Get inspired to write your growing up essay with us!

  • 📝 Growing up Writing Prompts
  • 📚 Growing up Essay Topics
  • 📜 Essay Sample #1
  • 📜 Essay Sample #2

📝 What Are the Challenges of Growing Up? Essay Prompts

Every child is unique, so that everyone can tell a different childhood story.

What is typical for everyone – the process of growing up is a challenge. Although there’re lots of challenges, it’s also an exciting experience.

Growing up essays usually describe hobbies, relationships with siblings, difficulties with parents, etc. Check our essay ideas below.

The picture provides the list of the best themes for a growing up essay.

What Does It Mean to Grow up?

This is not only about aging or changing your looks. Growing up is a physical and a deep psychological process at the same time. Your picture of the world changes, people come and go, and you change too.

Creating a mind map of your childhood can help you understand what exactly growing up was to you.

A reflective childhood & growing up essay can involve such matters:

  • Taking on new responsibilities.
  • Learning from mistakes.
  • Changes in attitude towards people.
  • Childhood dreams and ambitions.
  • Childhood beliefs and values.
  • Independence, confidence, and self-acceptance.
  • Life lessons that shaped one’s personality.
  • People who affected the growing up process.

Growing up in a Small Town Essay

Describe the details of being a child in a small town. You can also describe the pluses and minuses of living in a small town. It can be a general overview, but better try to connect it to your life and experience.

In this kind of a growing up essay, you might write about:

  • Knowing everyone around.
  • Local school.
  • The first summer job.
  • The places that have always been special.

A comparative essay is a good choice in this case. Discuss why life in small towns is different from life in big cities.

Growing up without a Father Essay

How many children in the United States grow up in single-parent families?

Growing up with a single parent is certainly not the only thing that shapes a kid’s personality. However, it is one of the essential factors, for sure.

  • Check the statistics to see how many children grow up with one parent.
  • Tell about the mother’s efforts to raise children alone while working.
  • Include stories about relatives that were of immense help: siblings, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
  • Describe a person who substitutes father and his role.

Growing up without a Mother Essay

This topic might seem similar to the previous one, but there are several differences.

  • Write about the general psychological effects of growing up without a mother.
  • Compare the scientific facts with personal experience and conclude.
  • Describe how it affects adult life and childhood.
  • Write about the typical leisure time with father.

While describing a relationship with a father, describe daily responsibilities and how they influence a child’s life. What challenges do children growing up with a single parent experience?

Growing up Asian in America Essay

Even though the US is multicultural, there are still issues that people of color face. Including children.

Explain how the childhood of an Asian is different from the experience of white Americans. Describe it if you were a part of an Asian community such as a neighborhood or school you attended. Write about your national traditions that you maintained or abandoned.

In your essay on growing up, describe the challenges you overcame. These might include:

  • The time you faced racism.
  • The stereotypes and misconceptions you faced.
  • The choice between your identity and the one imposed by society.
  • How has the social position of Asians in the United States changed?

Growing up in Poverty Essay

How many young Americans live in families with incomes below the poverty threshold? There are several risks which growing up in poverty possesses.

You can discuss them in your growing-up-poor essay:

  • Malnutrition. Starting from low birth weight, ending with health problems.
  • Psychological damage. Being in need as a child might cause emotional and behavioral issues.
  • Academic failures. Some poor children have to work and attend school at the same time. This interferes with the proper learning process.

Use growing up in poverty topic for a problem-solution essay. Here you can discuss how to deal with poverty and provide equal opportunities for all children.

Growing up in Two Cultures Essay

Adapting to a new culture is a complicated process. It is a massive challenge for children as they can’t identify themselves.

Here is what you can discuss in your essay on growing up:

  • Traditions of your family. They might include cuisine, holidays, religious practices.
  • Transcultural adaptation. Describe the change of behavioral patterns, language, or looks.
  • Your relationships with peers. Tell about the situations you remember: bad experiences such as bullying or good ones such as interest in your culture.

Write a narrative essay about your vision of what it’s like to be a person who belongs to two cultures.

📚 Essay Titles about Growing Up

And here is your selection of essay topics that you can also use as ideas for a speech or discussion.

You can pick your essay title from this list:

  • What country is the best for children to grow up in?
  • Should kids and teenagers work during the summer holidays?
  • Explain how growing up among American children influences children of migrants.
  • What is the most important lesson you learned from your parents?
  • Were you more like your father or mother as a child?
  • What do you think you needed the most as a child?
  • What are the common problems between parents and adolescents?
  • Have you ever been a victim or took part in school bullying?
  • What are the consequences of growing up too fast?
  • Describe a life-changing experience from your childhood.
  • How to motivate children to study based on their early childhood performance?
  • Does having a pet teach children responsibility?
  • Did you have any secrets that you kept from your parents?
  • What is it like growing up in a small town with big ambitions?
  • What tips could you give your parents if you went back in time?
  • What advice would you give yourself if you went back in time?
  • How did your race and ethnicity affect your childhood?
  • Describe your childhood hobby and the achievements in it.
  • How do childhood problems might affect adult life?
  • Is it more challenging to grow up as a girl or a boy?
  • Who was your role model as you were a child?
  • What challenges did you face while growing up, which you think others didn’t?
  • What was the biggest mistake you made in your childhood?
  • What are the psychological effects of family issues on children?
  • How well do you remember your childhood?
  • What are the main reasons for suicide among teenagers?
  • Describe your best childhood friend and your relationship.
  • How does growing up in a low-income family affect one’s attitude to money?
  • Why do children lie to their parents?
  • What is your brightest childhood memory?
  • Why do teenagers tend to be rebellious and sometimes violent?
  • What would you change in your childhood if you had a chance?
  • Describe the moment when you felt you had grown up.
  • How has your music taste changed since you were a kid?
  • How to instill tolerance in children from an early age?
  • Growing up without a father made me a stronger person.
  • What was your dream profession when you were a child?
  • What is the most unforgettable present you received as a kid?
  • Were you popular in middle and high school?
  • What is your earliest childhood memory, and why do you think it’s this one?
  • What is the best advice you have received as a child?
  • How successful were you academically as a child?
  • How to avoid and prevent bullying at school?
  • What experience in your family affected you the most and why?
  • Did your parents support your dreams and ambitions?
  • How can you describe your relationships with your siblings?
  • What were the common traits of teenagers of your generation?
  • What is the most valuable object that reminds you of childhood?
  • Describe your first love and what you felt about it?
  • How did your family affect your current values?
  • Videogame Addiction and Its Impact on Children.
  • Can a single parent provide enough attention and care to their children?
  • Who was the closest to you in your family?
  • What are the things your parents have done you are grateful for?
  • What opportunities do you wish you could have as a kid?
  • What were your phobias in childhood or as a teenager?
  • What were your strong and weak sides when you were a child?
  • What do you want your future family to be like?
  • How to detect and prevent child abuse at early stages?
  • Why do teenagers try smoking, drugs, or alcohol?

📜 Growing Up Essay Example #1

To make it easier for you, our experts prepared a couple of childhood and growing up essays. Check them below!

Everyone defines growing up in their way. It is more than just physical changes that you notice in the mirror. As for me, growing up means accepting responsibilities, being able to take care of somebody, and becoming independent. I remember the first time my parents asked me to babysit my little sister. Rachel was a silent kid, but I was nervous anyway. I wanted my parents to come home as early as possible because I was afraid of the responsibility. I felt as if they entrusted her life and safety to me, just a teenager. Some weeks later, I discovered that it was not terrifying me anymore. We had fun together; I taught her how to play games and enjoyed our time together. Rachel was also the first person I learned to take care of. I helped my sister with her homework, picked her from school, and gave her advice when she asked for it. The feeling that I do it without waiting for something in return taught me a lot. I changed my attitude towards people, learned how to be kind and generous. Now I am sure that I will be able to nurture my kids in the future. Moving to a college dormitory made me independent. I thought I was an adult fully responsible for myself at high school, but I was wrong. Living alone and being in charge of my life motivated me to change a lot. I learned how to spend time alone, value it and take care of my health. I also started managing my time rationally. Independence doesn’t mean you don’t need other people in your life. It means you can rely on yourself in any case. I can’t say that I am a one hundred percent adult at this stage of my life. I am sure that I grew up helping my parents, my sister, and myself. I changed a lot. But many challenges are waiting for me in the future. Taking up more responsibilities and facing difficulties will help me on my way.

📜 Growing Up Essay Example #2

Growing up asian in america.

Asian-American children are a vulnerable group that needs protection. My experience is an excellent example of the difficulties that Asian-Americans might face in their childhood. As an Asian, I faced bullying at school, low expectations regarding my future career, and troubles with self-identification. High school was a hard time for me. 21.7% of Asians report being bullied at school . The rate is the highest among all the ethnic groups. I didn’t report my own experience as I didn’t want to seem weak. I was bullied because I studied harder than many other students and cared about my grades too much. I am sure that I would have been bullied less if I were a white child. There is nothing wrong with being ambitious regardless of your ethnicity. My family and friends didn’t support my aspiration to become a doctor. They said that no one from my family went to college and that it was too hard to be admitted. It was challenging to keep my motivation without support. Even when they knew I had all the chances to receive financial aid, they just didn’t believe it. It was always hard for me to identify myself. I don’t know if I am like children from China as I have never been there. I was born and raised in the United States. But my motherland does not feel like home too. I don’t look like many of my peers, and my family has a different lifestyle and traditions. I don’t think that I belong to any of the communities. In conclusion, my experience shows how a childhood of an Asian-American kid might look like. I feel that further generations will confront similar challenges facing society and themselves. That is why I want to raise attention to the mentioned problems and change people’s attitudes.

We hope that our article clarified what a growing up essay should look like.

We will be glad to learn about your experience of writing such an essay! Share your thoughts below in the comment section.

