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tartarusrussell wrote:

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I'm with Buntles on this one. There have always been deeply unpleasant and disrespectful children in every generation, and thankfully they are, and always have been, in the minority. It's just that they get noticed while all the decent children don't, and then they find their whole generation condemned.

Yeah, it's more "get off my lawn" stuff.

I guess maybe I got lucky or something, because despite a divorce that wasn't exactly pleasant at the beginning, I've got two kids who have barely needed to be disciplined or punished, ever. We had to do a little at the beginning, because we were completely focused on their becoming children who wouldn't bother adults and more to the point, happy kids with something interesting to talk about when they did speak. We didn't spank, however, we did pretty much give up any notion of a social life or anything and our lives, from 0-5 or so for both of them, was all about them, even as our marriage crumbled. Always. I spent five years pretty much never seeing a movie opening night or first run - I think I only went to the movies four or five times to see something I wanted, maybe, during that time. I watched a lot of rentals while the kids were sleeping.

And they're teenagers, now, and they're still kids who engage people and so close to being adults like that it seems impossible. I read other people's accounts, sometimes, of dealing with their kids and it's all about what a trial it is and how you really, really, have to hit them sometimes or you're just not a parent. I don't know what to say about that, except I was the guy at the birthday party who could sit and eat cake and talk to other adults and not worry that my kids were any of the ones screaming and running around with their heads cut off, and that's not because they didn't have any natural inclinations to do so.

I'm not even remotely ashamed to say my kids are my friends. I just asked my son to be Best Man at my wedding because I honestly couldn't think of any guy better in my life to fill that role. That's all I ever really wanted from my kids, now that I think about it: people I could be friends with. And they are, yay.

Bookhoard wrote:

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But I'm sure that if this thread continues long enough, someone will say, "Yeah, but everything wasn't sunshine and rainbows back then; there was a lot more child abuse, for example this kid was killed by his lousy drunk of a father, and that kid was starved half to death by his mother and his teachers couldn't do anything about it," etc, "and even if kids aren't as well disciplined today, isn't that better than failing to intervene to prevent these terrible cases of abuse?" And nobody will want to argue against that.

In other words, when balancing protecting children from abuse against the problems caused by government interference with parents, the anecdotes in favor of the former are always more compelling.

Well, that, and the fact that modern CPS failures in the direction of "removing children for stupid reasons" are outweighed in terms of numbers, even, by more traditional failures by those departments to properly act on reports and rescue children who end up hurt or killed.

I don't really have any sympathy for "OMG I SHOULD TOTALLY BE ABLE TO HIT MY KIDS" arguments, though, and consider pretty much any parental hand on a child's sex regions that isn't about cleaning pee or poo a bad touch. It's like getting all irate because your state might ban smoking in cars with children as passengers. Huh. Well, thanks for telling me you're the kind of asshole who smokes in the car with his kids, I guess.

Bookhoard wrote:

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We have to be taught to be civilized, and a lot of kids these days aren't being taught that. They do what they want at home, they do whatever they want at school, until they get sent to prison -- and they do pretty much whatever they want in there, too! So it's no wonder they get sent back after they get out. It's crazy. Most of this would be prevented if you just let parents do their jobs.

What "a lot of kids?" Because I haven't noticed this to be true, in general. I mean, I've got a fucked-up sister whose life provides counterpoint to my own whenever our kids are in the same room, and she and some of her friends fit that description somewhat, I guess, but...those aren't the kinds of parents whose kids we like our kids hanging out with. Also, you want to hear something funny? All big spankers. All big believers in "spare the rod, spoil the child." It's amazing how conservative and traditionalist impoverished reprobate fuckups can be, out in the real world.

My kids hang out with serious kids and foolish kids and smart kids and dumb kids and cautious and reckless and cranky and happy kids and kids, occasionally, whose ethics and character my ex and I wonder about, as they solidify in adulthood. And that doesn't describe any of their lives, not even the rich kid friend of Max's whose parents died and his moneyed grandparents are raising him. Not even Kate's old best friend whose stepdad was a rather nasty and contentious local Republican politician. (She slept over there one night, and the family went out to pull up opponents signs and toss them in the minivan. Kate asked her mom if that was cool when she got home. I have never seen Joy that angry at another parent, not even the mom who had a slumber party when she knew her kid had lice, and Joy's a Republican.) I know this because I've met them - I've been to their houses for parties and I've hosted birthday parties and we all went to the same soccer games where they didn't keep score a few years ago.

