Life used to be bettter!

[napi21]

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting ecoli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option...even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house both because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house! Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T- SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED.I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING

[AndyA]

1. And how in the world did we all miss out on being abused by our parents?

I can't think of a single acquaintance I knew growing up who was sexually, physically, or verbally abused by their parents.

It's a wonder any of us made it to adulthood, considering the dangers lurking everywhere!

Great read - I agree - life used to be better! The kids of today don't know what they're missing, and they're missing a lot.

[fishwax]

10. with respect, I highly doubt that you didn't know anyone who was abused

unless you knew very few people indeed. You may not have known of anyone that you knew was sexually, physically, or verbally abused by their parents, but such secrets were kept well in the "good ol' days"--or, as another poster pointed out, simply considered okay.

[raccoon]

211. A lot of what was called "discipline" in those days was actually physical abuse. nt

[Morgana LaFey]

337. and emotional abuse

"You'll never amount to anything. You're just a loser. You'll always be a loser. Can't do anything right." and on and on. Still goes on; still cripples and maims.

[Xenotime]

355. Discipline in any form is physical or mental abuse.

Just ask any dog.

[AndyA]

237. The subject has come up at reunions, and it doesn't appear to have been a problem.

As I mentioned in another post, there was an alcoholic father and a trampy mom, but both were good to their kids and took care to see that they were raised well and didn't do without anything.

I feel badly for those who were abused, but the fact is many or most were not.

[fishwax]

256. your standard has changed significantly from your original post

Originally, you said "I can't think of a single acquaintance I knew growing up" who was abused, and now you're saying that it was no one in your pretty tight circle of friends who still see each other and talk at reunions. I don't doubt that people grow up without having a friend who was abused. (I suspect many or most of my friends grew up thinking the same--it happens that they were wrong, but I could see it happening.)

But that's quite different from saying no one that you knew growing up was abused, a statement that, unless you knew few people indeed, I have a hard time believing, is likely mistaken.

[MistressOverdone]

258. I do think there are elements of modern life

that make physical and sexual abuse a bit easier to slide into: isolation being one of them.

But I grew up in the 50's and I think the generations before me had more autocratic fathers to deal with than I did. It's been a pretty fluid thing in our culture.

[chervilant]

351. Please check your facts

before stating that "the fact is many or most were not." Please refer to such resources as The Best Kept Secret by Florence Rush, or any of the myriad of books now available that report the prevalence of child sexual abuse throughout our nation's history. Please use Google to find current online info regarding rates and prevalence (e.g., http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/statsinfo/nis3.cfm#national, or http://www.darkness2light.org/KnowAbout/statistics_2.asp). Bear in mind that the prevalence rates you will see are considered under-representations because so many survivors WILL NOT DISCLOSE EVER.

A significant percentage of our children are abused in some manner every single day. We are NOT a child-centric society, no matter how hard the Bushies OR the media strive to portray us as such. If you really want to learn more about our poisonous pedagogy, read anything by Alice Walker, but especially "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware."

Most of all, please be an advocate for children in a real sense. Consider volunteering for the Big Sister/Big Brother groups or CASA. Volunteer to mentor students in your area schools. Volunteer to do ANYTHING positive with a child or children.

If nothing else, please don't indulge in toss-it-off commentary that diminishes the atrocities some of us visit upon our children every single day.

Regards,

Cheryl Ann

[Cha]

336. Yeah, unfortunately, I went back

to my home town decades later and found out, quite by accident, that my friends' dads had abused them when we were young and I thought they didn't have a care in the world because they were very wealthy.

I love the OP's view on life back then, though..that's what I always wanted.

[Iris]

42. how would you know if they were sexually or verbally abused?

That's something that goes on behind closed doors.

[AndyA]

236. I still see many of them today.

The topic has come up, and abuse by parents wasn't an issue for any of us.

One had an alcoholic father, and we all knew about that, but the man wasn't abusive and he managed to provide a nice living for his family. Another had a mom who had a couple of affairs, and we knew about that but she still took care of her kids and was a good mom to them.

We've discussed these things, so I doubt anyone in the group is hiding something, a lot of us are still pretty close.

[Iris]

254. well, I know plenty of people from your generation who were abused

Including many in my own family. They are out there.

[The Stranger]

54. How? That's easy.

It's called denial.

[idgiehkt]

124. child abuse is a grossly underrreported crime

My mother always told me that back when she was young if people had known what her father did to her when he came into her room at night, she would have been regarded as the lowest trash. She didn't tell my father until they had been married for almost twenty years; too late to project her children from being victimized by him.

My father phrases it like "if child abuse had been around when I was growing up" then his mother would have been as guilty of it as people who go to jail for it today.

When I look around at the state of the world today, and how we've been brought to the brink of nuclear annihilation twice in the last half century, it doesn't surprise me at all with the denial that people used to live in, and many still do.

[raccoon]

217. Not to mention all the battered women who society just turned a blind eye to.

Or figured it must be her fault, she provoked him.

And before anybody can say so, I'm sure there were battered husbands too, but it wasn't nearly as common.

[tavalon]

206. Wow, quite the bubble you've lived in

Dysfunctional families make sure that the kids don't talk. It's a primary way these families function. I'm happy you didn't have an abusive childhood. You are as rare as a white rhino.

[AndyA]

235. I'm still in touch with quite a few of my childhood friends.

At a high school reunion, a group of us discussed abuse and how widespread it seemed these days. Everyone in the group commented how amazing it was that none of us were abused growing up.

If it happened, and they don't want to admit it, I feel badly for what happened to them, but this was/is a pretty tight group, and I feel if abuse had occurred, we would have known about it by now.

So, it's not as rare as you say it is.

[Zuiderelle]

210. I'm sure that none of my neighbors knew what went on in our house either.

But I certainly don't applaud their ignorance like you are. Congratulations for growing up in such isolation. It must be nice to imagine that life could possibly ever have been so idyllic.

[AndyA]

234. Hey, not everyone was abused as a kid.

I feel bad for those who were, but there's no reason to look down on or be insulting to others about it, just because they weren't abused and didn't know anyone who was abused.

The fact is, a lot of people did actually grow up with nurturing, caring parents who did their jobs instilling values, morals, and ethics on their offspring.

That's too bad if you don't like it, but it's a fact.

[Zuiderelle]

238. No, but very many were. My point is that you didn't know it.

None of my friends knew it. None of my neighbors knew it. Even my oldest siblings didn't know it after they left home.

