Are our grandkids getting too sissified?

[MossRoad]

I don't think there's any more perverts, child molesters, etc... percentage-wise, today than there were 50-60 years ago. As a kid in the 60s, we were often warned about not going with strangers, not going near cars that stopped and asked us to come over, etc... we lived on the edge of town, and drifters, hobos, transients, etc... plus the local weirdos were quite common back then, just as they are today.

Look at it this way.... if, say, 5% of the population are deviants of some sort, back in 1960, the U.S. population was about 180 million people. That would be about 9 million perverts. Today, there's about 326 million people. That would be about 16.3 million perverts. It's still the same percentage as it was then, only now you're more likely to live near one because its more people in the same space. Also, you're more likely to hear about it through more streams of communication. As two of my elderly neighbors told me about 5-10 years ago, back in the late 60's, "We caught that guy that lived in the woods back there buying the young neighborhood boys booze, and ***** them in his shack. So we went down there, drug him out, and beat him bloody. He moved away and his shack got burned down." There was probably nothing mentioned in the papers, nothing said to the cops, etc... as a lot of people handled it themselves back then. But it happened back then just as it does today. You just didn't hear about it.

 

[MossRoad]

My childhood home was in a secluded wooded neighborhood with several cemeteries, deep ravines, woods, a lake, farmland, a river.... just a great place for a kid (boy or girl) to grow up and run wild. I was very fortunate. Today, we have friends that know kids that live in that neigborhood. I ask them if they go down to the lake? Nope. The river? Nope. The farm? Nope. The cave? Nope. The cemeteries? GOSH NO! .... what do you do? Play video games. That's pretty much all they do. Very few play sports or even have bikes.

I was fortunate to get my girls out into the woods many times, long walks, canoe rides, campfires, bike rides, sports, karate, etc.... they played very few video games growing up. They wanted to, but we limited them severely. Glad we did. But we couldn't let them run wild like we got to, and that's too bad.

 

[k0ua]

My childhood home was in a secluded wooded neighborhood with several cemeteries, deep ravines, woods, a lake, farmland, a river.... just a great place for a kid (boy or girl) to grow up and run wild. I was very fortunate. Today, we have friends that know kids that live in that neigborhood. I ask them if they go down to the lake? Nope. The river? Nope. The farm? Nope. The cave? Nope. The cemeteries? GOSH NO! .... what do you do? Play video games. That's pretty much all they do. Very few play sports or even have bikes.

I was fortunate to get my girls out into the woods many times, long walks, canoe rides, campfires, bike rides, sports, karate, etc.... they played very few video games growing up. They wanted to, but we limited them severely. Glad we did. But we couldn't let them run wild like we got to, and that's too bad.

My wife and her sister when they were young girls (10 to 15) would take off on their bikes for all day rides around the area. They said 20 to 30 miles were common. Just young girls out by themselves without a cell phone or any kind of protection. They never had any real problems. No one got raped or killed.

 

[tallyho8]

When we were 13, my friends and I each made motorbikes out of 20" bicycles and Briggs and Stratton reel type lawnmower engines. We would ride to Audubon Park and City Park in New Orleans about 15 miles away and never got stopped or had any problems. No chance of that happening today.

 

[RSKY]

I think my granddaughters, and grandson when he gets older, would love the Forest Kindergarten. It's hard to keep them inside as it is. They play video games but give any of them a new LEGO set and you can forget about them for a couple hours until it is assembled.

RSKY

 

[MossRoad]

My wife and her sister when they were young girls (10 to 15) would take off on their bikes for all day rides around the area. They said 20 to 30 miles were common. Just young girls out by themselves without a cell phone or any kind of protection. They never had any real problems. No one got raped or killed.

Even back then, there were places my parents told us never to go in town. There were also some back roads with keepy farm houses that my parents told me to stay away from. The houses looked like the one from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.... cars in various states of repair laying around, barns with blown out roofs and walls, houses with newspaper over the windows, pigs or goats in the yard, creepy old dudes in really filthy overalls wearing old rubber hip boots ALL THE TIME! Dad: "Just stay away from there." and he meant it.

 

[MossRoad]

My wife and her sister when they were young girls (10 to 15) would take off on their bikes for all day rides around the area. They said 20 to 30 miles were common. Just young girls out by themselves without a cell phone or any kind of protection. They never had any real problems. No one got raped or killed.

Also on that note, one of my sisters used to skip high school and ride the train over to Chicago to go to the museums without telling my parents. She was 15 or 16. Had a few issues. She carried a knife. Come to think of it, all 4 of my sisters carried knives. My mom kept two rolls of quarters in her purse to hit people with. And we had a dog that was trained to scare the crap out of you if we pointed at you and snapped our fingers. Had another sister that got beat up and robbed working as a lifeguard at a city pool. And I was held at gunpoint in a Dairy Queen parking lot when I was 16 (1977). We had an incident of attempted road piracy when I was maybe 8. My dad had his .45, and that ended that. And he once chased a prowler out of the neigborhood during looting after a tornado.

And we lived on the good side of town!!!

God, I love my hometown!

 

[/pine]

Back then parents were more concerned with "who" we were hanging out with rather than where we were hanging out...but there was a few places that were off limits...
Starting from the time I was nine or ten...my mom would drop us off at the fishing pier on Friday afternoons and not be back to pick us up until Sunday afternoon...we had money to eat at the snack bar and there was always worthy adults around that would let your parents know if you acted up...
...Used to hate hearing your name called over the PA system saying that your mom or dad was there to pick you up...!

 

[Dadnatron]

I've told my sons that it won't be a huge invasion that takes over the US. It will be 3 Guatemalans who come up and whip butt. So many in this new generation wouldn't stand a chance.

 

[mark02tj]

It's not just the lawyers, it's the "do-gooders" as well. When I lived in the suburbs, one of the guys on city council was a pediatrician. He managed to get council to pass a city ordinance that anyone under 16 or 18 that was riding a bicycle had to wear a helmet. Parent's couldn't really fight it if the kid was given a ticket by the local cops for not wearing one. The problem is that the Township that surrounded the City had no such ordinance. So a kid that lived in the Township could ride his bike to the house of his friend that lived in the City. And as soon as he passed the city limit (which could be just across the street since one side of a street could be a city address and the other side a township address) he'd be breaking the law. Makes no sense.