Do you think that the generation that started telling others to butt out of their child rearing really hurt themselves in the end?

They didn’t hurt. I think there is power in words and a positive message doesn’t hurt.

What we have is a Baby Boom generation, who raised Generation X, who then failed and abandoned their kids. The Baby Boomers end up raising their grandchildren, and hopefully have learned from the mistakes they made with the Boomers, because they probably won’t live long enough to raise their Great-Grandchildren.

@bkcunningham That phrase from the TV’s hasn’t been around in decades. You don’t hear it any more. That’s my point. People started saying, “It’s none of your business if I know where my kids are or not. You’re just trying to lay a guilt trip on us, which you have no right to do, so take it down!”

What generation has ever appreciated sanctimony from anyone? Those parents who clamp down hard on their kids probably cause as much harm in a different way.

@Dutchess_III They still say it here where I live. It always makes me smile.

So, expecting your kids to be home by a certain time, ESPECIALLY by 10:00 at night on a school night, is “clamping down,” @woocutter?

I wish they still said it here @chyna!

I don’t think it helped. I mean, my parents didn’t have a TV, so they didn’t get that message. Although our bedtime was 8 pm, it seems to me, so they probably had a pretty good idea of where we were. Asleep.

But a message like that doesn’t help one bit. That’s not what people respond to.

What people respond to is news about crime. They respond by keeping their kids close. This had continued through older and older ages now. Boomerang children now stay at home to the age of 30 and beyond. This is partly because of the economy, but it’s also partly because their parents never let them go anywhere unsupervised as children. Parents and children alike feel unsafe when they are too far from each other, I guess.

Not all parents and children, of course. But more now than did fifty years ago.

I believe city people have always felt less inclined to want interference from others, while more rural populations find it common for several generations to live together and towns people to be more protective of each other.

The world would be a better place if people did know where their kids were after 10. The incidence of child crime is just unbelievable. Whether it is a group of 10–15 year olds mugging people or stealing cars or 16 year old breaking and entering, if their parents were parenting instead of thinking society should do it for them, it wouldn’t be quite as scary to walk out at night.

@rooeytoo Not only are the parents not parenting, they’re demanding that society butt out of it.