I am certain that you did in fact know someone who was abused. You just didn't know it. Those of you who insist that things were better once are living in your own insular world where racism, sexism, child abuse and molestation did not exist. To pretend that it was better 30 or 40 or 50 years ago is insulting to those who did suffer racism or sexism or abuse.

[AndyA]

242. I'm sorry that you suffered from abusive parents.

But to say that it was more widespread than we believe is an insult and disrespectful to all the parents who weren't abusive. Yes, I understand it was one of those things you didn't talk about back then.

Like the couple getting the messy divorce.

And the alcoholics.

And the people having extramarital affairs.

But all of those things have been discussed in my group of friends at this point. And since I still know many of my friends, and even some of their parents today, and since this subject has come up before in our group, I'm certain it would have been discussed had it been an issue. We discuss some rather personal things, and at this point I do believe that if anyone had been abused we would know it. After a few drinks, most people tend to talk about things, or would get quiet if the subject were one they didn't want to address.

I understand what you're saying, but it's just not right to insist that it was so widespread that it isn't possible to have grown up and not had at least one friend who was abused.

As I said, I am sorry that you didn't have the kind of childhood you should have had. But the fact is not all of us had abusive parents.

[Zuiderelle]

245. It takes a lot of gall to be insulted by someone saying that abuse was more widespread than thought.

I'm happy for you that you and all your friends had such wonderful childhoods. The FACT is that MANY did not.

Most of the people I know who were abused do not talk about it with people who weren't. They should, but they don't.

You won't convince me that you did not have one single acquaintance growing up who was not abused in some manner. It just isn't possible.

Not sure why you keep saying that not all children had abusive parents. That's as obvious as the fact that not all women are raped. Doesn't change the FACT that rape and abuse are big problems that were problems then and are still problems now.

[AndyA]

250. I'm not denying that SOME people had abusive parents.

But I would be comfortable in saying that MOST parents weren't/aren't abusive to their children.

My first post was in keeping with the theme of the original post that despite all the dangers, somehow, many of us managed to grow up without getting sick from bacteria because the same knife was used to cut raw chicken and spread mayonnaise. Many of us could play in areas that posed dangers and survive.

Yes, the bacteria existed, and yes, the danger was there, but most of us got through without incident anyway.

I think it's ridiculous that I have to DEFEND growing up with parents that didn't abuse me. Out of respect for all the parents who DID DO the right thing by their kids and respected and loved them, I think it takes a lot of gall to question that it wasn't possible to not know someone who was abused.

I know these people, you don't, so I believe I'm in a much better position to judge the situation than you are. Yes, I know it happens and I know that it has ALWAYS happened, but to make it sound like parents who aren't abusive to their children are in the minority is ridiculous and insulting.

[Zuiderelle]

251. I never said that most parents were abusive. But it's impossible to believe that NO ONE you knew

was abused. Never once did I say that parents who aren't abusive are in the minority. It's ridiculous and insulting for you to insinuate that I did.

I knew someone who was electrocuted at 15 in a situation that he would probably not have been in today's world. I knew someone who was killed in a car crash being thrown from the car because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. I knew someone, a teacher, who had polio as a child and was in a wheelchair. The world was not all ribbons and bows and chocolate ice cream long ago.

I never once asked you to DEFEND anything. I still maintain that it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE for you to not have known ANYONE who was abused as a child.

[AndyA]

252. As I said, I know the people and you don't.

I am still in contact with them. I do not believe there was any abuse. Period. But I will ask a few of them over the weekend if I happen to talk to them.

By insisting that I am wrong about not having friends who were abused, you put me in a defensive position. Obviously many people have issues with this, and obviously it's a very sensitive topic for many. My intent was not to stir up any bad feelings, but to expand on the original post, the theme of which was how kids today are missing out on so much that many of us enjoyed as kids.

For some, the world may not have been all ribbons and bows and chocolate ice cream, but for many, it came pretty damn close.

This has now gone so far off topic, I am not going to respond any more in this thread out of respect for the original poster, and will block it since it really needs to just sink at this point.

[Zuiderelle]

253. You know everyone you knew as a child? Everyone?

Sorry, but I just can't believe that.

I am very happy that my kid is "missing out" on not having a seatbelt in the car, or not using a car seat, or not using a helmet, not playing with dangerous toys that could cripple or kill him, being protected from child abusers and stalkers more than I was. I think that the RW chain letter in the OP is insulting to all of us.

Respond or not, but if you do, I will too. :hi:

[fishwax]

259. It's unfortunate that you won't respond further, b/c you won't be able to clear up the contradiction

in your posts. Is it that nobody you knew growing up was abused, or that none of your friends were abused? You feel you're having to defend yourself, and yet, with all due respect, it appears you've abandoned the initial position which caused people to respond.

I've no interest in making you feel further defensive--you know your friends, as you say, and I don't--but I am curious about the claim in your initial post (not "a single acquaintance I knew"), which is much more expansive then that you've been defending in these later posts ("none of my friends"). Is it the case that you really didn't know anyone growing up other than the friends that you still keep up with? Was it an exaggeration (in keeping with the OP)? Did you simply misspeak?

[chervilant]

352. I would encourage you

to ASK SPECIFICALLY at your next social event with these close knit friends. Tell them you have been embroiled in a raging controversy online about the prevalence of child abuse, and ask them very specific questions. I think you might be surprised.

[chervilant]

353. I would encourage you

to ASK SPECIFICALLY at your next social event with these close knit friends. Tell them you have been embroiled in a raging controversy online about the prevalence of child abuse, and ask them very specific questions. I think you might be surprised.

[MistressOverdone]

257. Come to think of it

I didn't, either. We all got spanked. We survived.

[WilliamPitt]

283. Tree falls unseen in the forest...kids endure unseen abuse...

Both happened, but you didn't hear about it.

[AlCzervik]

338. really? Wow that must have been one enchanted childhood you had and i say

lucky you and i mean that, i am not being sarcastic.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. We rode our bikes without helmets and kneepads. Never had a car seat nor even

seat belts until I was in high school. I ran barefoot all summer on the farm and did have to get a shot to prevent 'lock jaw' after stepping on a nail. I would take bites from my sandwich and then let my dog, Snowball, have one, and we'd trade back and forth. My playhouse was a pig house filled with straw. I ate wild blackberries and apples right where they grew.

Yes, I think we've gone overboard on a lot of things.

[MistressOverdone]

260. Okay, carseats and seatbelts

I'm glad have arrived. Lots of dead friends in the good old days.

