Is society today producing kids who are less respectful and less sensitive than 50 yrs ago? Do parents over protect and pander to the whims of kids? Why did this happen?

I have always felt overwhelmed and completely frustrated that it seems our kids have forgotten what its like to be real Aussie kids..ie ball games..footy..family time fishing etc..

Are we living in a society that ,via the media create a world that is frightening and uncertain to parents that they pass this fear onto their children.

I know for myself alone that my kids dont have the freedom I did as a child and Im sad about that.

OZGIRL, your heading is one that is very topical for me at the moment.

I started to write something about my own experience and then realised I was turning it into something I didn't want it to be. I'll take a break on that and see if I can come up with a better approach to writing about this stuff.

Hopefully not to long because I think that this topic is important.

Cheers
R0bert

It is a very different world now compared to the 50s and 60s. Back then we all had peace of mind. Today we can all see that things are building up to a very ominous point and that this is going to affect us all very soon.

Of course this rubs off on our kids and it is bound to be a large part of the cause for more rebellious behaviour.

We can’t help but pass our fears onto our children, both directly as parents and teachers, and via the media where really seriously bad-news stuff is just inescapable.

Ludwig, some of my favourite authors did much of their writing in the 50's and 60's. When they take the time to reflect on the world they lived in a common theme was a very real concern that the cold war could errupt into total destruction of the earth at a few minutes notice. In the USA normal people built bomb shelters in the back yard and stockpiled supplies in case they were fortunate/unfortunate enough to survice the first hours of World War III.

The impression I have is that the world did come very close to a large scale nuclear war on a number of occasions.

I've not read much Australian material from that period but suspect that the cold war concerns were much less pronounced here but still present just as concerns about terrorism are less pronounced here than in the USA today.

It's an interesting point you make but it does not gell with my understanding of the period.

Cheers
R0bert

You make a good point R0bert. But I think it is a different level of perception today to what it was then.

Most of us in Australia didn’t really appreciate the threat of nuclear war at the time and we can only see how grave the situation was when we look back on it. Yes we knew of the potential for Armageddon at the push of a button, but we somehow had faith that it wouldn’t happen or that if the nukes did fly, it still wouldn’t affect us too much downunder.

But today, we just get the feeling that things really are terminal to our way of life… and that rising fuel prices and climate change are highly tangible examples of it progressing in real time… not at some point in the future.

This stuff has got to play havoc with a developing brain

In the goode olde days, we used to take off in the morning[getting away from a nagging parent with jobs] and we would not come home until tea time. We walked miles to and from school, took cut lunches that often tasted awful by lunchtime, then after jobs, played out in the street until driven in by our stomachs.
We did all this in safety, any one interfering with kids then would have been literally lynched. There were no Civil Libertarians to protect paedophiles,drug smugglers.
But we were taught a strict respect for law, society and our parents. In fact all grown ups were accorded courtesy, it was inherent in us.
We KNEW we had to behave in a certain way or we would be punished. The sight of a policeman rendered in us all, a desire to be saintly.
That's the way we were.

mickijo, that is a massive shift.

When I was a kid I knew that adults did not have to cop crap from me. If I was rude to an adult someone - either the adult concerned or my parents would ensure that I learnt the errors of my ways pretty quickly.

There were clearly abuses in that but I'm left wondering if the harm done to kids by the current system where no-body dares touch them until they are old enough to go to jail is not a lot worse.

Is there a middle ground somewhere?

R0bert

I truly believe that today's kids are less respectful. I so rarely hear pleases and thankyous coming from the mouths of children and when in the mall etc the way children speak to their parents is absolutely atrocious.

As to being less sensitive, i think they're over sensitive. I was listening to a talk back program the other night and schools are now not using red pens to mark childrens tests etc as it is 'pshycologically damaging' for a child to see red on their papers.

Teachers and child carers can't use the words 'no' and 'don't'. What happens to this child when it gets older and is faced with 'no' and 'don't'in everyday life??

I believe we do over protect our children. The reality is that the world out there is pretty scary but kids need to be taught the life skills to deal with it, not the protection most parents offer. I realise that the most natural instinct of a parent is to protect their child but in some instances they are doing an injustice to that child...