This is it for today. Good luck and happy writing!

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Essays About Growing Up: 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Essays about growing up help us view and understand various experiences from different perspectives. Check out our top examples and prompts for your writing.

How do you know when you’ve finally grown up? Me, it happened when I was in high school. I realized I matured when I had no qualms about looking for ways to help my family financially. I didn’t think I had a choice, but at the same time, I desperately wanted to aid my parents in ensuring we had food on the table. 

I was a fast food crew member, a librarian, and many other odd jobs I could talk about for hours. Some judge my parents’ poor financial literacy when I tell my stories, but I never did. All of it was a part of my growing up; without these experiences, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. 

Growing up is a unique experience for every person, influenced by our surroundings and influences. With so many variables, each person has their own story about growing up; take a look below to see the best example and prompts to begin writing your own. You might also like these essays about youth .

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5 Essay Examples

1. social influences on children’s growing up by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 2. growing up in the 626 by katie gee salisbury, 3. growing up in poverty determines the person’s fate by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 4. growing up on the streets by writer bernadette, 5. growing up with hearing loss by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 1. what does growing up mean, 2. the effect of my environment on my growth, 3. growing up rich or poor, 4. family values and growing up, 5. growing up with siblings, 6. your best memories growing up, 7. changes while growing up.

“Human growth and development is a complicated process which is inevitably impacted upon by socioeconomic circumstances within which an individual is growing up.”

To demonstrate the social influences that can impact a child’s experiences growing up, the essay offers several credible citations from professionals, such as Damon and Lerner, the writer and editor of “ Handbook of Child Psychology .” It looks at how social factors, such as living conditions, access to resources, and others, can affect a child’s overall development as they grow. Ultimately, the writer believes that parents play a huge role in the development of their children. You can also check out these essays about development .

“Something welled up inside my throat. All of a sudden I felt a burning urgency to stake a claim, to assert that I was one of them, that I too belonged in this group. ‘Hey guys, I’m Chinese too,’ I ventured. A classmate who carpooled with my family was quick to counter, ‘Katie, that doesn’t count.'”

Salisbury shares her experiences as an overachieving Asian-American, focusing on her grievances at being biracial, not connecting to her heritage, and people’s assumption of her being white. She talks about her life in 626, the area code for Arcadia, Southern California, where most Asians reside. At the end of her essay, Salisbury offers facts about herself to the reader, recognizing and accepting every part of herself.

Looking for more? Check out these essays about time .

“Economic mobility is the ability of someone or a family to move up from one income group to another. In the United States, it is at an all-time low and is currently decreasing.”

The author shares their opinion on how a family’s financial situation shapes their children’s future. To back up their claim, the essay provides relevant statistics showing the number of children and families in poverty, alongside its dramatic effects on a child’s overall development. The writer mentions that a family’s economic incompetence can pass on to the children, reducing their chances of receiving a proper education.

“As a young black woman growing up on the hardcore streets of North Philadelphia, you have to strive and fight for everything. The negativity and madness can grab and swallow even the most well-behaved kids.”

Bernadette opens her readers’ eyes to the harsh realities of being a young black woman throughout her essay. However, she also expresses her gratitude to her family, who encouraged her to have a positive mindset. Her parents, who also grew up on the streets of North Philly, were determined to give her and her siblings a proper education. 

She knows how individuals’ environments impact their values ​​and choices, so she fought hard to endure her circumstances. She also notes that the lack of exposure to different social norms results in children having limited thinking and prevents them from entertaining new perspectives. You might be interested in these essays about dream jobs .

“The world is not accommodating to people with hearing disabilities: apart from professionals, barely anyone knows and understands sign language. On top of that, many are merely unaware of the fact that they might be hurting and making a deaf person feel disrespected.”

The essay discusses critical issues in children growing up with hearing impairments. It includes situations that show the difference between a child growing up in an all-deaf family and a non-deaf environment. While parental love and support are essential, deaf parents should consider hearing impairment a gift and be aware of their children’s needs. 

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

7 Prompts for Essays About Growing Up

Growing up is a continuous sequence where we develop and experience significant changes in our bodies and how we think and feel. It’s the transition between being a child and an adult, so define what childhood and adulthood entail in your essay.

Then, describe how an individual grows up and the indications that they progressed physically and intellectually. For a fun addition to your essay, include questions your readers can answer to see if they have matured.

Essays About Growing Up: The effect of my environment on my growth

Many studies show how people’s environments, such as home, community, and school, affect growth. These environments significantly impact an individual’s development through interactions. For this prompt, write about the factors that influence your overall development and explain how you think they affected you. For example, those who studied at a religious school tend to be more conservative.

Money is essential for survival, but only some have easy access. Most people act and make decisions based on how much money they have, which also influences their behavior. In this prompt, cite several situations where money affects parents’ decisions about their children’s needs and wants and how it affects the children as they grow up.

Discuss how financial constraints impact their emotions, perceptions, and choices in life. Choose high, average, and low-income households, then compare and contrast their situations. To create an in-depth analysis, use interview research and statistical data to back up your arguments.

Studies show that children understand rules and have already formed their behaviors and attitudes at seven. Before this age, children are surrounded by relatives who teach them values through experiences within the family. For this prompt, use real-life examples and factual information to discuss the importance of good parenting in instilling good values ​​in children.

Essays About Growing Up: Growing up with siblings

Growing up with siblings is an entirely different experience growing up versus being an only child. Use this prompt to explain how having a brother or sister can impact a child’s progress and discuss its pros and cons. For instance, having siblings means the child has more role models and can get more emotional support. However, it can also mean that a child craves more of their parent’s attention. Discuss these points in your essay, and decide the “better” experience, for a fun argumentative essay.

In this essay, choose the best memories you had from childhood to the current day that has contributed significantly to your principles and outlook. Describe each memory and share how it changed you, for better or worse.

Talk about the changes people expect as they grow up. These physical, emotional, or mental changes lead people to act and think more maturely.  Add studies demonstrating the necessity of these changes and recount instances when you realize that you’ve grown up. For example, if before you didn’t care about your spending, now you’re more frugal and learned to save money. For help with your essay, check our round-up of best essay writing apps .

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difficulties of growing up essay

How to Write the “Overcoming Challenges” Essay + Examples

What’s covered:.

  • What is the Overcoming Challenges Essay?
  • Real Overcoming Challenges Essay Prompts
  • How to Choose a Topic
  • Writing Tips

Overcoming Challenges Essay Examples

  • Where to Get Your Essay Edited

While any college essay can be intimidating, the Overcoming Challenges prompt often worries students the most. Those students who’ve been lucky enough not to experience trauma tend to assume they have nothing worth saying. On the other hand, students who’ve overcome larger obstacles may be hesitant to talk about them.

Regardless of your particular circumstances, there are steps you can take to make the essay writing process simpler. Here are our top tips for writing the overcoming challenges essay successfully.

What is the “Overcoming Challenges” Essay?

The overcoming challenges prompt shows up frequently in both main application essays (like the Common App) and supplemental essays. Because supplemental essays allow students to provide schools with additional information, applicants should be sure that the subject matter they choose to write about differs from what’s in their main essay.

Students often assume the overcoming challenges essay requires them to detail past traumas. While you can certainly write about an experience that’s had a profound effect on your life, it’s important to remember that colleges aren’t evaluating students based on the seriousness of the obstacle they overcame.

On the contrary, the goal of this essay is to show admissions officers that you have the intelligence and fortitude to handle any challenges that come your way. After all, college serves as an introduction to adult life, and schools want to know that the students they admit are up to the task. 

Real “Overcoming Challenges” Essay Prompts

To help you understand what the “Overcoming Challenges” essay looks like, here are a couple sample prompts.

Currently, the Common Application asks students to answer the following prompt in 650 words or less:

“The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?”

For the past several years, MIT has prompted students to write 200 to 250 words on the following:

“Tell us about the most significant challenge you’ve faced or something important that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?”

In both cases, the prompts explicitly ask for your response to the challenge. The event itself isn’t as important as how it pushed you to grow.

How to Choose a Topic for an Essay on Overcoming Challenges

When it comes to finding the best topic for your overcoming challenges essays, there’s no right answer. The word “challenge” is ambiguous and could be used to reference a wide range of situations from prevailing over a bully to getting over your lifelong stage fright to appear in a school musical. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind when selecting an essay subject.

1. Avoid trivial or common topics

While there aren’t many hard-and-fast rules for choosing an essay topic, students should avoid overdone topics.

These include:

  • Working hard in a challenging class
  • Overcoming a sports injury
  • Moving schools or immigrating to the US
  • Tragedy (divorce, death, abuse)

Admissions officers have read numerous essays on the subject, so it’s harder for you to stand out (see our full list of cliché college essay topics to avoid ). If events like these were truly formative to you, you can still choose to write about them, but you’ll need to be as personal as possible. 

It’s also ideal if you have a less traditional storyline for a cliché topic; for example, if your sports injury led you to discover a new passion, that would be a more unique story than detailing how you overcame your injury and got back in the game.

Similarly, students may not want to write about an obstacle that admissions committees could perceive as low stakes, such as getting a B on a test, or getting into a small fight with a friend. The goal of this essay is to illustrate how you respond to adversity, so the topic you pick should’ve been at least impactful on your personal growth.

2. Pick challenges that demonstrate qualities you want to highlight

Students often mistakenly assume they need to have experienced exceptional circumstances like poverty, an abusive parent, or cancer to write a good essay. The truth is that the best topics will allow you to highlight specific personal qualities and share more about who you are. The essay should be less about the challenge itself, and more about how you responded to it.

Ask yourself what personality traits you want to emphasize, and see what’s missing in your application. Maybe you want to highlight your adaptability, for example, but that isn’t clearly expressed in your application. In this case, you might write about a challenge that put your adaptability to the test, or shaped you to become more adaptable.