[EnviroBat]

3. Ahhh, those were the days.

What a magical time. I survived, and I think I turned out to be a pretty cool guy now that I'm older.

[bryant69]

4. On the other hand people back then had never even heard of the Chemical Brothers

So there.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[waiting for hope]

5. Amen!

I'm trying to figure out if I was bored....then I realized how much we played outside when the weather was nice. Now, it scares the crap out of me if I lose site of my six year old...having the asshole across the street thrown in jail (his family owns a good sized business in the area) for taking dirty pics of his 10 year old and trading the pictures with a big time pedophile in Utah doesn't help with feeling secure and safe....Yes, Life used to be better.

[Matariki]

6. circa 1965 - friend of mine who's 15 at the time gets caught drinking

His alcoholic father (although there was no such thing as an alcoholic back then) dragged him out of bed every night at 2am and beat the pants off him.

Finally my friend ran away because he couldn't stand being woke up every night for a beating. The police found him and he got a year probation for running away (because back then there was no such thing as child abuse - if a kid got hit they deserved it).

Oh, for the good old days.

[mrcheerful]

7. I guess I must have missed out on things back in the good old days. My brothers and I weren't bored

because our day started with carrying 2 5 gallon buckets from the house to the 2 50 gallon drums cut in half and put up on stands so the horse's could be watered, then we had to drag 4 100 pound bails of hay from the loft, throw them to the barn floor, break them open and give each horse its amount of flakes for their morning meal. Then fed and water dads dogs. Then we got to eat breakfast, if there was anything in the house to eat that is, when dad was on strike from the factory, we went without breakfast. Then it was time to either start digging a foundation for the addition dad wanted to put on the house because there was another baby born that year and we needed another bedroom for the kids. When we weren't doing that we had to clean, rake and mow the yard or help mom with the house work. Then we were allowed to go play, until mom found something else that needed to be done or the horse's needed More water carried to them. Don't forget spending a few hours with a hoe when dad planted a veggie garden, not to mention carrying more buckets of water to water his plants. Then the ass beatings when you made a mistake with the hoe and killed a plant or over watered the garden. Not to mention the trips to the hospital for stitches when your brother laid your leg open with a hoe, don't forget chopping down trees for new fence post's, where I almost lost my thumb because the axe blade slipped and got my thumb instead of the tree, when dad notice the fence for the horse's needed posts replaced or the fence needed mending. Yeah the good old days, when teachers hit kids with wooden paddles so hard that there were often bruisings and broken blood vessels on your behind, the crime being you asked the person next to you a question instead of asking the teacher. Who had ignored your raised hand for 1/2 an hour. I don't remember childhood as anything more then surviving adults until you were old enough that they left you alone.

[Matariki]

11. Oh yeah, how could we forget the sadists that got jobs in public schools

and beat kids with paddles with holes drilled in them or with metal rulers. Kids sure were better behaved back then.

Oh yeah, and girls couldn't wear pants to school or work. And the job classifieds had a section for men's jobs and a section for lady's jobs. And blacks couldn't use the same bathrooms and water fountains.

Yeah, those were some fun times.

[mrcheerful]

12. In the schools I went to the kids that got the paddlings the most were also

the kids who took everything out on everybody they didn't like when it was time to go to the play ground. The bullies.

[idgiehkt]

126. most probably because they themselves

were beaten at home.

[raccoon]

214. And pedophiles in the public schools. There was this old man who taught in

my elementary school, and when a girl went up to him to ask him for help, he'd put his arm around her so that he touched her boob, or where it would be when she developed them.

My mother and some other parents finally got his ass fired. He should never have been allowed to teach again, but in those days (early '60's ) he probably was teaching again. :puke:

[MistressOverdone]

263. You just reminded me of

"Pop." Pop owned a candy store right next to our school. We bought wax lips (you can still see the stains on the slate sidewalks all up and down that street) and Bonomo's Turkish Taffy and other goodies. But we girls knew that Pop (who was missing a couple of fingers for some reason) was very FRIENDLY so we always went in in pairs and most of the time was spent in an odd kind of dance with Pop who would be ringing up the sale and trying to cop a feel at the same time.

I was kind of glad when the old dude died, actually.

[MistressOverdone]

262. No doubt the "good old days"

seem better in hindsight, but one thing I do NOT remember is serial murders, and school and workplace killings like Columbine and VaTech. I grew up in the NYC area and remember a real big deal being made of a woman found dead in Manhattan. This was about 1955 or so. Headlines, even!

Makes me wonder... did we have to deal enough with things like polio and other epidemics that life was somehow more precious? And now life seems cheaper to some? I don't know, really. Don't have any answers.

[napi21]

13. As I understand it, that's life on the private farm. Most of us didn't grow

up on a farm. It's a HUGH amount of work, and the real reason why most real farmers had a bunch of kids! They needed the help to work the farm.

[Matariki]

17. That's all you have to say to the reactions to your post?

"We didn't act up at the neighbor's house both because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home"

You really think this was a better way of life?

For that matter, we used to ride our bikes without helmets, sure, but have you ever gone to a skate park? I've seen kids do things on skateboards recently that I NEVER saw kids do back in the 'good old days'. So apart from a nostalgic longing to child abuse the rest of it isn't even accurate.

[napi21]

52. A skate board park isn't even close to just riding a bike!

And YES I do think it was better when the neighbor punished your bad behavior as well as your parents.

I have been to a skate board park, and the speed, jumps, andmanuvers they use DOES require a helmet at the very least! That's NOT what I or the message was talking about.

[Matariki]

64. What point ARE you making?

That kids don't need helmets to ride bikes?

Sure, I agree. But then there certainly were accidents that could have been prevented in your 'good old days' by wearing a helmet, so what exactly is your point? Besides advocating child abuse.

[napi21]

68. I guess my point is I think society is trying to prevent EVERY possible harm

that can happen, and that just can't happen! Just look at all the safety features that have been added to cars. Unfortunately, some people die in accidents even in the most protected environment. It's fine for any parent to procide as much or as little safety equipment for their children as they chose. Just remember, I sure never had any serious problems with the many, many skinned knees I had. It was just part of growing up!

[Matariki]

74. I agree that a life without any risk isn't much fun.

But why take stupid or unnecessary risks? There are more cars on the road than there were 30 years ago - worse, more distracted people with cell phones and the like.

