Sexism, racism, discrimination against the disabled...

We gain some things we lose somethings. What's better, is pretty subjective and depends on the metric.

Some things are better (better vehicle safety, more known about diet/nutrition), some worse (less exercise, less free time).

Responding to one of Brian's points:
"And you don’t have to hang out on the McLean soccer fields to know that you kids aren’t being coddled by youth-league coaches."

Depends on your program. There are levels of youth sports now. Our softball program offers a high-level, year-round program that's trying to get to national level tournaments in Florida, Colorado, etc. It's very competitive; they work hard.

We've got an intermediate program. And then we've got a recreational program that's designed for kids to learn the game, have fun and be active. Yes, we keep score, have standings and award first-place trophies, but nobody gets cut, there are strict rules about playing time, etc.

So whether you're being "coddled" by your youth league coaches depends on your level.

Not saying that's a bad thing. When I was playing, we had one league/one level. If that fit your abilities and interests, great. If you were better than that, too bad. If you weren't good enough for that, too bad.

What I find most interesting about the different generations is that previous generations just did what they thought they should do, but the current group of parents spends tons of time talking about what they do, arguing about it, preaching about it and justifying it.

A carryover from yesterday's discussion, sorry...

For those teaching their children to scream - I used to help teach a "stranger danger" class for kids at my tae kwon do studio. We always taught kids to scream - at the top of their lungs - "not my mommy, not my daddy" if a stranger was touching them, trying to make them get in a car, etc.

If you're in the park, at a ball game, etc., every parent, grandparent, former babysitter, or other responsible adult in the area will recognize that as a sign that something bad is happening.

Certainly, there have been advancements and improvements in the last few decades...but what I see which is sad is that the kids these days don't have the freedom and independence that we children of the 70s enjoyed. Yes, I lived in one of those neighborhoods where everyone knew each other and we spent all summer riding bikes in a pack everywhere. Now, parents practically lojack their kids. Is it really that much more dangerous??

What I find most interesting about the different generations is that previous generations just did what they thought they should do, but the current group of parents spends tons of time talking about what they do, arguing about it, preaching about it and justifying it.

Posted by: jjtwo | December 4, 2008 8:49 AM | Report abuse

LOL! And making money on it, ie. this blog!! And all the other self-help stuff.

The JUDGING has been going on for thousands of years.

The world keeps getting better and better for kids. The video games are cooler, the roller coasters more thrilling, they have new activities like lazer tag and paint ball, better opportunities for education, cell phones, instant messaging...

So I ran around in the woods and cought frogs for entertainment when I was a kid, whoopie, something I doubt my kids will ever do, and they won't miss it either.

As for the music, I'm not sure that it has gotten better. Surely, the female pop stars are hotter and wear a lot less clothing nowadays, but I found a healthy selection of Floyd, Zepplin, Ozzy, and the Stones on my teenager's playlist. Should I be worried enough to wag my finger at her like my parents did to me, or am I a bad father for asking her to crank it up a little louder because it's one of my favorite songs?

Brian - I like it!

I have been angered and annoyed for years about emails and letters like the one you got. People are so "stupid" to not realize that we may have survived the 70's and 80's, but lots of kids didn't.

I personally know a family that lost one of their twin boys in the 80s when he fell out of a moving car. He was not buckled up and the door opened while he and his brother were fighting. Now we have doors that don't open from the inside and very strict seatbelt laws.

I also have a family member of mine that had to put her kids on "anti-lead" medicine after finding out that their lead levels were sky high and that her windows were covered in lead paint. Thanks to blood testing and new regulations about lead paint, her kids will be fine. 30 years ago her kids would have had serious learning problems and maybe even died from all the exposure.

Not to mention all the kids that did die from unsafe cribs or from suffocating in their blankets and sheets!

"we spent all
summer riding bikes in a pack"

Otherwise known as a "gang" by the standard of a growing number of parents.

"30 years ago her kids would have
had serious learning problems and maybe even died from all the exposure"

The same thing is happening today. Children are getting poisoned from the mercury from all the vaccines they are required to take.

"we spent all
summer riding bikes in a pack"

Y'all had bikes?

Vaccines do not cause learning disabilities. They save lives.

Anyone who thinks that the current generation obsesses about how they parent and the older generation didn't obsess about how they parented didn't have a stay at home mother.

My mother seemed to spend an hour a day on the phone talking to nervous neighbors about their children and trying to deflect their incessant gossip about how other women kept their house. She would complain about this at dinner- one time I remember a neighbor stopping by to show my mother her daughter's spelling test, fully freaked out and my mother screamed at her that she was making herself sick over nothing while the country was going down in flames (the watergate hearings were on).