Here are some examples of good topics we’ve seen over the years:

  • Not having a coach for a sports team and becoming one yourself
  • Helping a parent through a serious health issue
  • Trying to get the school track dedicated to a coach
  • Having to switch your Model UN position last-minute

Tips for Writing an Essay About Overcoming Challenges

Once you’ve selected a topic for your essays, it’s time to sit down and write. For best results, make sure your essay focuses on your efforts to tackle an obstacle rather than the problem itself. Additionally, you could avoid essay writing pitfalls by doing the following:

1. Choose an original essay structure

If you want your overcoming challenges essay to attract attention, aim to break away from more traditional structures. Most of these essays start by describing an unsuccessful attempt at a goal and then explain the steps the writer took to master the challenge. 

You can stand out by choosing a challenge you’re still working on overcoming, or focus on a mental or emotional challenge that spans multiple activities or events. For example, you might discuss your fear of public speaking and how that impacted your ability to coach your brother’s Little League team and run for Student Council. 

You can also choose a challenge that can be narrated in the moment, such as being put on the spot to teach a yoga class. These challenges can make particularly engaging essays, as you get to experience the writer’s thoughts and emotions as they unfold.

Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to have succeeded in your goal for this essay. Maybe you ran for an election and lost, or maybe you proposed a measure to the school board that wasn’t passed. It’s still possible to write a strong essay about topics like these as long as you focus on your personal growth. In fact, these may make for even stronger essays since they are more unconventional topics.

2. Focus on the internal

When writing about past experiences, you may be tempted to spend too much time describing specific people and events. With an Overcoming Challenges essay though, the goal is to focus on your thoughts and feelings.

For example, rather than detail all the steps you took to become a better public speaker, use the majority of your essay to describe your mental state as you embarked on the journey to achieving your goals. Were you excited, scared, anxious, or hopeful? Don’t be afraid to let the reader in on your innermost emotions and thoughts during this process.

3. Share what you learned 

An Overcoming Challenges essay should leave the reader with a clear understanding of what you learned on your journey, be it physical, mental, or emotional. There’s no need to explicitly say “this experience taught me X,” but your essay should at least implicitly share any lessons you learned. This can be done through your actions and in-the-moment reflections. Remember that the goal is to show admissions committees why your experiences make you a great candidate for admission. 

Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the g arb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire. 

Furiously I rubbed the twigs together—rubbed and rubbed until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers. No smoke. The twigs were too young, too sticky-green; I tossed them away with a shower of curses, and began tearing through the underbrush in search of a more flammable collection. My efforts were fruitless. Livid, I bit a rejected twig, determined to prove that the forest had spurned me, offering only young, wet bones that would never burn. But the wood cracked like carrots between my teeth—old, brittle, and bitter. Roaring and nursing my aching palms, I retreated to the tent, where I sulked and awaited the jeers of my family. 

Rattling their empty worm cans and reeking of fat fish, my brother and cousins swaggered into the campsite. Immediately, they noticed the minor stick massacre by the fire pit and called to me, their deep voices already sharp with contempt. 

“Where’s the fire, Princess Clara?” they taunted. “Having some trouble?” They prodded me with the ends of the chewed branches and, with a few effortless scrapes of wood on rock, sparked a red and roaring flame. My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame. 

In the tent, I pondered my failure. Was I so dainty? Was I that incapable? I thought of my hands, how calloused and capable they had been, how tender and smooth they had become. It had been years since I’d kneaded mud between my fingers; instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano, my hands softening into those of a musician—fleshy and sensitive. And I’d gotten glasses, having grown horrifically nearsighted; long nights of dim lighting and thick books had done this. I couldn’t remember the last time I had lain down on a hill, barefaced, and seen the stars without having to squint. Crawling along the edge of the tent, a spider confirmed my transformation—he disgusted me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to squash him. 

Yet, I realized I hadn’t really changed—I had only shifted perspective. I still eagerly explored new worlds, but through poems and prose rather than pastures and puddles. I’d grown to prefer the boom of a bass over that of a bullfrog, learned to coax a different kind of fire from wood, having developed a burn for writing rhymes and scrawling hypotheses. 

That night, I stayed up late with my journal and wrote about the spider I had decided not to kill. I had tolerated him just barely, only shrieking when he jumped—it helped to watch him decorate the corners of the tent with his delicate webs, knowing that he couldn’t start fires, either. When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.

This essay is an excellent example because the writer turns an everyday challenge—starting a fire—into an exploration of her identity. The writer was once “a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes,” but has since traded her love of the outdoors for a love of music, writing, and reading. 

The story begins in media res , or in the middle of the action, allowing readers to feel as if we’re there with the writer. One of the essay’s biggest strengths is its use of imagery. We can easily visualize the writer’s childhood and the present day. For instance, she states that she “rubbed and rubbed [the twigs] until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers.”

The writing has an extremely literary quality, particularly with its wordplay. The writer reappropriates words and meanings, and even appeals to the senses: “My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame.” She later uses a parallelism to cleverly juxtapose her changed interests: “instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano.”

One of the essay’s main areas of improvement is its overemphasis on the “story” and lack of emphasis on the reflection. The second to last paragraph about changing perspective is crucial to the essay, as it ties the anecdote to larger lessons in the writer’s life. She states that she hasn’t changed, but has only shifted perspective. Yet, we don’t get a good sense of where this realization comes from and how it impacts her life going forward. 

The end of the essay offers a satisfying return to the fire imagery, and highlights the writer’s passion—the one thing that has remained constant in her life.

“Getting beat is one thing – it’s part of competing – but I want no part in losing.” Coach Rob Stark’s motto never fails to remind me of his encouragement on early-morning bus rides to track meets around the state. I’ve always appreciated the phrase, but an experience last June helped me understand its more profound, universal meaning.

Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running. When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors.

Our school district’s board of education indicated they would only dedicate our track to Stark if I could demonstrate that he was extraordinary. I took charge and mobilized my teammates to distribute petitions, reach out to alumni, and compile statistics on the many team and individual champions Stark had coached over the years. We received astounding support, collecting almost 3,000 signatures and pages of endorsements from across the community. With help from my teammates, I presented this evidence to the board.

They didn’t bite. 

Most members argued that dedicating the track was a low priority. Knowing that we had to act quickly to convince them of its importance, I called a team meeting where we drafted a rebuttal for the next board meeting. To my surprise, they chose me to deliver it. I was far from the best public speaker in the group, and I felt nervous about going before the unsympathetic board again. However, at that second meeting, I discovered that I enjoy articulating and arguing for something that I’m passionate about.

Public speaking resembles a cross country race. Walking to the starting line, you have to trust your training and quell your last minute doubts. When the gun fires, you can’t think too hard about anything; your performance has to be instinctual, natural, even relaxed. At the next board meeting, the podium was my starting line. As I walked up to it, familiar butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Instead of the track stretching out in front of me, I faced the vast audience of teachers, board members, and my teammates. I felt my adrenaline build, and reassured myself: I’ve put in the work, my argument is powerful and sound. As the board president told me to introduce myself, I heard, “runners set” in the back of my mind. She finished speaking, and Bang! The brief silence was the gunshot for me to begin. 

The next few minutes blurred together, but when the dust settled, I knew from the board members’ expressions and the audience’s thunderous approval that I had run quite a race. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough; the board voted down our proposal. I was disappointed, but proud of myself, my team, and our collaboration off the track. We stood up for a cause we believed in, and I overcame my worries about being a leader. Although I discovered that changing the status quo through an elected body can be a painstakingly difficult process and requires perseverance, I learned that I enjoy the challenges this effort offers. Last month, one of the school board members joked that I had become a “regular” – I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Just as Stark taught me, I worked passionately to achieve my goal. I may have been beaten when I appealed to the board, but I certainly didn’t lose, and that would have made Stark proud.

While the writer didn’t succeed in getting the track dedicated to Coach Stark, their essay is certainly successful in showing their willingness to push themselves and take initiative.

The essay opens with a quote from Coach Stark that later comes full circle at the end of the essay. We learn about Stark’s impact and the motivation for trying to get the track dedicated to him.

One of the biggest areas of improvement in the intro, however, is how the essay tells us Stark’s impact rather than showing us: His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The writer could’ve helped us feel a stronger emotional connection to Stark if they had included examples of Stark’s qualities, rather than explicitly stating them. For example, they could’ve written something like: Stark was the kind of person who would give you gas money if you told him your parents couldn’t afford to pick you up from practice. And he actually did that—several times. At track meets, alumni regularly would come talk to him and tell him how he’d changed their lives. Before Stark, I was ambivalent about running and was on the JV team, but his encouragement motivated me to run longer and harder and eventually make varsity. Because of him, I approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The essay goes on to explain how the writer overcame their apprehension of public speaking, and likens the process of submitting an appeal to the school board to running a race. This metaphor makes the writing more engaging and allows us to feel the student’s emotions.

While the student didn’t ultimately succeed in getting the track dedicated, we learn about their resilience and initiative: I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Overall, this essay is well-done. It demonstrates growth despite failing to meet a goal, which is a unique essay structure. The running metaphor and full-circle intro/ending also elevate the writing in this essay.

Where to Get Your Overcoming Challenges Essay Edited

The Overcoming Challenges essay is one of the trickier supplemental prompts, so it’s important to get feedback on your drafts. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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difficulties of growing up essay

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Growing Up — Growing Up in a Small Town: The Joys and Enduring Memories

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Growing Up in a Small Town: The Joys and Enduring Memories

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Published: Sep 7, 2023

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The joys of small-town childhood, the challenges of small-town life, the enduring sense of community, conclusion: nurturing the small-town spirit.