My point about skate parks is that people are still taking risks, maybe even more exciting ones than in the past, but again why take unnecessary risks? I know of kids killed in bike accidents back in the 70's that would have been prevented with a helmet. A good friend of mine is devastated to this day that his only sibling was hit in an intersection - she died of a head injury. It's not like it never happened.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

95. Yeah but if you're in a head-on crash you'll go thru the windshield and die.

Without a seat belt. Newton's laws of physics haven't changed.

Lots of people who don't wear seat belts "so they can get away from the wreck quickly" get thrown out the windows and the car rolls over them and they wake up dead.

[idgiehkt]

132. my father never got any care for his injuries as

a child and when he talks about it I can tell it still haunts him. He broke ribs, fell of the roof and was unconcious for a day or two, in addition to other things here and there; none of that includes the beatings from his father. I've only heard him say a handful of sentences about that buried pain. When I read stuff like in the OP what it sounds like it is saying to me is someone has buried pain and all the people working to label and end child abuse/neglect/endangerment bring up stuff for those folks that they are afraid to remember, and they badly want these folks to shut up. It has nothing to do with the present, it's about running from the past and trying to recast it so that the folks now are "crazy" or "overprotective". I think it's sad, and I think that childhood violence and violation is the root of a hell of a lot of problems in the adult world; the feelings aren't mitigated and the person carries them into adulthood and projects them onto society in an attempt to resolve them. As a culture we are just beginning to understand this.

[Zuiderelle]

213. Good post.

[fishwax]

142. don't worry, kids today are still getting skinned knees

:)

[napi21]

166. HA! Well my grandkids don't! You should see the fit they throw

when they get a little scratch that you can't even see! Of course when they ride their bikes they have a helmet, knee pads, and sometimes even leather gloves! I'm a good grandma and I don't say anything, but I know their parents never read DU either so I can gripe here!!!!

[fishwax]

171. I'm sure there have been overprotected kids in every era :)

the kids I know get plenty of childhood scrapes and bruises from plenty of typical, active childhood behaviors, I assure you :)

[Manifestor_of_Light]

190. I wear lots of gear when I play volleyball.

I wear wrist braces, batting gloves, elbow pads and knee pads because I don't want to break my hands or wrists. I've had way too many bad bruises without combat gear.

Simple. Smart people protect their bodies, assuming they don't enjoy the pain of broken bones.

[MistressOverdone]

264. My grandchildren

has never been out of the front yard alone.

I spent my life wandering a metropolitan neighborhood with my friends. None of us were raped or kidnapped.

Life is a trade off. What I would have given for the Internet back then!

[eridani]

174. The safety features added to cars have been responsible for--

--some very dramatic reductions in death rates since the "good old days".

http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/disasters/19th20th_accidents.html

[raccoon]

215. Agree with you there, about society trying to prevent every possible harm.

Some of it makes sense, such as seat belts. But in some cases it goes too far, such as all this anti-bacterial stuff.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

316. Cars have safety features because the car makers were SUED.

The car makers did NOT want to put in seatbelts and airbags. They thought that safety features cost too much and would not sell.

Cars have seatbelts and airbags because of Ralph Nader's book about the Corvair "Unsafe at any Speed" and because of many many lawsuits over defective products. They stopped making the Pinto, commonly known as "The Molotov" because of the gas tanks exploding on impact. I think it would have cost five or ten dollars to modify it so it would be safe, but for Ford, that was just too much money. They got millions of dollars of bad publicity from wrongful death lawsuits because they refused to change. And paid out millions of dollars in judgments.

That's because the defect caused a foreseeable, and therefore avoidable, accident.

[pokerfan]

169. You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older.

Little things like being spanked every day by a middle aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life. -Emo Philips

:D

[mrcheerful]

19. Wasn't a farm, it was a house with 2 acres of land and 155 acres of woods

behind it, which my dad didn't own. Dad felt that idle hands were the devils work and he made sure we had plenty of work to do. We tore down a house for one of dads friends and built the horse barn out of that house. He also had a friend that had a large horse farm who would give dad 100 bales of hay for every 1000 bales we helped him harvest twice a year. Dad would end up having 250 + bales by winter.

[napi21]

53. I'm sorry. I was a city kid, and to me, if you had a horse and had to

deal with things like bales of hay and hauling water, that was a farm!

[bleedingheart]

314. I grew up in suburbia in the 70's and 80's and I had to work around the house

and make dinner..

My father died when I was a kid...life was no "Norman Rockwell" painting for me...

My mother suffered from depression and made our life hell at times...I only wish she had gone to a psychiatrist instead of taking years and years to work out her issues on her own...

I remember having to mow lawns, cut back weeds, garden, etc...

I also remember having no money for anything extra and when i outgrew my bike...I didn't get another...

[bvar22]

134. WOW! You had a HORSE??!!!!

I always wondered what it was like to grow up rich.

[Art_from_Ark]

186. When I was in elementary school, two or three of my friends had horses

but it's not like the horses were thoroughbreds or anything. None of my friends could have been described as "rich", certainly not living in that neighborhood.

[raccoon]

218. We had two horses when I was a teenager. We lived in a small town

and had a big field behind the house for the horses. In that place and time, you didn't have to be rich to have horses.

[SoCalDem]

239. I had a horse until the first stable bill came in..

:cry:

[Xenotime]

357. That's so sad...

I'm sorry for your suffering

[MistressOverdone]

261. There is a county near me in Florida

where corporal punishment is still legal and still done with a wooden paddle.

Where I grew up in the Northeast, I had never heard of corporal punishment in school and that we 60 years ago.

Sounds like you had a rough go of it. Glad you survived.

[AX10]

8. Child abuse didn't "exist" then either.

[mrcheerful]

9. It did, but they called it keeping the kids in line

[napi21]

15. I think it depends on what you call child abuse.

I know I'm asking for trouble by saying this, but I don't see any reason not to give a small child a swat for testing the limits. That IS what they are doing...testing to see just how far they can push the rules before someone stops them. I certainly don't think the swat should ever leave any marks of any kind, but a sting never hurt anyone for long. I totaly disagree with this "time out" stand in the corner stuff. I think that's why we have an entire generation of arrogant, disrespectful, and misbehaving youth who have no respect for authority or of any laws!

In line with the OP, I followed the rules because I knew if I didn't I'd get my a** kicked!

[fishwax]

18. swats are the only way to instill respect for authority or law?

:shrug:

[napi21]

26. In young children...YES! Under the age of 6 they have no ability to

reason, or judge. All they know is if it hurts or is uncomfortable, then you don't do it because you don't like the results.

I guess you;re right that it's unacceptable today, but I think today's decisiuons are wrong.