Apparently my grandmother was also beset by nervous nellies whose kids ran wild during World War II while Dad was away in Europe.

So... JJTwo, Parents have been obsessing over how they raise their kids since time immemorial, give up your fake view of history.

The thing about running in packs in the 1970s was...

girls were attacked. I remember a girl about age 12 from a block over was viciously egged by a car full of young men old enough to drive. That was very weird and that ended everything. After that no trick or treating alone.

By 1975 no kids were allowed to go to the store alone, especially Wheaton Plaza and everyone who lived in DC back then knows why. It loosened up in the 80s, but we were on lockdown for 2 years.

Brian -- Agree with just about everything you say; this is one of my pet peeves, because it ignores the plain fact that all the kids who died because they didn't have bike helmets, car seats, etc., aren't here to talk about the dangers.

I will disagree on the food issue, however. As a kid, unless your folks were hippie health freaks (which my mom pretty much was), you pretty much ate white bread, box mac and cheese, canned veggies, canned fruits, Jif/Skippy, Kool-Aid, bologna (with mayo), burgers, hot dogs, and casseroles made with (pick 4) noodles, ground beef, frozen peas, mashed potatoes, cheese, tomato or cream of chicken soup, Funyons. (Lucky me: I was the weird kid with wheat bread and an orange).

Seriously, do you really think food was less "toxic" then? Do you really think farmers didn't use pesticides and fungicides? They did -- they just were pretty much unregulated until the early 1970s, and for the most part were far more dangerous than they are today (DDT, anyone?). We just know about it more now -- in part, because it IS regulated now.

I put today's nutritional options far, far above how we ate back then. Juice may have a lot of sugar, but it's still better than Kool-Aid or Tang; at least nowadays you can get Wonder Bread with whole wheat "white" flour, etc. Admitted, we don't always make the best choices, and sometimes it feels like we are running in circles, because the science seems to change so frequently. But we know a lot more about nutrition now than we did 30+ years ago. And we have far more options for fresh fruits and vegetables and organic choices. And food is a much smaller part of today's budget -- meaning more people have the financial wherewithal to afford those healthier options, if they choose to.

you pretty much ate white bread, box mac and cheese, canned veggies, canned fruits, Jif/Skippy, Kool-Aid, bologna (with mayo), burgers, hot dogs, and casseroles made with (pick 4) noodles, ground beef, frozen peas, mashed potatoes, cheese, tomato or cream of chicken soup, Funyons.

Posted by: laura33 | December 4, 2008 11:42 AM | Report abuse

The Duggar family!

WhackyWeasel: Repeat after me: "mercury no longer used in vaccines"..."there is no proven (or even sustainable) link between mercury in vaccinces and brain damange"..."there is absolutely no link demonstrated between autism and mercury"

- repeat until you stop believing everything bottle-blonde actresses say on the subject.

thank you.

byte1, I don't know where you are getting your information, but vaccines, including the flu shot, still contain mercury. The reason - storage is less expensive.

And here is one of many articles that show a positive correlation between mercury emitting power plants and autism:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424120953.htm

But if you want to believe that mercury injected directly into the body isn't toxic, but the mercury generated as a pollutant from an industrial plant causes autism, no one is going to stop you.

@laura33: I don't want to defend white bread or the ample use of Kool-Aid in my childhood years, but the reality is that for every step we've taken forward (whole-grain bread, organic milk, etc.) we've taken a couple of steps back.

When I was a teenager, and we want to the convenience store for a Coke, you had one option: a 12-ounce can. Now, you can't get a can at most 7-Elevens. You need to get a 250-calorie, 20-ounce container. Likewise, a home-cooked meal built around a can of Cream of Mushroom soup was not great nutrition, but neither is the modern equivalent: a quick stop at Chipotle. There are more good food choices today, to be sure. But there are even more bad ones.

@WhackyWeasel: The only vaccines in the U.S. that still have mercury are flu shots. I don't want to start a flame war, but the evidence connecting mercury in vaccines to adverse health effects is really quite poor.

When I was a teenager, and we want to the convenience store for a Coke, you had one option: a 12-ounce can. Now, you can't get a can at most 7-Elevens. You need to get a 250-calorie, 20-ounce container.

Posted by: rebeldad | December 4, 2008 12:52 PM | Report abuse

You don't NEED a Coke, whatever the size. It's a choice.

"There are more good food choices today, to be sure. But there are even more bad ones."

It's a choice, it's always a choice.