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difficulties of growing up essay

Growing Up Essay: Guide & Examples [2024]

What does it mean to grow up? Essays on this topic might be entertaining yet challenging to write. Growing up is usually associated with something new and exciting. It’s a period of everything new and unknown.

Now, you’ve been assigned to write a growing up essay. You’re not a kid anymore, but not quite the adult. It would be interesting for your teacher to learn about your childhood memories or read what you think about the experience of growing up.

That’s why:

In this article, we will provide a guide on how to write an essay on growing up. Our team listed some topics to make your writing process more manageable.

  • 📍 How to Write It

🏡 About Your Childhood

🧒 about someone else.

  • 👧 Growing Up

🔗 References

📍 how to write a growing up essay.

Writing an essay about growing up can seem complicated, but it’s always easier to handle when you have a plan. In this section, we will talk more about how to write an essay on the topic.

  • Reflective essays focus on the author’s attitude towards individual experiences. This type is often required during the college admissions process. For instance, one may write about growing up in poverty and how it shaped his character.
  • Narrative essays focus on a specific event or sequence of events. For example, you might write about the most memorable trip from your childhood.
  • Choose the topic on the familiar subject. It will be easier to reflect on the issue when you have a lot of relevant experience.
  • Choose the topic of interest. Write about something that provokes a strong emotional reaction from you.
  • Show a unique vision on the topic. Try to approach writing college essays about growing up from a different perspective. When writing a narrative essay, you need to remember that your work should tell a story. Your essay topic about growing up needs to agree with the paper’s length and follow the essay structure. Focus on a specific point in your writing.
  • Think about the event in your life that provokes a strong emotional response;
  • Write what you have learned from the experience;
  • Consider writing about experiences with your friends or relatives. What those events taught you?
  • Introduction : Your growing up essay introduction is an opening paragraph of the work. It grabs a reader’s attention and contains a thesis statement.
  • Body Paragraphs : The childhood and growing up essay can contain three body paragraphs. In each one, provide an example of an event or situation that supports the general topic.
  • Conclusion : In your growing up essay, the conclusion is the final paragraph. It summarizes the main points and brings the paper to an end.
  • Revise your draft a couple of days after writing it. That way, you will be able to notice mistakes or typos you missed.
  • Try to avoid passive voice . Rewrite the sentences in an active one, if possible.
  • Read your essay out loud. If it doesn’t meet the set criteria, keep revising it.

👩‍👦‍👦 Growing Up Essay Topics

You may not know what your essay on growing up should be devoted to. If it’s the case, look at this section. Earlier, we talked about how to write, but here we will tell you what to write about.

See the topics that can navigate an essay about your childhood experience:

  • Your family values and how they have been shaping your personality. Engage in reflective writing to show how certain factors of growing up influenced your character. What do you think were the effects of your growing-up period? 
  • What various roles have you had in your family? How and why did they change? As children grow, the family adjusts accordingly. Remember your roles as a child, adolescent, and young adult . How did they change?
  • Your personal changes over the course of growing up. Write an essay describing your personal development. What caused those changes? 
  • Sudden adulthood. Write a “growing up too fast” essay. Reflect on your feelings and emotions about growing up so suddenly.
  • Growing up with siblings. Write an essay about your childhood experience in a house where you weren’t the only child. Remember what it was like growing up with blood brothers and sisters? Or, maybe you have step-siblings? How did it influence you?
  • A short memoir. You don’t need to have a dramatic adolescence or an out-of-ordinary story to write about yourself. Share your most exciting stories from childhood.
  • A significant event from my childhood.
  • Personal experience of parenting styles .
  • Describe the events that helped you to learn about life.  
  • Tell about the time you tried to challenge gender norms.
  • Analyze your experience of growing up in another culture and the influence it had on your adult life.
  • Most memorable Christmas of my childhood. 
  • Discuss how the relationships with your parents influenced your growing up and character formation.
  • Describe the experience of self-disclosure in your childhood and the consequences it had.
  • How I used to cope with stress at high school.
  • Write about your family trips and the effect they had on the relationships within your family.
  • Analyze how the relationships with your peers impacted your growing up and adult life.
  • How I learned to ride a bicycle .
  • Examine how different teaching styles you’ve experienced in childhood influenced your growing up.

In other words, try to focus on something that made your growing up experience memorable and tell about it.

What if you do not feel like talking about your own experience in the essay on growing up? Do not worry. There are many other ways to complete your paper.

What follows next are additional ideas for you:

  • Write essays on growing up based on a work of literature or songs. Choose your favorite piece of literature or a song that talks about growing up. Write several paragraphs about the portrayal of the growing up period in music or literature. 
  • Write essays on growing up with a single parent. Write an essay about growing up without a father or mother. What is it like? What impact can it make on a person’s character?
  • Write about growing up without parents . A childhood spent in an orphanage or with distant relatives can have lasting consequences. Think about the effects it can have on a person’s character.
  • Write an essay about growing up in a small town. Think about the advantages and disadvantages of living in a small town . Why do you think it’s good or bad to live in a small town?
  • Write about youth growing up fast. Children become adults quite quickly. Discuss the possible reasons for children to grow up faster.
  • What happens to the mentally challenged children when they grow up?
  • Examine how Nhuong depicted childhood in the book Water Buffalo Days: Growing Up in Vietnam .  
  • Discuss the changes digital technology brought into a growing-up process.
  • Childhood’s effect on adulthood: the story of John Wayne Gacy .
  • Explain how the environment influences the growing up and physical development of a child.
  • Describe the relation between difficult childhood and personal development .
  • Description of lost childhood in Night by E. Wiesel.
  • Analyze the consequences being bullied or being a bully in childhood may have in adult life.  
  • Frank Conroy’s childhood in his book Stop-Time.    
  • Explore how childhood development and growing up shown in Born to Learn video .
  • Examine the stories about coming of age and infantilism in literature.
  • Discuss the peculiarities of growing up in multiracial family.
  • Analyze the authors experience in Country Pride: What I Learned Growing Up in Rural America by Sarah Smarsh .
  • Describe the problem of childhood obesity and the ways it influences children’s life.

👧 Growing Up Topics for College Essays

Writing a college essay about growing up essay is a great opportunity to reflect on the challenges and triumphs that made you who you are. Here are some compelling essay prompts and topics that will help you share your unique coming-of-age experience.

  • Essay on how growing up has shaped my life. Describe the pivotal moments from your upbringing that have had an impact on your personality and aspirations. You may also reflect on the lessons learned from your family, friends, community, and cultural surroundings. How did these experiences shape your values and worldview?
  • What are the effects of growing up in poverty? Essays on this topic can explain how growing up in financially disadvantaged circumstances shapes people’s lives. If it’s something that resonates with you, you can write about it in your college essay. For example, describe the challenges you’ve faced and the experiences that have fostered your resilience. You can also analyze how these circumstances have impacted your values, such as a passion for social justice.
  • What are the challenges of growing up? Consider the impact of family dynamics and cultural influences on your personal development. You can also discuss how overcoming these challenges has influenced you as a person and how it made you stronger.
  • Is taking risks a necessary part of growing up? An essay on this topic can discuss the potential benefits and drawbacks of taking risks at a young age. Is taking risks an essential part of maturing and gaining independence, or are there other ways to learn? Remember to provide examples to illustrate your point.
  • Fear of growing up. For this essay, consider how young people grapple with the challenges of transitioning to adulthood. What anxieties are associated with leaving behind the safety of childhood? Discuss the potential consequences of the fear of embracing adult responsibilities and provide real-life examples.
  • Explain how peer influence shapes a person’s identity.
  • The challenges of being the oldest sibling.
  • How does one’s cultural background determine one’s childhood milestones?
  • Social media and the coming-of-age experience.
  • How education shapes a person’s future opportunities.
  • The impact of childhood experiences on adult development.
  • Explore the influence of gender identity on your journey to adulthood.
  • The connection between your childhood hobby and adult career choice.
  • The importance of self-discovery in the process of growing up.
  • Write about the challenges and joys of adolescence.

📝 College Essay about Growing Up: Example

For your inspiration, we came up with a growing-up college essay example. It will provide insights into the content and structure and help you write an outstanding paper.

I have always been captivated by the world of art. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I have been experimenting with different forms of self-expression, such as painting and sketching.

As a child, I was fortunate to have a supportive family that nurtured my love for art. My mother enrolled me in an art class and was always ready to provide me with supplies. All this helped foster my creativity to the point where I decided to pursue an art education in college.

During my teenage years, I was surrounded by a diverse group of friends who shared my interests. We went to galleries, attended art events, and collaborated on projects. These friendships enriched my artistic perspective even further. They also taught me about the diversity of creativity and expression.

In addition to art, I have various hobbies that help me become better at what I do. In particular, I enjoy reading non-fiction about renowned artists. Aside from traditional art forms, I also experiment with photography and digital design.

My family and friends played a major role in my decision to pursue a career as a creative. Their support and my belief in the power of self-expression will help me contribute to our school and the whole community.

Thank you for reading this article! Hopefully, you found the information written here useful. If so, don’t forget to comment and share this article with your friends.

This might be interesting for you:

  • School Days Essay: How to Describe a Memorable Event
  • Childhood Memories Essay: Brilliant Writing Ideas
  • Writing Essay about Someone Who Has Made an Impact on Your Life
  • Excellent Remembering a Person Essay: Free Writing Guidelines
  • Life Experience Essay: How to Write a Brilliant Paper
  • Essays that Worked: Hamilton College
  • Essay Growing Up: Bartleby
  • Narrative Writing: Brigham Young University
  • Reflection Essay: Kent State University
  • My Childhood Memories Essay: Cram
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The concerns and challenges of being a U.S. teen: What the data show

Most Venezuelans struggling financially

American teens have a lot on their minds. Substantial shares point to anxiety and depression, bullying, and drug and alcohol use (and abuse) as major problems among people their age, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of youth ages 13 to 17.