[Matariki]

27. Sorry, but bullshit

Children under the age of six are able to reason and can 'get' right from wrong without being hit.

[gollygee]

37. Bullshit!

Do you have any kids? I have a 5-year-old who has the ability to reason and judge right from wrong, and who has NEVER been hit.

[MistressOverdone]

267. I admire your ability to parent

without hitting.

Personally, there were incidents in my kids' lives (and now in my grandchildren's) where I chose to swat. (I don't swat the grandkids; their mom does) I'm not talking beat. I mean a swift slap on a bottom. Those instances were about hurting. For example, I clearly remember my son pulling my hair on purpose. I gave him a quick one. I think sometimes the best lesson a child can learn is that bigger people CAN hurt back so it's a good idea not to poke at them.

However, now, as a teacher I have kids who are never hit. I have kids who get spanked. I really don't see a lot of difference between the two. The kids that are out of control are the ones who are never held accountable for anything OR who are physically abused. (and you can see by my story above I don't consider a swift lick abuse.)

It is a running joke with my son, who is a big firefighter that if I get up suddenly, he runs out of the house. You'd think I'd actually CAUGHT him to hit him or something! I probably actually caught him once, maybe twice, for that quick swat. After that, it was all "display." Guess it worked okay. He's a good guy, and actually posts here now and then.

[fishwax]

145. and yet plenty of people grew up fine without them, and others grew up screwed up with them

I think you can instill respect for authority without resorting to fear or violence, and thousands of parents have.

I guess you;re right that it's unacceptable today, but I think today's decisiuons are wrong.
I didn't say it was unacceptable today. In fact, I think society is far more tolerant of it than you seem to think. But to suggest that those parents who DON'T spank are ineffective parents or that you can't raise good kids without violence really strikes me as odd.

[Mythsaje]

205. That's not precisely true...

Depends on the kid, and on the parent's ability to communicate effectively.

Spanking's a short cut, and not always the best one either.

[MistressOverdone]

268. Wise words

spanking is definitely a short cut. When I talk to my kids today they say the definitely preferred the spankings to the time outs and long lectures. Over quicker and the "I'm bad" feeling was shorter.

Child rearing is an art and it depends on the kid and the parents, and the dynamics. Where it gets very hairy is when a parent loses control. Alcohol, isolation, frustration, etc. all feed into that situation. There were time as a parent when I did not DARE even swat my child because I was WAY too angry.

[Mythsaje]

324. I think the assumption that they're not capable of reason

is pretty ridiculous, myself. Hell, I'm not convinced that DOGS aren't capable of reason. I'd certainly give more credit to kids, even if they ARE under six.

[MistressOverdone]

327. Reason develops along with the child

I think. The first time I ever "spanked" my son was when he was about six months old and crawled to an outlet. Really what I did was make a very loud noise hitting his diaper, and I screamed. It was very negative stimuli and he cried a long time. I think I rocked his world a bit! Doesn't really count as spanking because I am sure he didn't feel it, but he never messed with outlets again. I hate to draw the parallel, but at that age it IS somewhat like training a dog! Later I told him "hurt! no!" And he could reason to the point that he knew what those words meant. And later, still, I could explain electrocution.

[Mythsaje]

328. Funny... I just pulled him away and gave him something else to do...

When he was a bit older, I told him they were "hot."

He repeated, "hot."

From an early age he was willing to accept that his mother and myself knew more about such things than he did.

[MistressOverdone]

332. He's a smart one, then!

My son hangs out here so I better add he was a bright kid, too. Somewhere along the line he started figuring out his mother is a wimp!

[Madspirit]

320. BULLSHIT

You never have to hit a child and I co-directed a day care for two years...with all ages...from newborns to after school. ...a whole room full of toddlers.

On what bizarro planet is it cool to do to someone who doesn't come up to your knees what would get you an assault charge if you did it to someone your own damned size.

Go take some child development courses or even Psychology 101. You NEVER have to, nor should you, HIT A CHILD.

Only a bully thinks it's cool to hit a kid. Being a child should not hurt.
Lee

[Morgana LaFey]

339. I hope to God you're not a parent

"No ability to reason" under the age of 6? Totally, utterly false and misguided.

Before my son could TALK himself, talked to him about everything, everywhere we went. I showed him things and explained things, and when we went places and he was naturally curious, I told him, "That's for looking at, not for touching." No problem. He'd leave things alone, so none of my friends had to put their nice, breakable things away and out of sight.

We were visiting a neighbor who had just planted some flowers along the front of her ground-level porch. My son was walking through the new "flower bed." I took him aside, pointed to the little plants and told him that if we didn't walk on them, they'd make pretty flowers in a few weeks. He never went near them again. Since he didn't yet talk himself, it wasn't always clear to me that he understood what I was saying. That particular day he proved to me he did.

NO ABILITY TO REASON? BULLSHIT. I've shared but ONE example of one child's incredible ability to reason.

Here's another: he went into his bedroom one night (age about 4) and the overhead lightbulb blew when he turned on the light. "Mommie, mommie, the electricity broke!" He had obviusly) extrapolated from what he knew about things not working any more to conclude that "breaking" is what must have happened to the electricity to his room. (Anyone who's a parent knows that one of the great joys and delights in raising a small child is watching how their minds work and gain knowledge about their worlds.

NO ABILITY TO REASON UNDER THE AGE OF 6? UTTER AND TOTAL BULLSHIT.

Another at age 4-1/2. I really tried to TALK to him about behavior rther than resort to corporal punishment, but I didn't live up to my own ideals always. One afternoon he'd been particularly pesky, and I myself was at my wits end and I lit into him good, spanking him on his bottom. He went to his room, I went to the kitchen. Maybe 15 minutes later he came into the kitchen, looked up at me, put his hand on his hip and said: Would you like to be spanked if you were a kid?

No. No I wouldn't. I didn't when I used to get spanked, and so after that I worked a little harder at simply talking to him about things and what was "appropriate behavior" instead of resorting corporal punishment. Wish I could report I was 100% -- but at least I made the effort. Spankings were NEVER as effective as talking to him, IF he were at a point to listen.

NO ABILITY TO REASON BELOW THE AGE OF 6? UTTER AND TOTAL BULLSHIT.

[Matariki]

21. Corporal punishment and child IQ

It is absolutely possible to teach children discipline without hitting them. Everyone of my friends with kids would NEVER hit their kids and they all have bright, well behaved kids - who know there boundries, btw.

Google "studies on hitting children".

