What’s Different About Our Times?

I often wonder, what is different about the times we live compared to the days when our country was a great nation. When I say great nation, I don’t mean it in the sense of power or even wealth. I’m talking about the days when a person could walk down the street and not worry about being robbed. The days when neighbors had much more respect for each other than they seem to have these days.


I can remember when I was a kid, all it took was for a neighbor two miles away, I grew up in the country, that never even visited us to call my father and inform him that I had been doing something I shouldn’t have been doing for me to get a whuppin. It was like that with all the parents back then. At least where I came from it was.

These days children can do no wrong. I’m 36 years old now. I remember just last year my father was having trouble with some kids throwing their trash in his front yard while they played in the cul-de-sac at the end of his street. While I was over there, my dad saw a kid from up the street throw a coke can into his front yard. We walked out to the cul-de-sac where my father told all the kids that were there that they were more than welcome to come down in the cul-de-sac to ride their bikes and skate boards, but to please stop throwing trash in his front yard.

The chubby 10 year old on his bike immediately snapped, “We didn’t throw no trash in your front yard!” My father informed him that he just saw him throw the coke can down in the yard. That’s when the kid brought on a verbal attack! “You didn’t see s#*%! F*$% you!”

Instead of smacking the kid up side the head like what would have happened when I was a kid, we drove up to the kids house to talk to his dad. Of course he already high tailed it home by the time we had walked back to the house and got in my truck. We pulled up and my dad introduces himself to the kids father and informs him of his son’s vast vocabulary.

What was the father’s reply? I know what my dad’s would have been. I’d been called out into the drive way and had my rear end light up brighter than a Fourth of July Night! Instead, all we heard was, “My son doesn’t talk like that!”

It wasn’t long after this incident that I saw a piece on television about China’s one child per couple limit. They showed that by only allowing couples to have one child, they become spoiled. I then began thinking about my parents and grandparents. My dad came from a family of eight. His dad came from a family of 16 and his mom from a family of 9. My mom came from a family of 5 and her dad and mom from families of 11 and 8 respectively.

It makes me wonder if our parents generation that some how adopted the “only two kids” policy has led to the same type of spoiling that China has seen. Yes, I know that with the big business hiring large numbers of people in the 50’s and 60’s that couples stopped having as many children because they weren’t needed like they were when people lived more off the land than they do today. But couldn’t it have still lead to us spoiling our children?

I myself came from a family of four. One of the things I remember my father always saying while I was growing up was, “I just want you to have it better than when I was growing up.” I’m sure he meant by not having to eat saltine crackers mushed up in a bowl of milk for my diner like he had to eat when he was a child. However, I know that my brother and I sure had a lot more toys than he did. I remember getting an allowance with out any responsibilities also. This isn’t to say my father wasn’t stern with discipline. Did I mention I use to get whuppins when I did something wrong?

Yet today we live in a society where a parent can go to jail or have their children taken away from them for spanking them. We have children that turn their parents into the police. We have parents that blame the school system for their child's academic failure and who refuse to believe that their child could misbehave in any fashion---even when I show them video tape of them bullying my nephew.

Now here is where I’ll probably get into trouble with the women. Let me say right up front, I am not blaming women for society’s problems! I blame the men! Somewhere along the line, men forgot to let the women know how appreciated they were. Some how the term “A woman's place is in the home” became a derogatory statement against women, done so by men. It takes a very skilled person to run a home, be it a man or a woman.

I also tie this in with the lower birth rate. I believe that with fewer children in the home, or none at all, women started to feel insignificant. Perhaps this why so many started entering the work force in the late 60’s and 70’s. Without a newborn child at home to take care of, what’s the need for them to stay home during the day while they are off at school? Also, I ask myself this, “Is it a coincident that the divorce rate starting to rise around the time more and more women began to enter the work force?”

Remember the days when women weren’t allowed to be married to be school teachers or “stewardess”. We look back on those times now as archaic. But was there a reason for it? Did our grandparents and their grandparent know something that we don’t?

These two issues are but just a few that run through my mind as what may be the cause of our moral decline in our society. There’s the “do whatever makes you feel good” issue. There’s the “I want it now” syndrome ranging from drive thru fast food joints to massive credit card debts. We have political correctness and affirmative action. Then let’s not forget the idiots we elect to our own government that has run amok.

Again, before I’m called on the carpet, I want to say that in no way what so ever am I implying women should be second class citizens and ruled over by men, and offer an apology to the women on this forum up front if you have taken it that way. That is not my intent! I’m simply looking back into a time when things were different and seemed to have been better times for society as a whole. Then again, I didn’t actually live during those times, so what the hell do I know?

The problem isn't lack of children; the problem stems from the false "progressive" thinking of the late 50's and the 60's.  For example, Dr. Spock, who taught a whole generation of parents not to punish their children when they misbehave.  This was a huge influence, but it was part of a larger "liberalization" that focused on denying personal responsibility and shifting blame.  Nothing was bad if it felt good or made you feel good or happy.  It was the beginning of the acceptance of moral relativism.

The kids who grew up during this period were taught (by their parents, primarily, but also by society in general) that THEY were the most important.  So, naturally, they believed that they were, and, by extension, that they were superior, or more important than, everyone else.  When you grow up believing that, why would you NOT become selfish and self-centered, and disrepectful of others?

These days, it's all about "feeling good."

-Troy