I have a wonderful nephew, age 9. My mother, his gran, wanted to bring him with her by train to the CBD to meet with me and go to lunch. His mother (my sister) decided against this as she was worried my nephew would somehow run away (he is so well behaved and wouldn't dream of running off) and wind up being molested or kidnapped or whatever.

Yes, we do overprotect our children and by doing so are saying we don't trust them and then wind up surprised when they reach their teens and don't respect us.

I am very upset with my sister and am astounded that she has let herself become a victim of the epidemic of fear that punctuates our media and politics.

As for the why of this fear campaign it is much easier to control a population by fear. And that is what we have allowed to happen. Time to take back control over our own lives.

Scout well said. I've held the view for some time that the misrepresentation of child sexual abuse is hurting kids a lot. From what I've seen most of it is committed by people known to the kids and that random abductions are rare. In our efforts to show how wrong any child sexual abuse is I suspect we've come to misunderstand the incidence of the most severe cases. Some of it seems to be driven by people trying to deal with abuse of their own children who see the world in terms of what happened to their child.

charliechuckles, some good points there. It's worth remembering that it's not just parents. The prospect of inteference by outside agencies who are not faced with the day to day responsibilities of raising a particular child is a factor which limits parents ability to address some behavioural issues. Teenagers are paid to move out of home if they don't like the discipline, well meaning social workers bring their own philosophy on child rearing to bear.

Somehow we need to protect kids from legitimate abuse but still allow parents the scope to deal with disciplining their kids as well.

R0bert

How I long for the good ol' days when we used to roll our hoops down down disused stormwater canals licking ha'penny ice-creams made out of sawdust and old straw and copped a swift hiding around the ears if we complained, too, my word yes, never did me any harm.

Oh, how wonderful to warm our frozen little mitts in mum's boiling hot laundry tub of lime and caustic soda, and after dinner of coal tar and hot ash, for dessert, what a treat it was to lick warm treacle off the road.

And we knew our place too, never you mind. None of this self-esteem nonsense. We were all perfect little angels and butter wouldn't melt in our mouths and we never gave our parents any grief whatsoever and all the grown-ups praised our generation as the finest, most well-disciplined, well-spoken, polite little lads and lasses history has ever known.

Sheesh.

I will only consider us to have failed our children if they grow up to whinge in online forums about how disrespectful the young people of today are.

.Mercurius...I was so enjoying your post until I realised you were having 'a go' at me..bought back so many lovely memories for me..
My headline nor my introductory post actually says that I believed that kids are more disrespectful, I simply asked do people believe so, because the perception is that some pple believe this to be the case. So for the record I do believe that this is the case..I believe that my children are better behaved than some but I am very vigilant about respect, but the respect must go both ways,. We must earn it..

Scout is completely right and Robert makes some very good points.

I long for the days when we kids could go out all day till dark (we lived on a station) and mum and dad never had to fear that we would come to harm.
Mum washing our clothes in a boiler,using rendered fat from previuos roasts for cooking..billy tea..wooden wash pegs..A huge bag of lollies for threepence and on it goes...
I believe that the world as my children know it is a far cry to the one they know today.
I am soon relocating to the bush...

.correction ' I believe the world as I knew it is a far cry to the one my kids know today.'

“I am very upset with my sister and am astounded that she has let herself become a victim of the epidemic of fear that punctuates our media and politics.”

Scout , I think everyone has to find their own balance between protection and freedom. Your sister has a different balance to you. But is it necessarily a worse position to hold?

“Yes, we do overprotect our children and by doing so are saying we don't trust them and then wind up surprised when they reach their teens and don't respect us.”

Some of us are overprotective. Some of us are the opposite. Some (probably most) of us are protective some of the time and then let our guard down when it might really count.

It’s all over the place.

You worry about an apparent fear campaign leading to over-protection. I’d be more inclined to worry about a lack of sufficient expression by our political masters, academics, teachers, P&C associations etc about the ever-present dangers for our naïve children and adolescents.

I say, let there be full expression, and if it leads to a bit of overprotection, well that’s got to be better than underprotection.

When our kids reach adulthood, they will respect us if we were a tad overprotective. They won’t respect us if we let them get into trouble that we could have prevented with a little more loving care.