Here's a start: http://www.religioustolerance.org/spankin5.htm

This part is interesting (probably explains Republicans and Freepers :evilgrin: )
1986 to 1990: Corporal punishment and child IQ:

The Family Research Laboratory of the University of New Hampshire released a study which showed that the more often a child is spanked, the lower they score in IQ tests four years later. Their paper was described by researcher Dr. Murray Straus at the World Congress of Sociology on 1998-AUG-1 in Montreal, Quebec. They examined 960 American children who were between one and four years old between 1986 and 1990. The researchers do not attribute the lower IQ tests directly to physical injuries sustained during the spanking. Rather, they believe that parents who do not spank are forced to use more reasoning and explaining while disciplining the child. "Some parents think this is a waste of time, but research shows that such verbal parent-child interactions enhance the child's cognitive ability." Thirteen percent of the parents studied reported spanking their children seven or more times a week. The average was 3.6 spankings per week. Twenty-seven percent reported using no physical punishment. Those children who were spanked frequently averaged 98 on their IQ tests. Those who were rarely or never spanked scored 102 -- an above-average score. The four point average decline in IQ among the spanked students is sufficient to have a negative functional effect on those children. Ms. Dawn Walker, executive director of the Canadian Institute of Child Health commented: "We know that children who are under the threat of violence or aggression develop a fight-or-flight response system that has an impact on creativity and imagination, both of which could influence their IQ...Children need discipline but not hitting."

[napi21]

29. I'm sure if I lookd, I'd find some research to prove the exact opposite!

I do not accept the premise that you can reason and explain ANYTHING to a 3 year old! I suspect this study had a lot more to do with what the parents taught their children and how many different things they were exposed to. If shildren are taken to the zoo, to museums, art shows, concerts, etc. they are going to do much better on an IQ test. THAT's what makes the difference, not wether they got a swat on their behind when they should have.

[Matariki]

35. Are you are parent?

[napi21]

45. Yep. I have two sons who are now grown and also parents themselves.

Why?

[Matariki]

47. guess why.

[renie408]

97. It isn't the spanking.

I believe you are right. It is possible to raise good kids without spanking them. I also think that you can raise total monsters without ever spanking them and I have seen that. Honestly, it probably isn't the spanking. It is most likely the REASONS (or more accurately, the lack thereof) behind the spanking. Spanking seven times a week or even 3.6 times a week seems excessive to me. The occasional swat on the butt isn't going to stunt anybody's IQ, it isn't abuse and most kids recognize when they have earned it. I think that ANY discipline has to be proportional to the misbehavior, timely and quickly over.

I don't think that spanking should be your first line of discipline. But I don't think that if it is in your discplinary playbook it necessarily means you are a bad parent or damaging your kids. I think the explanation that comes before and the spanking...or the time out...or whatever...that counts just about as much as the discipline itself.

BTW...I have on more than one occasion offered to let my children choose their own disciplines and had THEM choose ten swats on the butt vs. time in their rooms or being grounded. That led me to believe that it wasn't nearly as big a deal to them as I had been led to believe.

[Matariki]

106. Is it okay to 'swat' your spouse when they 'deserve it'?

swatting people, hitting people, teaches one thing - that phyically dominating someone smaller than you is acceptable.

[LanternWaste]

114. Well... it was in the "good old days".

Well... it was in the "good old days".


Yes... the good old days. Jim Crow, child abuse, spousal abuse, disenfranchisement, people "staying in their place and not getting uppity".

I think what many people fail to realize is that the "good old days" had good points and bad points; the "here and now" has its own good points and bad points, and tomorrow will, too.

I imagine that in 1066, some Norman was pining away for the good old days and that "today's" children have no respect...

[renie408]

123. There are good and bad things about ALL times. Now as well as then.

To say that NOTHING was 'better' fifty years ago because some things were markedly worse is simplistic. Why can't we keep the good things of each generation while discarding the bad? Why do we have to throw it all out? I think there was some sense to the original post.

Child abuse has not been advocated anywhere in this thread. To imply that it has been is a ridiculous twisting of some people's (including my own) comments.

[fishwax]

152. but the text from the OP was not an ideologically-neutral nostalgia trip

it was structured specifically to cast negative light on specific developments of the past few decades, like environmental awareness, PE, more frank discussions about physical abuse and dysfunctional families, etc.

To say that NOTHING was 'better' fifty years ago because some things were markedly worse is simplistic.
I'm not sure where anyone said such a thing (though I'm just now catching up on the thread since being away for a few hours, so I may have missed it). And we can keep the good things of each generation, but I've read several of these nostalgia trips, and most of the time they are pitting a simplistically romanticized view of the past against an equally ill-informed view of the present. (For example, kids these days, contrary to the text in the OP, still take sack lunches to school, still do face plants off the front stoop, still get hurt without going to the emergency room, etc.)

[LanternWaste]

271. The header in your reply was the precise point I was trying (I guess unsuccessfully) to make.

The header in your reply was the precise point I was trying (I guess unsuccessfully) to make.

I have not implied that anyone in this thread condones child abuse. To infer that is simply erroneous.

I did not in fact say that "nothing was better fifty years ago". I stated, plain and simply that fifty years ago, some things were better, some were worse. Same thing applies to the here and now, same thing applies to the future.

[MistressOverdone]

272. But look at it from another point of view

(and I do see yours) If your child goes out into the world thinking he can hit, bite and kick with impunity he's going to be very surprised when that big third grader doesn't put him in time out!

It's a very thorny issue, isn't it? Because we all know about the cycle of abuse, as well.

[napi21]

172. You explaianed it much better than I did. A swat or spanking should never

be a daily occurrance or even several time a week. I think it also depends a lot on the child and their personality. I've seen some children cry their eyes out when they were told to stand in the corner for 2 minutes, but I've also seen some who simply don't care about that at all.

You see, I was one of the kids who didn't care about dicipline. I remember being sent to my room, without toys, and just making up an imaginary game to play while I was there. It was no big deal to me! I always just made the best of whatever "punishment" was handed out. I drove my parents crazy as my Mother told me many times after I was grown and had kids of my own.

[raccoon]

221. Most of the time the spanking is more about the parent being pissed off than what the kid did. nt

[Matariki]

46. The study from the The American Psychological Association agrees with you in one area

Corporal punishment causes 'immediate compliance by the child'.

Other than that, they go on to point out that it also causes depression later in life, a higher rate of addictions, aggressive and anti-social behavior, and so on.

And I'm sure you can find studies by fundamentalist types that support your misguided believe that physical domination of children is good. But go ahead - post some REPUTABLE studies supporting your view.