How common are these and other experiences among U.S. teens? We reviewed the most recent available data from government and academic researchers to find out:

Anxiety and depression

Serious mental stress is a fact of life for many American teens. In the new survey, seven-in-ten teens say anxiety and depression are major problems among their peers – a concern that’s shared by mental health researchers and clinicians .

In recent years, rising reports of youth depression

Data on the prevalence of anxiety disorders is hard to come by among teens specifically. But 7% of youths ages 3 to 17  had such a condition in 2016-17, according to the National Survey of Children’s Health. Serious depression, meanwhile, has been on the rise among teens for the past several years, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health , an ongoing project of the federal Department of Health and Human Services. In 2016, 12.8% of youths ages 12 to 17 had experienced a major depressive episode in the past year, up from 8% as recently as 2010. For 9% of youths in 2016, their depression caused severe impairment. Fewer than half of youths with major depression said they’d been treated for it in the past year.

Alcohol and drugs

Anxiety and depression aren’t the only concerns for U.S. teens. Smaller though still substantial shares of teens in the Pew Research Center survey say drug addiction (51%) and alcohol consumption (45%) are major problems among their peers.

Alcohol use drops among youth, but marijuana use largely steady

Fewer teens these days are drinking alcohol, according to the University of Michigan’s long-running Monitoring the Future survey, which tracks attitudes, values and behaviors of American youths, including their use of various legal and illicit substances. Last year, 30.2% of 12th-graders and 18.6% of 10th-graders had consumed alcohol in the past 30 days. Two decades earlier, those figures were 52% and 38.8%, respectively. (In the Center’s new survey, 16% of teens said they felt “a lot” or “some” pressure to drink alcohol.)

But the Michigan survey also found that, despite some ups and downs, use of marijuana (or its derivative, hashish) among 12th-graders is nearly as high as it was two decades ago. Last year, 22.2% reported using marijuana in the past 30 days, versus 22.8% in 1998. Past-month marijuana use among 10th-graders has declined a bit over that same period, from 18.7% to 16.7%, but is up from 14% in 2016.

Marijuana was by far the most commonly used drug among teens last year, as it has been for decades.  While more than 10% of 12th-graders reported using some illicit drug other than marijuana in the late 1990s and early 2000s, that figure had fallen to 6% by last year.

The Michigan researchers noted that vaping, of both nicotine and marijuana, has jumped in popularity in the past few years. In 2018, 20.9% of 12th-graders and 16.1% of 10th-graders reported vaping nicotine in the past 30 days, about double the 2017 levels. By comparison, only 7.6% of 12th-graders and 4.2% of 10th-graders had smoked a cigarette in that time. And 7.5% of 12-graders and 7% of 10th-graders said they’d vaped marijuana within the past month, up from 4.9% and 4.3%, respectively, in 2017.

Bullying and cyberbullying

Issues of personal safety also are on U.S. teens’ minds. The Center’s survey found that 55% of teens said bullying was a major problem among their peers, while a third called gangs a major problem.

Girls more likely than boys to be bullied, at school or electronically

Bullying rates have held steady in recent years, according to a survey of youth risk behaviors by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About a fifth of high school students (19% in 2017) reported being bullied on school property in the past 12 months, and 14.9% said they’d experienced cyberbullying (via texts, social media or other digital means) in the previous year. In both cases, girls, younger students, and students who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual were more likely to say they’d been bullied.

As for gangs, the share of students ages 12 to 18 who said gangs were present at their school fell from 20.1% in 2001 to 10.7% in 2015, according to a report on school safety from the federal departments of Education and Justice. Black and Hispanic students, as well as students in urban schools, were most likely to report the presence of gangs at school, but even for those groups the shares reporting this fell sharply between 2001 and 2015, the most recent year for which data are available.

Four-in-ten teens say poverty is a major problem among their peers, according to the Center’s new report. In 2017, about 2.2 million 15- to 17-year-olds (17.6%) were living in households with incomes below the poverty level – up from 16.3% in 2009, but down from 18.9% in 2014, based on our analysis of Census data. Black teens were more than twice as likely as white teens to live in households below the poverty level (30.4% versus 14%); however, the share of white teens in below-poverty-level households had risen from 2009 (when it was 12.1%), while the share of black teens in below-poverty-level households was almost unchanged.

Teen pregnancy

Far fewer U.S. teens are having to juggle adolescence and parenthood, as teen births continue their long-term decline . Among 15- to 19-year-olds, the overall birthrate has fallen by two-thirds since 1991 – from 61.8 live births per 1,000 women to 20.3 in 2016 , according to the CDC. All racial and ethnic groups have witnessed teen-birthrate declines of varying degrees: Among non-Hispanic blacks, for example, the rate fell from 118.2 live births per 1,000 in 1991 to 29.3 in 2016 .

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Essay on Growing Up In The 21st Century

Students are often asked to write an essay on Growing Up In The 21st Century in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Growing Up In The 21st Century

Introduction.

Growing up in the 21st Century is a unique experience. This era is marked by rapid changes in technology, culture, and society. It’s like a roller coaster ride with lots of ups and downs.

One of the main things about growing up now is technology. It’s everywhere! We use it for learning, playing, and connecting with friends. Smartphones, computers, and the internet have changed our lives in big ways.

Education in the 21st Century is different too. We learn not just from books, but also online. Websites, apps, and virtual classes make learning fun and easy. It’s a new way to gain knowledge.

Social Life

Social life has changed as well. We make friends not just in school, but also online. Social media allows us to connect with people all over the world. It’s exciting but also challenging.

250 Words Essay on Growing Up In The 21st Century

Growing up in the 21st century is a unique experience. It’s like living in two worlds at the same time. One world is the physical one, where we go to school, play with friends, and spend time with family. The other world is digital, where we use computers, smartphones, and the internet.

Technology and Learning

In the 21st century, technology plays a big role in our lives. We use it to learn new things. For example, we can use the internet to find information for school projects. We can also use apps on our phones to learn new languages or to practice math skills.

Communication

Communication has also changed. We can talk to people in different parts of the world through video calls. We can share photos and updates with friends on social media. But, it’s important to remember to use these tools wisely and be kind to others online.

Entertainment

For fun, we have many options. We can play video games, watch movies online, or listen to music on our phones. But, we should also make time to play outside and read books.

Growing up in the 21st century is exciting. We have many tools to help us learn and have fun. But, we must also learn to use these tools responsibly. We must remember to balance our time between the physical and digital worlds.

500 Words Essay on Growing Up In The 21st Century

Growing up in the 21st century is a unique and exciting experience. This era is marked by rapid advancements in technology, a global community, and changing social norms. It’s a time of great change and opportunity, but also comes with its own set of challenges.

The Influence of Technology

One of the most defining features of growing up in the 21st century is the role of technology in our lives. From smartphones to laptops, technology is everywhere. It has made life easier in many ways. For example, we can now learn about anything from anywhere through online classes. We can stay connected with friends and family no matter how far they are, thanks to social media. But, it’s important to remember that too much screen time can have negative effects, like less physical activity and face-to-face interaction.

Global Connections

Changing social norms.

Society is always changing, and the 21st century is no exception. Today, there’s a growing focus on equality and fairness. For example, there’s more awareness about the importance of equal rights for all, regardless of gender, race, or religion. This is a positive change, but it also means that we have to constantly learn and adapt to new ways of thinking and behaving.

Environmental Awareness

Growing up in the 21st century also means being more aware of our environment. There’s a growing understanding that we need to protect our planet for future generations. This has led to more emphasis on recycling, reducing waste, and using renewable energy. It’s a big responsibility, but it’s also an opportunity to make a positive impact on the world.

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8 Challenges of Growing Up as a Second-Generation Immigrant

Things about having immigrant parents that no one talks about..

Posted January 10, 2023 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

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  • As a child to immigrant parents, you might have automatically blamed yourself for their struggles.
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Second-generation immigrants often wish their parents had been different. You may long for parents who share your intellectual level, values, and political or spiritual beliefs. In this post, we will discuss some of the challenges of having immigrant parents, including the ones that are often tabooed.

1. The Heaviness of Unspoken Guilt . Children naturally blame themselves for their parents' pain. Your unwarranted guilt is worse as a second-generation immigrant when you know that your immigrant parents came to a new country to "give you a better life.” As a child, you might have automatically blamed yourself for your parents' struggles because you thought you did something wrong or did not help enough. So you studied harder, did more housework, counseled them, and may even have become their emotional punching bag.

Unconscious guilt can manifest itself in unexpected ways. Even now, you may have trouble taking care of yourself and managing money. You may work too much and feel guilty when you relax or have fun. Despite your success, you feel like an imposter. You are wary of being vulnerable even in close friendships and romantic relationships .

2. Rootless Without Home. If you were born to immigrant parents, you might have lived "between" two cultures all your life. Unlike your parents, your sense of self does not revolve around your heritage from the old country. But neither is it a purely Eurocentric integration into the new country.

You may have been conditioned to behave a certain way toward your relatives but a very different way toward your friends. You have not had the opportunity to explore and solidify your identity if you constantly hide one or more aspects of your personality to fit in, like a chameleon. Even now, you could be struggling with identity confusion, having difficulty deciding on important life goals such as a career or a romantic partner.

3. The Intellectual Divide. You may find that while other families may have stimulating discussions about current events, your parents seem rooted in the past and unable to see beyond their narrow perspective. Your parents may have shown no understanding of diversity, feminism, the dark side of capitalism, etc., and so there are no intellectual or political discussions about these issues at home. The intellectual distance between you and your parents can make even the most mundane conversations tedious, if not painful.

You may feel compelled to challenge your parents when they say or do things against your values. However, if you try to correct them, they may become defensive and either avoid you or become combative.