If you watch a lioness with her cubs, she will give them what they need while training them for the future when they must get out on their own. If they persist in any behaviour that could be dangerous to their well being, she will bring them smartly back into line.
We must do the same for our children, we have to equip them physically and mentally for when they ,too, must go out into dangerous waters. Maybe kids today are not getting enough rigour. Cut out some of the [babysitting]play stations and let them use their imaginations more in real time. They are learning while they play just like the cubs.

I agree with most people to some degree. Let's not look through rose coloured glasses though. In previous generations, children were raised in families where domestic abuse, sexual abuse and alcoholism were rampant and endemic, yet society as a whole often turned a blind eye to all of this, just as they turned a blind eye to the severe bullying at school (both from other students and teachers).

Mercurius: Indeed, kids have all these new-fangled toys and are spoilt rotten! What they really need is for every male role-model in their lives to piss it all up against a wall every Thursday pay day, and then come home and give them all a hiding. That'd teach them some morals, the ungrateful little bastards. It worked for my mother and her siblings and all of her neighbours growing up.

Great thread, folks, and thanks to OZGIRL for raising the question.

When I talk to my friends with kids, most seem to have the belief that kids are more at risk from abductions and sexual assault by strangers than ever before, and this is the reason for the extra protection so many think is necessary. Strangely, I’ve never seen any convincing evidence that this anxiety has any basis in reality.

In the US, there was a massive increase in reported child abductions during the 1970s and 1980s. When you actually look at the cases, in nearly every situation the “offender” was the non custodial parent of the child, reluctant to accept a court’s judgement – a sad and dysfunctional situation, and one that deserves sensible attention, but not as sinister as was originally believed.

My own impression is that the abduction and rape of children is rare now, although when cases do occur they are highly publicised and cause understandable repugnance. But I’ve never seen any evidence that such cases are any more common now than they used to be. In fact my guess is that such perpetrators are more likely these days to be caught and punished and controlled. Most sexual abuse is by perps known to the child and his or her protectors, and always has been.

So why the anxiety?

cont.

In the mid 1980s in the US, and to a lesser extent in the UK and Australia, there developed a widespread belief that Satanists had taken over control of many childcare centres and kindergartens and were subjecting hundreds of little kids to horrific rituals that included torture and sexual abuse. These beliefs were taken up by many in the mainstream child protection, policing, medical and legal professions, and led to such popular, but bogus, concepts as “recovered repressed memory” and the “anal wink test” for sexual abuse. Dozens of innocent people were convicted and jailed for terrible crimes that never happened, and hundreds of children were traumatized by well meaning professionals lacking basic critical skills in medicine, psychology and jurisprudence. We can look back on this phenomenon as another example of moral panic or witch hunting which have always been recurrent dysfunctional themes of human societies, but I reckon we’ve got some lessons in this. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse
Or http://skepdic.com/satanrit.html

I reckon we’ve got to look more broadly at how anxiety functions in society, how it is used by the media and entertainment industries, how it’s used by politicians to corral support. OZGIRL, I don’t think there are simple answers to your question, but it’s a really important one.

Thank you Snout. You are quite correct in the likelihood of abduction - I have been having similar talks with my sister and brother-in-law - they agree that maybe they did overreact.

However, as a result of a fearful response to the negative hype the tabliod media thrives upon, a nine year boy missed out on a trip into the city with Grandma and lunch with his aunt. And left with a feeling that he is both vulnerable and untrustworthy. All because of his parents' fear.

For the record, I don't think kids are any worse today than back in my childhood. The children in my neighborhood are strong, independent kids. They treat me with a lot of respect. Only last Christmas, when I drove home from work, I pulled into my carpark and a group of six of my neighbours kids sang a christmas carol to me. Amazing.

But then I don't live in an ordinary suburban environment where houses fully dominate the block with no room for a garden or an area in which to run around. I live in the Dandenong Ranges, which means the kids have room to move, break bones, develop their immune systems and generally behave like kids. Like I used in the country town I spent my first 10 years.

If we continue overprotecting ourselves, building artificial environments and living in fear instead of in hope, then I am concerned at the long term effect on our children.