You didn't describe prison accurately, either. And there is no concerted effort to keep parents from "doing their jobs," not here, certainly. The only reason parents don't do their jobs is that they don't feel like doing them. Which I can sympathize with, as it's a pretty hard job and unlike almost everything else in life, none of it's about you or any future reward for yourself. It's not like we've got farms to hand down, most of us. Every parent gives up in frustration and breaks her own standards and has a little tantrum about how she'd really like some fucking time for her, over and over. Every good parent puts her eyes back on the prize and goes back to work, just like anything else. Bad ones go sulk on the couch and watch TV and gripe about how rotten kids are and all of a sudden it's time to get to the graduation ceremony.

Bookhoard wrote:

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And nevermind parents beating the Devil out of their kids -- in the good old days, any parent in the neighborhood could do it, and when the kid got home he'd probably get a second whoppin'!

Yeah, I remember that. Not quite as gleefully as you do, apparently.

TMWright wrote:

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Shocklines wrote:

You never know the circumstances in cases like this. You don't know how much of this was learned by how the parents treat each other, etc. This may not be a case of the good parents who are stuck with a rotten teen.

I agree completely.

T.M.

In my experience, anyway, the whole "Bad Seed" thing is a fun scare story that doesn't play out in real life. I don't have to get mad at kids running amok in a restaurant or movie theater or wherever. I can just look over at their parents, maybe sitting twenty feet away eating and not paying attention except to bark every once in a while, or insisting on staying for a movie that's freaking their kid out to the extent she can't help ruining the movie for everybody else.

I also don't have to say "Why, my parents would never put up with..." about the reported conversation that started this thread, because I wouldn't put up with anything like that from my kids, and neither would any parents I know, because I don't generally hang out with people who are shitty parents. More to the point, I can't even imagine being in a space with one of my kids where'd they'd feel compelled to treat me that way in public or private, let alone me taking it very well, which is not likely in this lifetime.

Well, see, here's my life, and it doesn't line up with your account:

First off, I know and have always known plenty of teens who hunt. That hasn't stopped because you're no longer allowed to stick your gun in your truck and take it to school with you, most places these days. My kids' friends next door hunt and their parents do target shooting on the property, for god's sake. The kids just don't take their rifles to school.

I don't remember any time when people just left their doors unlocked at night, anywhere, and that claim always turns out to be crap when it's very specific - remember Michael Moore saying you could just walk into anybody's house in Toronto? (I mean, I've been in specific situations like that - way out in the country, in cabins in the mountains, in coffee shacks in Hawaii, etc., because I've lived in some fairly nonstandard ways in my life. But that's not the norm.)

Crime was actually worse, across the board, when I was a kid in US than it is now, and has been lately. And I grew up right around the time people started taking spousal abuse and child abuse and drunk driving seriously at all, and legal standards had to be established just to successfully prosecute crimes that had formerly been tolerated and denied.

I ran all over the place when I was a kid, like I've seen kids still doing in Mexico and Canada and Europe, yeah. I rode my bike for miles, with friends or by myself, to go places. And you know what? Not only did your parents warn you about creeps in cars, back then, my sister and I actually had a guy try to get us into his car, once. We didn't even engage him when he started trying to call us over from fifteen-twenty feet away, we just ran home and got my dad, like we'd been told.

Kids aren't largely locked at home today because we've got it worse in terms of child abuse or molestation or stranger abductions - all of those issues have received welcome spotlights throughout my adulthood, where they were largely kept hidden in the dark and just something maybe for you and your parents to discuss at home when I was a kid. Things are nothing but better, in that regard. Better watch is kept, better laws are made, more victims speak out, more perpetrators are caught and punished and removed from their ability to harm. These things occasionally lead to their own abuses and excesses, but...such is the way of the world. If you're always looking at the short term, you'll go nuts.

Kids in the US don't go out and about like they used to because, IMO, we are a nation easily given over to mass hysteria. They got molesters and kidnappers in other countries, too, and kids still ride their bikes to the park with their friends, unsupervised. Here, that's pretty much over, like Halloween as it was celebrated when I was a kid. Bradbury turned out to be the best SF prophet ever, on that count.

This is the primary lie in all this "OMG THE OLD DAYS" nonsense: the world is better, demonstrably so, especially in these matters. A whole bunch of people insist on calling it not for a variety of reasons.

Oh, and: you and I both know that late inflated crime and especially incarceration rates are all about the War on Some Drugs, and we could bring those numbers right back down by ending that crap.