Although you respect and love your parents very much, you may find it difficult to relax and be yourself around them. You feel existentially alone in your own home, but you have no one to talk to about it because it is such a taboo.

4. Not Seen for Who You Are. Your immigrant parents may not have been exposed to global perspectives that would help them understand your place in the world. They think you are "good" because you have good grades or a steady job, but that misses the point. They do not know how to appreciate your ability to think independently, your willingness to stand up for what you believe in, your commitment to social justice, or your courage to defend the truth.

When it comes to our own family, it can be exceedingly hurtful to hear that we are "too much" (too emotional, too dramatic, too demanding, too intense, too sensitive). The pain of not being recognized by, or even being rejected by, our own family can cause immeasurable suffering that lasts a lifetime, even if we try to rationalize it by saying that we are materially well provided for.

5. Trapped in Codependency. It is sadly common for parents and children in immigrant families to develop an unhealthy level of codependency. You may feel obligated to put your parent's needs before your own, blame yourself for their problems, worry about them constantly, feel responsible for their happiness , and neglect your own needs. Part of you wants to rescue or help your parents, but you're also angry and resentful because their needs stunted you.

difficulties of growing up essay

6. Constant Disapproval. Your immigrant parents may judge who you're with, what you do, whether you're single, married, polyamorous , etc. Worse, you know that many of your so-called "choices" in fact just represent who you are. Parents may reject you because this new information contradicts what they are sure they know. Their unconscious bias hurts you, even if they don't mean to. Their casual comments, facial expressions, or punitive silences may reveal prejudices even when they say nothing.

7. Navigating Life with " Learned Helplessness ." If you were born into an immigrant family, you might have witnessed or experienced institutional discrimination , microaggressions , and racism too early, too soon, perhaps even as a child. Psychologists use the term "learned helplessness" to describe the effects of being regularly exposed to systemic oppression and injustice without being able to do anything about it. You may have internalized the idea that no matter how hard you try, you will ultimately get nowhere. This can affect your self-esteem and your ability to pursue goals as an adult. You may also feel powerless in the face of injustice or corruption. You cannot just dismiss them or pretend they do not exist, but you're paralyzed by an overwhelming sense that it is impossible to change the world.

8. Unmet Emotional Needs. Your immigrant parents may have struggled, but they never modeled what it was like to show or express feelings. What if grief kept them from working? What if they let out all their emotions and cannot control them, leading to a depressive breakdown? Because of these fears, they felt they had to suppress any burgeoning emotions. So, when you show vulnerable feelings such as shame or sadness, they do not know what to do. They may try to silence your feelings, so they do not have to face their own. They may tell you it's "bad" to show emotion , or punish or silence you to keep you from being expressive and spontaneous.

Furthermore, with a general lack of mental health awareness, your immigrant parents may misunderstand your depression as laziness, your eating disorder as defiance, your ADHD as a character flaw, etc. They may be unfamiliar with the idea of seeing a therapist or psychiatrist, let alone paying for such services.

Internalized beliefs that it is unacceptable to express feelings, have emotional needs, or be vulnerable can prevent you from developing meaningful relationships or finding fulfillment in life.

Discovering Strength and Peace as a Second-Generation Immigrant

You wish you had parents with whom you could have open, honest conversations about life and the world. But you are silenced for your loneliness because it feels wrong to be ungrateful. Transgenerational trauma can have devastating effects. But since we can't blame our parents forever, we must heal ourselves. Consider these questions: How do you approach authorities? What's your money mindset? Do you feel guilty when you outshine your siblings or parents? How well can you express vulnerabilities with intimate partners?

You may feel guilty or fearful when it's time to separate yourself from your parents' values, even if you logically know your feelings have no logical basis. If you follow your heart, you are afraid to break theirs. But if you ignore the existential call to be yourself, you may become physically or emotionally ill.

As you enter your second half of life, overcoming the trauma of being the second generation of immigrants is not only possible but essential. You can thrive by embracing repressed emotions and gifts. By acknowledging your history and struggles, sharing your true feelings, and overcoming generational trauma , you can build bridges between yourself and your family and contribute to your community.

Liem, R. (1997). Shame and guilt among first-and second-generation Asian Americans and European Americans. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 28(4), 365-392.

M Rothe, E., J Pumariega, A., & Sabagh, D. (2011). Identity and acculturation in immigrant and second generation adolescents. Adolescent psychiatry, 1(1), 72-81.

Phipps, R. M., & Degges‐White, S. (2014). A new look at transgenerational trauma transmission: Second‐generation Latino immigrant youth. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 42(3), 174-187.

Pumariega, A. J., Rothe, E., & Pumariega, J. B. (2005). Mental health of immigrants and refugees. Community mental health journal, 41(5), 581-597.

Imi Lo

Imi Lo, MA, is a consultant and psychotherapist with masters degrees in Mental Health and Buddhist Studies. She is the author of Emotional Sensitivity and Intensity and The Gift of Intensity and runs Eggshell Therapy and Coaching.

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essay sample about myself

Essay Sample About Myself: Challenges

The Biggest Challenges I Faced While Growing Up

There were many challenges to children who were born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; many were the changes of roles in the household since most housewives stayed at home and raised children. Back then, children were very seldom left alone to tend to their younger siblings. Another change was in the economy since post WWII sprung up the Baby Boomer generation. The Baby Boomer generation children were faced with many challenges of keeping up with their schoolwork and grades so they could get in a higher learning institution of their choice. From there, they were expected to find employment and afterwards raise their own families and be independent.

Keywords : Baby Boomers, parenting

Biggest Challenges I Faced While Growing Up

One of the biggest challenges I faced growing up was being taught the old fashioned way instead of the modern style, meaning that instead of speaking up and standing up for my rights children were to be seen and not heard. Therefore, I had to accept things the way they were and not speak out. This included meal times that I could not say I did not like a certain dish that was served and I had to eat quietly and the children in my household had a lot of quiet time. We were supposed to do as we were told and not as we pleased. Now, modern children are given a lot of freedom and are allowed to speak what they feel and what they like (Darr, Deanna, 2016).

Another challenge I faced was I had to do everything to a set time and schedule and it was not the easiest accomplishment. I had to do homework as soon as I was home from school and even when I was in school, I was not allowed to have one bad report on myself. Otherwise, my teacher simply called my parents which was very seldom (Rosemond, John K., 2016).

My parents always kept in contact with my teacher and it was not the most comfortable setting. I saw a few other children whose parents had a leniency level and they did not always have the best behavior in class but I always felt that I was under constant watch. I never heard about those other children whose parents also received phone calls at home if they were behavior related or lack of attention in class. I made it a point to always pay attention in class and not misbehave because I did fear my parents at the time. Now I am very close to my parents since they are in their 80s but things were much different when I was growing up.

Another challenge I faced growing up was the fact that I grew up not having any pets. I was an animal lover and I especially loved cats as I still love cats now. I was not even allowed to babysit a neighbor’s cat if the neighbor went on vacation. One time a friend was going on vacation for a week and they had a five-month old kitten who needed babysitting while they were gone. They brought the kitten over and offered me the job of looking after the kitten. I loved the kitten right away and held her and pet her. My mother was so very much against the idea of having me babysit the kitten. I begged my parents to let me keep the kitten while their friend was gone for that week but they completely negated the idea. This was one of my biggest disappointments as a child. I think every child should be allowed to keep a pet to learn responsibility and see if they can handle even raising a child.

A child cannot be compared to a pet but if a child cannot handle a pet, then they will know at the time if perhaps child rearing may be for their future as well. It is essential to teach children many adult-like responsibilities when they are growing up so they know if they can face these problems in their adulthood. To keep the children very sheltered while they are growing up is never a good idea and that is a mistake which was done with the baby boomer generation. There were many changes in the world when the baby boomer children were growing up; calculators were replacing the slide rules of the 1950s and 1960s (What Can You Do With A Slide Rule?, 2016).

Many changes have happened in child rearing during the 21st century which may or may have not be proven to be better methods. Most homes are now single parent households and many children are far more independent than they were fifty years ago.

Works Cited

Darr, Deanna. “MENTAL HEALTH: Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard and Other Parenting Myths.” Rapid City Journal. July-Aug. 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. <http://rapidcityjournal.com/lifestyles/columnists/mental-health-children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard-and/article_661cfcf1-de05-5bbe-ab0a-9feb779d135b.html>. Rosemond, John K. “Pre-1960s Parenting Vs. Parenting Today.” ArcaMax. 1 May 2015. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. <http://www.arcamax.com/homeandleisure/parents/johnrosemond/s-1651066>. “What Can You Do With A Slide Rule?” What Can You Do With A Slide Rule? University of Utah. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. <http://www.math.utah.edu/~pa/sliderules/>.

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Growing Up Essay Examples

Growing Up - Free Essay Examples and Topic Ideas

Growing up is a lifelong process of maturation and development that involves physical, emotional, cognitive, and social changes. It comprises various stages, including infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, each of which comes with unique challenges and opportunities for learning and growth. During these phases, individuals acquire new skills, knowledge, and experiences that shape their identities, beliefs, and values. They develop relationships with family, friends, and peers, and learn to navigate the complexities of the world around them. Growing up can be both exciting and challenging, as it involves facing new successes and setbacks, learning life lessons, and discovering one’s true self.

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Essay Example On 'A Challenge I Faced Growing Up'

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          A Challenge I Faced Growing Up

Life events are accompanied by challenges that people must navigate to achieve a fulfilling life. As children grow up, they become accustomed to their society’s cultural values that eventually contribute to their personality. One of the most pressing challenges that people face is the failure to adapt to a different culture that is different from their own. In my experience, moving to a foreign country at the age of five was challenging as I had to learn a new language, which proved a difficult task that I eventually accomplished through making friends, consequently leading to successful adaptation to new ways of doing things.