Kids are totally over protected today. Friends tell me they want their 16 year old girl to stay a little girl. Why? A little girl has to be the most vulnerable creature in society. We overprotect them and when they finally get to walk out the door by themselves they have absolutely no survival skills. It requires a great deal of effort to raise a well mannered, practical and thoughtful child. Most parents don't put in the time these days. Both work because they won't make the sacrifices our parents made - eg one car, occasional holidays and the discipline to not spend money they don't have. Don't knock the kids. It is the adults who are at fault for everything from rudeness to childhood obesity through sheer laziness.

Germ you are so right..it is up to parents to provide an enviroment conducive to the needs and the well being of their child..laziness and apathy have taken over in a lot of cases..Scout says that we are producing kids who dont trust their own judgement and self worth and she is absolutely right too.

I still say the freedom we had as kids served us mich better to cope as adults..we broke bones, made our own fun, no video games and entertainment laid on..we had to use our imagination if we were bored.

Yes we have come to look back on our past with slightly rose colored glasses but there was a lot of positive and great things about being kids back then..
Political correctness etc has a lot to answer for...now kids can divorce their parents etc for slight misdemeanours..forget child cruelty.. the pendulum has swung too far..

The exposure of child sexual abuse and cruelty is a critical change but there has to balance.

Interesting that there are so many women commenting on this thread. My perception is that a lot of the over-protection stems from a devaluation of what you might call "male" values that has led to a generation which appears to be more fearful than previous ones.

For example, I think we all now tend to view pain as something bad, whereas 40 years ago, when I was growing up, pain was something that boys used to value, and the ability to deal with it marked something of a passage into manhood.

Yet I'm sure I'm not the only modern father to have used the tough love approach to an injury and been reproached by other adults for not being more sympathetic to one of my kids.

Graham interesting point. I'd not thought of it in terms of physical pain. I think some of the same issues apply in terms of emotional pain. Some people seem to be pushing agenda's which insist kids feelings must never be hurt. I recently saw a article about some preschool staff being instructed not to say "no" or "don't" to children because it might stunt their development. http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,20267446-5007190,00.html

The stunting will come from not teaching children the reality of no.

R0bert

We would not have seen this 50 years ago [yes, I'm well old enough to remember]:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1442/use_condoms/

OK, maybe a bit extreme, but somewhat less dramatic scenes like this take place regularly, when a child wants to stuff far too much harmful junk in its face and the parent [initially] says 'No'.

This is the way I see it. We learn not to touch fire because when we try it we feel physical pain. If touching fire gave us the equivalent of a minor, ineffectual rebuke, then we would learn nothing and many of us would eventually suffer for this lack of knowledge. Whether we believe in God, evolution or both, this concept is tried and true. It works! The same principle applies to other potentially irresponsible behaviour.

But parents aren't supposed to discipline their children anymore. And when too many of these undisciplined 'children' turn up in the Childrens' Court for committing adult crimes, then further 'slaps on the wrist' teach them that they can carry on seriously misbehaving and get away with it.

Here’s another thought: I wonder if the fact that families are smaller nowadays is a factor. Most parents are pretty anxious with their first child – once they’ve had a few and get more experienced they get more confident and even blasé. If you have lots of kids it’s hard to be too indulgent with all of them, and a pretty basic kind of discipline becomes a survival necessity. So the smaller the average sibship the higher the anxiety/indulgence factor. In China, where they have a government enforced one child policy for population reasons, they’re starting to talk about the “Little Emperor/ess Syndrome”.

For those who are interested in the satanic ritual abuse phenomenon I can recommend a great book: “Satan’s Silence: The Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt” by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker. It’s a fascinating piece of recent social history, scholarly but very readable, and includes a great introduction to how moral panics have developed historically. It helped me understand how anxiety and social change can translate into some pretty bizarre belief systems, and I found it really helpful when I was entering my own professional life in the early 1990s.

Cheers to all, and thanks ROb and Scout for your kind words on other threads - you've made my day.

"I found it really helpful when I was entering my own professional life in the early 1990s."

Snout: As a satanic childcare worker? ;P

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

The 80s must have been a very strange time to live, if only for that reason. Fortunately, I was just a kid, and not in childcare!

I don't know if kids are 'worse' today than they used to be- i'm only 24 myself, so I'm barely not a kiddie! But I work with a group of girls aged 5-10yrs each week, and they are perfectly respectful, listen to adults (most of the time, when not running around like crazy things), and do not go to pieces when told off.