[renie408]

105. Why is it there is never any middle ground on this subject?

If you have EVER spanked your kids and aren't totally ashamed by it, you are a fundamentalist who believes that physical domination of children is GOOD. If you don't spank your kids, no matter how fucked up a parent you are in other ways, you get the Mother Teresa Parent of the Year Award.

I PROMISE YOU, there are worse things than spankings. MUCH WORSE. I know plenty of people who smugly tell me they would never spank their kids that I wouldn't put in charge of a house plant. Raising children has so many facets. Do I think the occasional spanking is good? No, I really don't. Do I think it is going to warp kids for life? No, I don't. The study you so righteously quote is talking about between 3.6 and 7 spankings A WEEK. I think that would probably be considered excessive by most people, even ones who are not all that freaked out by spanking. Find me a study which discusses the effects of seven spankings a year, which is probably more normal. Honestly, I don't think my kids even got that many. My son has had MAYBE seven spankings in his life. My daughter a few more. She was the kind of kid who wanted to see what the view was like from the roof of the house and so figured out how to get up there when she was six (she was supposed to be taking a nap and climbed out on the roof from her bedroom. A neighbor called me to tell me she was sitting on the peak of our 100 year old, three story Victorian house.) She's a smart, independent kid with a lot of physical bravery. There were times when, for the life of me, I just couldn't figure out what else to do. So I would tell her that if she did ____________ again, it was going to be a spanking. I hope I didn't stunt her IQ, but since she just completed a tenth grade chemistry course at eleven, I don't think I did.

[Matariki]

111. Perhaps they weren't differentiating between 'swatting' and spanking?

I don't know. If you read the article it clearly states that spanking doesn't cause a drop in IQ, but that parents who favor other methods which involve reasoning over physical coercion foster intelligence and reason in their children.

I think it also makes no absolute statements that spanking will ALWAYS mess up a kid, but states there is a higher PERCENTAGE of things like adult depression, abuse, and so forth in people who were spanked as children.

Look, I'm not a parent so I don't know how I would react to having my non-existent kids pull life endangering stunts. I was smacked around by my parents though and I have *very* strong feelings against physical punishment. I don't think it does anything much beyond teaching 'might makes right'. I 'righteously' posted links to the numerous psychological studies that back that up.

[renie408]

118. I think it depends on how many tools you have in your belt.

My parents beat us. I am not going to fool around and call what we got 'spankings'. We were beat until we were bruised sometimes with whatever came to hand. Hairbrushes, spatulas, belts, fly swatters (those sting like a mother!)...anything my mother could get her hands on. She wasn't really emotionally equipped to deal with life, I think. She is very reserved, right up until she would freak out, snatch up somethind and start waling on us. I love her and have managed to forgive her. I understand a lot more now than I did then. But she didn't have ANY tools in her belt. She wasn't raised in the era of Oprah and she wasn't (isn't..won't ever be) in touch with her emotions. Kids can be rotten little shits sometimes. Even well raised GOOD kids. Actually, I think all kids are good. But even the best of them can push and push and push. They have their own agendas and, being kids, they can't see a whole helluva lot else. If you have kids, when they turn about twelve they move into an eighteen inch square mirrored box. Everywhere they look, all they can see is themselves. Of course, by then they are WAY past the point of spanking. But I digress...even given that I was more than spanked as a child, I have fallen back on spanking with both my kids at times. But I am a talker and an analyzer, so there was always a lot of discussion before and after. And I would always hug them afterwards. I could never really decide if that was just screwing them up even more, but I always wanted them to know that I loved them...even if I thought they needed a spanking.

I don't know if it was right or wrong. I just know that I have always done the best I could with what I had and at the moment. It has taken me 40 years to realize that my mother was doing the same thing. It just turns out that there were times when, given her personality, her own upbringing and the situation, that the best she could do in the moment was beat the crap out of us. That might not sound quite right and I am NOT really excusing her...I guess I just sympathize or something.

[Matariki]

148. I guess I'm glad we're living in the 'age of Oprah'.

It sounds like you aren't passing on the sort of anger motivated lashing out you got from you mom. Good for you. I know it's hard to break cycles like that, maybe part of my own reason for not having kids.

Personally, I hope that some day hitting one's children will be considered as unacceptable as hitting one's spouse. There was a time when 'disciplining one's wife' was acceptable too. In some parts of the world it still is, sad to say. I'm doubly glad that it's not legal or acceptable to hit another person's kid or paddle kids in school.

[raccoon]

225. Your mother sounds a lot like mine.

Whenever my mother spanked me or my sibs, it was because she was pissed off, not because of what we did or didn't do.

She wasn't in touch with her emotions at all.

Fortunately we did have some good years later on, when I was in my 30's and 40's.

[fishwax]

159. speaking of middle ground, it was a pro-spanker who said you can't instill respect

for authority without spanking, and that people using time outs instead of swats is what's responsible for the unruliness in our society. In contrast, the anti-spanking poster who has been most prevalent here has not, I don't believe, suggested that any parent who ever spanked is a bad parent. Rather, her posts have disagreed with the assertion that there is no effective alternative to corporal punishment and (citing evidence) that there are potential negative consequences to spanking one's children.

[renie408]

319. Don't get me wrong, I am NOT 'pro-spanking'.

I just know that there are times when I have spanked and my kids don't seem to be warped. I think anybody who is pro-spanking probably has a relatively low IQ. Seriously. I guess my position is that while spanking is not optimal, if it is not excessive and comes with an explanation, it is unlikely to do permanent damage.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

193. Here's what's much worse than spanking:

visiting a house where a woman said (in front of her children, ages 10 and 5) that she was sorry she'd ever had kids. Not surprisingly, they were messed up kids, and she tried to control them by screaming at them.

[MistressOverdone]

273. You make a great point

verbal abuse via screaming or even quiet spewing is every bit as harmful as excessive spanking. Maybe even moreso. I know I was pretty liberally spanked as a child (when they could catch me). Maybe three times a week. But I got a whole lot of positive reinforcement and encouragement as well, and the feeling that I was as good as anybody.

Remember that old commercial where the mother says "I wish you were never born."? That freaked my kids out, that any mother could say that.

[renie408]

321. One of my daughter's best friend's mother

said right in front of her kids ALL THE TIME while she was separated from her husband, "I can't stand to be alone. I come home every night and I am so miserable because I am alone." She went on to get involved in a BAD relationship to avoid 'being alone'. Can you imagine being those kids?? I am sure deep inside somewhere they wanted to say, "HELLOOOO!!! You aren't alone, WE'RE here!!" I think that is awful.