Growing up in a rural setting in Kenya was fulfilling and beneficial in terms of making friends. Even though children in these settings lack necessary playing facilities, there was no shortage of improvisation, which made my childhood experience fun. Moreover, I managed to make friends that would stand by me through thick and thin while attending to my social needs. According to research, the homogeneity that characterizes rural settings is beneficial to young girls as it enhances not only their political knowledge but also contributes towards the formation of stronger social bonds (Lay 318). As a result, I made friends during my childhood that made my experiences worthwhile to the point whereby I was devastated to learn that my family would be relocating to the United States.

The migration to the United States proved challenging as I had to learn English before enrolling in my new school, which proved a difficult task at first. Since I was young, I was in a better position to learn a new language but was simply reluctant because I felt lonely. I was still reeling from having left my friends and wonderful childhood experiences in Africa that I found it had to concentrate on my English lessons. Indeed, unwillingness to learn new things is one of the factors that could make learning a new language seem so difficult (Durcharme). On my part, this unwillingness arose from feelings of loneliness as it was initially difficult to make new friends and express myself in a foreign language. As a result, I alienated myself further from my classmates as my confidence levels had gone down.

As time went by, I realized that I needed to make new friends in order to learn the English language effectively. I interacted with classmates whom I felt were more accommodating and willing to tolerate me despite the challenges that I was facing. I would communicate using simple phrases, and they would correct me, and with time, my language proficiency grew significantly. The importance of interacting with peers when learning a new dialect is that it enhances the ability to converse hence outlining the importance of friends in language development (McBrien 287). As a result, making friends enhanced my English language conversational skills and helped me learn a valuable lesson that it is essential to step out of the comfort zone if one is to tackle the challenges that one come across in life.

Concisely, making new friends is a prerequisite to efficient learning of a new language in a foreign country. Young children find it hard to adapt to foreign cultures at first because of the language differences and loneliness associated with adapting to new surroundings. The importance of making new friends is that young immigrants can quickly learn how to communicate, further increasing their chances of integrating into new surroundings. Overall, immigrants must strive to conquer their insecurities and make as many friends as possible to effectively learn new languages and cultures.

    Works Cited

Ducharme, Jamie. "Why It's So Hard to Learn Another Language After Childhood.” Time , time, 2 May 2018.

Lay, J. Celeste. "She Was Born in a Small Town: The Advantages and Disadvantages in Political Knowledge and Efficacy for Rural Girls.” Journal of Women, Politics & Policy , vol. 38, no. 3, 2016, pp. 318–334.

McBrien, Jody L. Educational Policies and Practises of English-Speaking Refugee Resettlement Countries . Koninklijke Brill NV, 2019.

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Here are the Democratic lawmakers calling for Biden to step aside in the 2024 race

By Kaia Hubbard

Updated on: July 12, 2024 / 3:16 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — A growing number of Democratic lawmakers have begun to call for President Biden to withdraw from the race in the wake of his debate performance last month. This week on Capitol Hill, they have been weighing arguments about whether Mr. Biden should be the party's nominee. 

So far, 18 House Democrats and one Senate Democrat have directly called on the president to exit the race:

House members calling on Biden to exit presidential race

  • Lloyd Doggett of Texas : He became the first Democratic lawmaker to call on Mr. Biden to drop out, saying on July 2 that he was "hopeful that [Mr. Biden] will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw." 
  • Raul Grijalva of Arizona : He told The New York Times on July 3 that what Mr. Biden "needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat — and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race."
  • Seth Moulton of Massachusetts: He told CBS Boston on July 7 that George Washington chose not to run for a third term, and Mr. Biden should follow that cue on another term. "I think that can be President Biden's legacy as well," Moulton said. "He defeated Donald Trump once and then he was willing to hand power over to a new generation of leaders. That's the kind of amazing legacy that a great president like Biden deserves."
  • Mike Quigley of Illinois : Quigley said on MSNBC on July 5, "Mr. President, your legacy is set. We owe you the greatest debt of gratitude. The only thing that you can do now to cement that for all time and prevent utter catastrophe is to step down and let someone else do this."
  • Angie Craig of Minnesota: Craig, who represents a key swing district, said in a statement on July 6, "This is not a decision I've come to lightly, but there is simply too much at stake to risk a second Donald Trump presidency. That's why I respectfully call on President Biden to step aside as the Democratic nominee for a second term as President and allow for a new generation of leaders to step forward."
  • Adam Smith of Washington: Smith on July 8 called on Mr. Biden to end his candidacy "as soon as possible." He said in a statement that presidential candidates "must be able to clearly, articulately, and strongly make his or her case to the American people. It is clear that President Biden is no longer able to meet this burden." Smith told CBS News that if Biden announced he was ending his bid, "there would be a huge sigh of relief amongst just about every Democrat in the House." 
  • Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey: In a statement posted to social media July 9 following a closed-door meeting among House Democrats, Sherrill praised Mr. Biden's presidency but said she was asking that he "declare that he won't run for reelection and will help lead us through a process toward a new nominee." Sherrill said the "stakes are too high — and the threat is too real — to stay silent."
  • Pat Ryan of New York: He said in a social media post on July 10 that he's "asking Joe Biden to step aside" in the upcoming election to "deliver on his promise to be a bridge to a new generation of leaders." The vulnerable House Democrat said, "Joe Biden is a patriot but is no longer the best candidate to defeat Trump."
  • Earl Blumenauer of Oregon: On July 10, Blumenauer wrote in a statement that he hoped Mr. Biden and first lady Jill Biden had "come to the conclusion that I and others have: President Biden should not be the Democratic presidential nominee." The 75-year-old congressman, who has served in the House since 1996, declared that "there is no question in my mind that we will all be better served if the president steps aside as the Democratic nominee and manages a transition under his terms. He has earned that right."
  • Hillary Scholten of Michigan: In a statement posted to social media on July 11, Scholten praised Mr. Biden's first-term accomplishments, but said that "for the good of our democracy, I believe it is time for him to step aside from the presidential race and allow a new leader to step up." The congresswoman said that if Mr. Biden decides to continue his campaign, she will vote for him but believes "it's time to pass the torch."
  • Brad Schneider of Illinois: On July 11, Schneider said in a statement that it's time for "Biden to heroically pass the torch to a new generation of leadership," which he said would give the president a chance to "seal his place in history as one of the greatest leaders our nation, and history, has ever known."
  • Ed Case of Hawaii: Case said in a July 11 statement that his decision to call on the president to withdraw "has nothing to do with his character and record," but Mr. Biden's "ability to continue in the most difficult job in the world for another four-year term." 
  • Greg Stanton of Arizona: The congressman said in a statement on social media, "For the sake of American democracy, and to continue to make progress on our shared priorities, I believe it is time for the president to step aside as our nominee."
  • Jim Himes of Connecticut: The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee called on the president to withdraw after his  solo NATO news conference  on July 11. "Joe Biden's record of public service is unrivaled," Himes said. "His accomplishments are immense. His legacy as a great president is secure. He must not risk that legacy." 
  • Scott Peters of California: In a statement issued after Mr. Biden's July 11 news conference, Peters said, "The stakes are high, and we are on a losing course. ... We must find a candidate from our deep bench of talent who can defeat Donald Trump."
  • Eric Sorensen of Illinois:  In a post on social media following Mr. Biden's news conference to conclude the NATO summit on July 11, Sorensen wrote , "In 2020, Joe Biden ran for President with the purpose of putting country over party. Today, I am asking him to do that again. ... I am hopeful President Biden will step aside in his campaign for President."
  • Brittany Pettersen of Colorado : On July 12, Pettersen shared a statement  on her social media account urging Mr. Biden to step aside from the presidential race. She said he "saved our country once, and I'm joining the growing number of people in my district and across the country to ask him to do it again. Please pass the torch to one of our many capable Democratic leaders so we have the best chance to defeat Donald Trump."
  • Mike Levin of California : Levin praised Mr. Biden's leadership and said he has respect for his decades in public services, but said in a statement that "the time has come for President Biden to pass the torch." The California Democrat went on to say that "it is time to move forward. With a new leader. Together."

Senators calling on Biden to exit presidential race

  • Peter Welch  of Vermont:  In an op-ed that appeared in the Washington Post on July 10, Welch became the first senator to publicly call on Mr. Biden to drop out. "For the good of the country, I'm calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race," he wrote. Welch argued that "the national conversation is focused on President Biden's age and capacity. Only he can change it."

Still, more congressional Democrats have publicly expressed support for Mr. Biden since the debate. And in recent days, some lawmakers have called for the party to unequivocally back the president, including prominent members of the powerful Congressional Black Caucus. 

President Joe Biden speaks during a 4th of July event on the South Lawn of the White House on July 4, 2024 in Washington, DC.

As lawmakers prepared to return to Washington after the July Fourth recess, a group of senior House Democrats met with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries over Zoom Sunday night, where a person on the call and three people familiar with the meeting told CBS News that three more lawmakers said Mr. Biden should leave the race: 

  • Jerry Nadler of New York
  • Mark Takano of California 
  • Joe Morelle of New York

But by Tuesday, Nadler said that he's "fully supportive" of Mr. Biden, and added that he was not going to "comment on what I said in a private meeting."  

"All I'll say is the president made very clear yesterday that he's running," Nadler said. "And to me that's dispositive, we have to support him."

An aide to Jeffries confirmed to CBS News on Wednesday that Jeffries plans to convey the growing concerns of the caucus directly to Mr. Biden by Friday. 

Mr. Biden has been working to address concerns about his ability to serve another term with a number of appearances in recent days, making clear his intention to stay in the race at every turn — from a highly anticipated interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos last week to rallies in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania over the holiday weekend. 

