I think not finding things in common with young people isn't abnormal. My childhood was miserable partly BECAUSE of the sameness of it all. I find the suburban vanilla Stepford ways soul-killing. I had no exposure to culture. The internet didn't exist yet. I was ignorant and brainwashed in many ways. I felt out of place and like I was a freak because I didn't believe what I was told was "correct". The city was "bad" and "city folk" were "bad". The family and people in those places still have the same narrow beliefs and I am still "wrong". The people I know that grew up in multicultural cities had so much richer experiences and opportunities to grow and explore their beliefs and ideas without their parents ideologies infecting them as much.
One of the things I find ironic about "experience seeking" is how often people go to places like India or China to have "rich experiences." But people from those places generally would relate much more easily to people like your parents. Circling back to the topic at hand--people in my home country of Bangladesh, where there is a rigid social order and strict indoctrination of children, may suffer from many things, but loneliness is not one of them.
Again, I can't help but notice the irony of your assertion. What is the virtue in not being xenophobic against Bangladeshis, if you're going to condemn the way they structure their communities and raise their children?
I’m from rural East Texas and would agree with that statement 100%.
This probably sounds like a throwaway comment, but it's not; there are big cities that are more friendly and less friendly to kids. An advantage of places like Chicago is that the trendy areas are shared between people with families and single people, where in New York the family-friendly neighborhoods are specialized, like Park Slope.