And their parents are quite happy for myself and my co-worker to speak sharply to their children. I would certainly never smack any of the children, or yell at them (execept when outdoors for volume, or if there was imminent danger), but a sharp "EXCUSE me? WHAT do you think you're doing?" is generally enough to stop unacceptable behaviour.

I do think that some of the kids are a bit over-activity'd though - they do three different out-of-school sports, plus this group, plus school, plus family/friends stuff... they must be exhausted.

Anyway. I'm just not convince that "The Children Of Today" are really so horrid.

There are two very different issues here - a decrease of respect and a change in attitude/approach to parenting.

As for the first, I very much believe that the media and television have a huge impact on the way our children interact and behave. I do not allow my three year old to watch commercial television and will probably keep this up until he is in his teenage years. I do not want him growing up with The Simpsons and other trash like it.

The decrease of respect is not only with our children, I think it is with our society in general. I think it has largely to do with the mistaken belief that "free speech" means all speech is equal ... that just because you think you have a right to say something, you don't have to worry about how you say it.

As for the second issue, I believe that the increasing age of parents has a lot to do with the over-protectionism (not sure though if I agree with the term "pander" - it is a very emotionally laden term). I think back to when I was in my early 20's, I was bullet proof - and I did not worry about the future. I had a very day to day existence and a certain joie d'vivre. Look at me now - 15 or so years later, and my approach to life is far more conservative. I am much more concerned about threats (real and perceived, immediate and in the future) to my wellbeing and my family's wellbeing. I read way too much when it comes to the rights and wrongs about parenting.

Laurie, good points. When I spend time at my sons school most of the kids are great.

I suspect that what we are really talking about is either a widening of the curve or a flattening of the curve of "acceptable" behaviour.

I have some great interactions with kids at times that are more open than would normally have been allowed when I was a kid but I also see more kids treating others in a way that was rarely allowed when I was a kid.

Or maybe it's just a sign of getting older.

R0bert

I think kids are noisier and under more adult supervision now than they were 50 years ago when families were larger, the average class size for infant classes was 45 kids and kids walked themselves to school more frequently than they do now.

I see that kids have far more activities than we did and parents are more actively involved in transporting kids to activities than in former times. Parents now show that they are actively involved in parenting rather than directing kids from the sidelines.

Todays kids are not as independent as kids in former times. We used to hit the lolly shop unsupervised from 6 years old. My first memory of inflation was when icy poles rose from twopence to three pence before I started school.

Shorbe, I hope not, but I never really did discover where that strange proboscis came from... or those funny horns. Yep, you're right - the 80s were a very strange time. I'll have to ask my therapist about it.

Cheers!

Billie, me too...we had much more freedom and we loved it..i have ,despite alcholism domestic violence and mental illness in my later yrs(from 6 -17 yrs when i left home) the happiest of memories because I had 3 other siblings and we stuck to together very closely due to the trauma of our enviroment and to protect each other..

The happiest times i cherish are the roaming free and unchecked(up to a point) and the adventures experienced therein.

It goes to show I guess that freedom just to be who we are is vitally important to our sense of self and wellbeing because if from that i have those memories and can say i looked back to my childhood and have those happy memories to counteract the other stuff, thats saying something.

My children are yet to have that kind of freedom...I know i am too watchful, but i want them to have the same freedoms i did and the memories associated.We are leaving for the bush at the end of the year.

"I fear for the future when it is placed in the hands of the children of today. They are disrespective to their elders and do not conform to society." Was this written recently?---No it is a paraphrase of the words spoken by a Greek philosopher (whose name escapes me at the moment) over a thousand years ago.
I have seen my children go through the various stages through the 60s, 70s and can recall my dismay at their behaviour in spite (or is it because)of firm but loving discipline.Do not despair as I believe that the children of today are no better nor worse than the children of yesteryear, only different. Of course there are exceptions but for every "bad" child there are countless numbers of "good" children. I used the word "bad" when it effect I probably mean the result of bad parenting. In spite of Governmental interference and the well meaning but unhelpful social workers, counsellers, children Court etc.most parents try to be good parents. I could write of the part Centre Link has played in all of this but will leave that for another time.