On Monday, the president sent a letter to Democrats in Congress saying he is "firmly committed" to staying in the race and making clear that "I wouldn't be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024."

The president aimed to shut down discussions about replacing him, arguing that "the voters of the Democratic Party have voted," and had selected him as their presumptive nominee. In March, he surpassed the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic Party's nomination, and now has secured 3,896 delegates. There are 1,976 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination at the convention in August. Mr. Biden warned that forcing him off the ticket would subvert the will of the voters: "How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party?"

Mr. Biden also called into "Morning Joe" on Monday, saying "I'm more than presumptive, I'm gonna be the Democratic nominee." He expressed frustration with "the elites" doubting his fitness for another term, saying "any of these guys that don't think I should run — run against me. Go ahead, announce for President. Challenge me at the convention."

The president has also made outreach efforts in recent days, with a campaign official saying he personally made 20 calls to congressional members since the debate. 

Ed O'Keefe, Nikole Killion, Scott MacFarlane, Fin Gómez and Ellis Kim contributed reporting.

Kaia Hubbard is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.

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Biden on Trump: "You can't only love your country when you win"

The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator

Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others.

A photomontage illustration of Donald Trump.

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked . One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.

After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied , “Lock them all up.”

Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.

Now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well. The attempted murder of Trump—and the killing of a person nearby—is a horror and an outrage. More will be learned about the man who committed this appalling act, and who was killed by the Secret Service. Whatever his mania or motive, the only important thing about him is the law-enforcement mistake that allowed him to bring a deadly weapon so close to a campaign event and gain a sight line of the presidential candidate. His name should otherwise be erased and forgotten.

It is sadly incorrect to say, as so many have, that political violence “has no place” in American society. Assassinations, lynchings, riots, and pogroms have stained every page of American political history. That has remained true to the present day. In 2016 , and even more in 2020, Trump supporters brought weapons to intimidate opponents and vote-counters. Trump and his supporters envision a new place for violence as their defining political message in the 2024 election. Fascist movements are secular religions. Like all religions, they offer martyrs as their proof of truth. The Mussolini movement in Italy built imposing monuments to its fallen comrades. The Trump movement now improves on that: The leader himself will be the martyr in chief, his own blood the basis for his bid for power and vengeance.

Christopher R. Browning: A new kind of fascism

The 2024 election was already shaping up as a symbolic contest between an elderly and weakening liberalism too frail and uncertain to protect itself and an authoritarian, reactionary movement ready to burst every barrier and trash every institution. To date, Trump has led only a minority of U.S. voters, but that minority’s passion and audacity have offset what it lacks in numbers. After the shooting, Trump and his backers hope to use the iconography of a bloody ear and face, raised fist, and call to “Fight!” to summon waverers to their cause of installing Trump as an anti-constitutional ruler, exempted from ordinary law by his allies on the Supreme Court.

Other societies have backslid to authoritarianism because of some extraordinary crisis: economic depression, hyperinflation, military defeat, civil strife. In 2024, U.S. troops are nowhere at war. The American economy is booming, providing spectacular and widely shared prosperity. A brief spasm of mild post-pandemic inflation has been overcome. Indicators of social health have abruptly turned positive since Trump left office after years of deterioration during his term. Crime and fatal drug overdoses are declining in 2024; marriages and births are rising. Even the country’s problems indirectly confirm the country’s success: Migrants are crossing the border in the hundreds of thousands, because they know, even if Americans don’t, that the U.S. job market is among the hottest on Earth.

Yet despite all of this success, Americans are considering a form of self-harm that in other countries has typically followed the darkest national failures: letting the author of a failed coup d’état return to office to try again.

One reason this self-harm is nearing consummation is that American society is poorly prepared to understand and respond to radical challenges, once those challenges gain a certain mass. For nearly a century, “radical” in U.S. politics has usually meant “fringe”: Communists, Ku Kluxers, Black Panthers, Branch Davidians, Islamist jihadists. Radicals could be marginalized by the weight of the great American consensus that stretches from social democrats to business conservatives. Sometimes, a Joe McCarthy or a George Wallace would throw a scare into that mighty consensus, but in the past such challengers rarely formed stable coalitions with accepted stakeholders in society. Never gaining an enduring grip on the institutions of state, they flared up and burned out.

Trump is different. His abuses have been ratified by powerful constituencies. He has conquered and colonized one of the two major parties. He has defeated—or is on the way to defeating—every impeachment and prosecution to hold him to account for his frauds and crimes. He has assembled a mass following that is larger, more permanent, and more national in reach than any previous American demagogue. He has dominated the scene for nine years already, and he and his supporters hope they can use yesterday’s appalling event to extend the Trump era to the end of his life and beyond.

The American political and social system cannot treat such a person as an alien. It inevitably accommodates and naturalizes him. His counselors, even the thugs and felons, join the point-counterpoint dialogue at the summit of the American elite. President Joe Biden nearly wrecked his campaign because he felt obliged to meet Trump in debate. How could Biden have done otherwise? Trump is the three-time nominee of the Republican Party; it’s awkward and strange to treat him as an insurrectionist against the American state—though that’s what Trump was and is.

David Frum: Biden’s heartbreaking press conference

The despicable shooting at Trump, which also caused death and injury to others, now secures his undeserved position as a partner in the protective rituals of the democracy he despises. The appropriate expressions of dismay and condemnation from every prominent voice in American life have the additional effect of habituating Americans to Trump’s legitimacy. In the face of such an outrage, the familiar and proper practice is to stress unity, to proclaim that Americans have more things in common than that divide them. Those soothing words, true in the past, are less true now.

Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.

The Republican National Convention, which opens this week, will welcome to its stage apologists for Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its aggression against U.S. allies. Trump’s own infatuation with Russia and other dictatorships has not dimmed even slightly with age or experience. Yet all of these urgent and necessary truths must now be subordinated to the ritual invocation of “thoughts and prayers” for someone who never gave a thought or uttered a prayer for any of the victims of his own many incitements to bloodshed. The president who used his office to champion the rights of dangerous people to own military-type weapons says he was grazed by a bullet from one such assault rifle.

Conventional phrases and polite hypocrisy fill a useful function in social life. We say “Thank you for your service” both to the decorated hero and to the veteran who barely escaped dishonorable discharge. It’s easier than deciphering which was which. We wish “Happy New Year!” even when we dread the months ahead.

Adrienne LaFrance: Thoughts, prayers, and Facebook rants aren’t enough

But conventional phrases don’t go unheard. They carry meanings, meanings no less powerful for being rote and reflexive. In rightly denouncing violence, we are extending an implicit pardon to the most violent person in contemporary U.S. politics. In asserting unity, we are absolving a man who seeks power through the humiliation and subordination of disdained others.

Those conventional phrases are inscribing Trump into a place in American life that he should have forfeited beyond redemption on January 6, 2021. All decent people welcome the sparing of his life. Trump’s reckoning should be with the orderly process of law, not with the bloodshed he rejoiced in when it befell others. He and his allies will exploit a gunman’s vicious criminality as their path to exonerate past crimes and empower new ones. Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable—and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.

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News Analysis

‘No Poll Says That’: Biden Digs In as Democratic Fears Deepen

The president put on a competent showing at his pressure cooker of a news conference, but it remained in doubt if he could stem the bleeding of Democratic support.

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Highlights from Biden’s News Conference

President biden held an hourlong news conference with reporters, stumbling early on but remaining defiant in the face of questions about his fitness to continue his campaign..

“The President of the United States, Joe Biden.” “Hey, everybody. Thank you. Please be seated.” “What concerns do you have about Vice President Harris’s ability to beat Donald Trump if she were at the top of the ticket?” “Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president did I think she was not qualified to be president.” “You mixed up presidents Zelensky and Putin earlier today. Officials here are saying off the record that your decline has become noticeable. Hasn’t this now, frankly, become damaging for America’s standing in the world? Thank you.” “Did you see any damage to our standing in my leading this conference? Have you seen a more successful conference?” “China has to understand that if they are supplying Russia with information and capacity, along with working with North Korea and others to help Russia and armament, that they’re not going to benefit economically. I know Israel well and I support Israel. But this war cabinet is one of the most conservative war cabinets in the history of Israel. And there’s no ultimate answer other than a two-state solution here.” “If your team came back and showed you data that she would fare better against former President Donald Trump, would you reconsider your decision to stay in the race?” “No, unless they came back and said, there’s no way you can win. Me. No one is saying that. No poll says that. I think I’m the most qualified person to run for president. I beat him once and I will beat him again.”

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By Shane Goldmacher ,  Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein

Follow the latest Biden news and election updates .

Days after President Biden said only the “Lord Almighty” could drive him from the race, he laid out a far more earthly scenario at his closely watched news conference on Thursday night: His advisers would have to prove to him that he was headed for certain defeat.

But leaning into the microphone and whispering to dramatize his defiance, Mr. Biden made clear that he did not foresee this happening.

“No one’s saying that,” he said. “No poll says that.”

He seemed to open the door to an alternative, then swiftly shut it. Sure, “other people can beat Trump,” he said, but it would be too hard to “start from scratch.”

The president’s first news conference since the debate amounted to a competent presentation, if not a compelling performance. But it remained in doubt whether it was enough to stop the bleeding of Democratic support that has threatened to hemorrhage. Minutes after he left the stage, the drip-drip-drip of Democratic members of Congress calling for him to step aside continued unabated.

“I believe I’m the best qualified to govern,” said Mr. Biden, who has for decades pointed to naysayers to fuel his own comeback narratives. “And I think I’m the best qualified to win .”

The high-stakes, mostly unscripted hour — Mr. Biden’s longest since the debate that sent his candidacy into a tailspin — came as some of those around him have talked about how to persuade him to drop out , and as his campaign has commissioned a survey to test the strength of Vice President Kamala Harris in a matchup he has insisted will never come to pass.

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