Whoa. You got my attention with the comment about not being coddled by McLean Soccer coaches, and it makes me very sad. Most of this generation will never know the pure joy of hanging out with friends and having a soccer game break out. The fields, (ostensibly owned by the general tax-paying public) are all booked by organized groups (read: pay big registration fees)and some adult in charge always kicks the neighborhood kids off the field (and sometimes call the cops)if they try to play there - even if the league teams are only using half the field. So you'd better not tell your kids to go out and play ball for fun with their friends (hopefully assorted ages, sexes and skill levels)and get some exercise, because our parks don't have anyplace for them to play anymore.

And while the league teams here are certainly not being coddled (you should hear the tenor of the screaming by coaches and many of the parents),the kids have been convinced by the parents in charge that they are deprived and subject to all sorts of horrors unless they have million dollar artificial turf fields to play on.

Listening some of these kids complain when conditions are less than perfect, and watching their tense faces during games, makes me realize that we are doing our kids a grave dis-service by allowing all of our fields and facilities to be controlled by the adults running these leagues instead of being public parkland.

As kids, we may not have had the finest Soccer Experience money could buy (I remember stopping during games to re-inflate the ball) but we had FUN, got exercise, improved our skills, and learned valuable lessons about organizing groups, leadership and resolving conflicts. All we needed was a place to play.

This must be my hypocritical behavior day...

First, can we please not highjack the blog with a debate/argument about the possible causes of autism spectrum disorders? Even though I'm the parent of a teen with autism, I don't follow the science and research terrribly closely. But my overall impression is that there are a whole lot of possibilities still to be explored, and very few definite answers so far. It appears that the most likely causes are a combination of heredity and envirnoment. Kids with a particular genetic sensitivity are probably more likely to be affected by some environmental substances, and kids with a different sensitivity by different substances.

Now, having made my request/compaint about off-topic blog posts, here's my hypocracy:

Back in the 60's and 70's the diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome didn't even exist. Most of the kids in my older son's program are "Aspies", and I envy them the services and supports they're getting. The first time I read the DSM-IV criteria for an Aspergers diagnosis, I saw myself and my childhood. Who would I be today and where would I be *if* I'd received a diagnosis 40-plus years ago and gotten some help? How many "weird" kids in my generation weren't lucky enough to achieve a successful adulthood after stumbling and flailing and failing their way through school until they just gave up?

Special needs kids today can get a lot of help that kids of previous generations didn't.

bbcrock: "The thing about running in packs in the 1970s was...

girls were attacked. I remember a girl about age 12 from a block over was viciously egged by a car full of young men old enough to drive."

Are you saying that that DOESN'T happen today? Because if anything, I think it's even more prevalent today than it was back then. There are more kids with access to cars at earlier ages, and they still seem to get in as much trouble per carload.

And teenaged boys still run in packs. As do teenaged girls.

Brian - While the maternal mortality rate has dropped by orders of magnitude since the early 1900's, according to the CDC, the maternal mortality rate for 2004 was the highest it's been in decades. Higher than in 1977, for example. See http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr55/nvsr55_19.pdf for example, or the Washington Post article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082401321.html

Of course, there's better and worse. My DH was not enthralled with the idea of getting a DVD player for the car. He said they never had one and they were fine. Then I pointed out to him that when he was a kid, he could go to the middle row and the back row, lay down, play games, whatever he wanted - while the car was in motion. Now the kids are strapped to their seats, and it's harder for them to do anything. So we got the DVD player.

So some is better some is worse. We hopefully learn from mistakes and get better all the time. You can lament all you want, but others were right - those who were poisoned by lead, or died because of inferior cribs, or no helmets, or whatever are not here. Look at the stats - they continue to decline for all those things that Brian mentioned.

jjtwo- cuz parents have evolved enough to realize they are probably still messing up pretty badly as parents, but not willing to admit that BEFORE they choose to procreate

fr Sue Mc:

>...How many "weird" kids in my generation weren't lucky enough to achieve a successful adulthood after stumbling and flailing and failing their way through school until they just gave up?

Special needs kids today can get a lot of help that kids of previous generations didn't.

Oh, VERY true. By the time I got to 3rd grade, the 'teachers" had convinced my mother that I "just didn't listen or pay attention" in class. Not at all true. I tried very hard, couldn't get the tutoring I knew I needed to pass the classes.

i grew up in the 70's and i will argue to the death that music was far, far superior then. of course, we've made lots of strides. but i think we were tougher than kids today. i have a 20 year old son and i raised him differently than my parents did me. neither way is wrong, both ways were right for the times. my mom used to shoo us out the door in the summer after lunch and tell us to be back by dark. you could do that in those days. i lived my own life. i wouldn't dream of letting my son out of my sight when he was a child. times were different. i think we have to raise kids the way we do today because of the way the world is today. but i had experiences on those long summer days that i wouldn't trade for the world and i think kids today are, for the most part, far softer than we were. i think our way WAS better, but today's way is necessary.