[MistressOverdone]

270. I certainly agree that a child who is constantly "under

the threat of violence" is going to have their learning hampered. However, average IQ is considered (at least in my district) as 90-110. And 98 to 102 is within the range of error. So I'm not sure about this research.

[Madspirit]

322. Only a Bully Hits a Child

On what bizarro planet is it cool to do to someone who doesn't come up to your knees what would get you an assault charge if you did it to someone your own damned size.

Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to take some child development courses or even Psychology 101. You NEVER have to, nor should you, HIT A CHILD.

Go check:
The American Psychological Association
The American Psychiatric Association
The American Medical Association
The American Pediatric Association
The American Academy of Social Workers

...or their British counterparts.

Only a bully thinks it's cool to hit a kid. Being a child should NEVER hurt. Only someone with horrible communication skills can't get through to their kid without hitting them, regardless of age. ...and as toddlers, you have to grow some patience. If you don't have any, use birth control and don't have kids. You have to SHOW things to tiny ones, more than once but you still don't get to hit them just because you find it annoying and you have a soap opera to watch.
Lee

[eridani]

175. Japanese kids are about as meek and conformist as they come

--and there is a real taboo against striking them. Standard Japanese discipline (according to a friend who lived there for many years in the 60s and 70s) was hugging the kid to the point of immobilization until s/he calmed down.

[Art_from_Ark]

194. There are different methods used by different individuals

Some Japanese parents will swat their kids on the head (not hard) when they misbehave. Others will yell at the kids (very effective if done only occasionally), and/or explain why the behavior is not acceptable. I've never seen the "hug them til they're immobilized" approach, but maybe that's done behind closed doors :shrug:

At any rate, I never have seen kids of kindergarten age or older running wild in supermarkets or restaurants here in Japan.

[Morrisons Ghost]

209. Thank you

For that stroll down my own childhood memory lane. I also remember my grandpa sitting me on his lap and letting me steer his Olds 98 while he worked the gas and brake as we drove around the empty A&P parking lot. Seems nowadays people are so frightened of everything and are so overprotective as they try to kid proof the world that they forget the simpler things in life. Life was simpler then, there was no need to complicate things like we do now.

[Zuiderelle]

216. So if it doesn't leave marks, it's ok? I suppose hitting a kid with a phone book would be ok then.

Sorry, but our kid has never been "swatted" and responds perfectly well to humane and intelligent discipline. All the beating I got as a kid didn't make me respect my father. On the contrary, it made me hate him.

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. Reactionary bullshit

Not surprising that it is made with anecdotal evidence.

Others in this thread have made the point clearly enough.

[SmokingJacket]

16. Lots of kids did die though.

Look at the stats:

Between 1980 and 2003, death rates dropped by 46 percent for infants, 51 percent for children ages 1 to 4, 44 percent for children ages 5 to 14, and 32 percent for teens ages 15 to 19.

http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/63ChildMortality.cfm

And that's JUST since 1980. They've dropped a lot more since 1950, but I don't know how to paste this chart... http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/86/4/505

Gawd, I knew so many dead kids. My friend's brother accidentally shot himself, a classmate's brother died of leukemia (treatable now), another drowned, two hit by cars... my kids don't know any dead kids, knock on wood.

If there's ONE good thing about the changes since I was a kid, the drop in child mortality is it, no question.

[mrcheerful]

22. I was the kid in the neighborhood that was hit by a speeding car, 45 in a 25 zone

and lived to be an example to the rest of the kids. My dad never let that get in his way of beating my ass or get out of back breaking work.

[fishwax]

23. wow, thanks for the stats

they don't surprise me at all, but I'm glad I didn't have to go to the trouble of looking them up. :)

[PassingFair]

76. The man across the street from me used to hit his kids AND his wife.

When his oldest son got caught stealing a bike at the
local mall, the whole street held it's breath, because
we were AFRAID of what would happen to that kid.

I was only 7, but I remember how horrible that felt.
The whispering amongst the grown-ups up and down the street...
Greg showed up 2 days later with a fat lip, a black
eye and a bunch of bruises. I never saw him hit any of his 5 kids, but I was
at the house once when he threw the dog down the stairs,
just because it got in the way.

No one even THOUGHT about calling the police on him.

"Golden Days", indeed.

[renie408]

125. That still happens now. All the time. Every day.

People are still unlikely to call the police or child services if they suspect someone is abusing their children. Why do you think it was only something that happened 'then'?

[PassingFair]

135. Because I WOULD report it. n/t

[Matariki]

153. AND the police would take it more seriously n/t

[eridani]

177. A kid in the next block was regularly tied to a tree in the front yard like a dog

Every kid in my neighborhood begged his or her parents to do something about Mr. Roper, but no one would--privacy rights and all. The kid later grew up to be a major troublemaker--what was called a "juvenile delinquent" back then.

[MistressOverdone]

275. You don't think that happens today?

Has anything really changed?

[MistressOverdone]

274. Yes, I remember a lot of kids dying

right on through high school.

Now, they get shot and things like that. When I was a kid it was disease..even measles and mumps..polio, leukemia.

Then my dad's generation, they had whole families wiped out by diptheria and typhoid. My mother lost two siblings to small pox and had it herself. My dad lost two to meningitis and diptheria. Old time graveyards are sobering reminders of childhood (and maternal) mortality.

And that's what I don't get. Now that we are so much better at surviving longer, why do we (some of us) feel the need to shoot up schools and workplaces? Or strap bombs to our bellies and blow up marketplaces? (basically, it's the same concept, no?) Is it some kind of human need we have to take down the population or something??

[foo_bar]

20. are you taking credit for this reactionary chain letter?

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

Ever heard of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"?

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

Ever heard of polio?

Speaking of school, we all sang the national anthem

No right-wing implications here!

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

Down with self-esteem!

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house both because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

Up with corporal punishment by neighbors!

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off.

This is where attribution comes in handy; the first person tense becomes confusing when you aren't the person who wrote the piece.

How did we ever survive?

Alas, your peers who died of preventable illnesses and accidents are not sharing in this fond remembrance of the golden age (not to mention the exponentially higher infant mortality rate). This screed is an apology for conservatism and Social Darwinism, and a none-too-subtle jab at progress such as safety inspections, vaccinations, sanitation, legal justice, psychology, modern medicine, and computer technology to boot. Apparently republicans aren't the only folks pining for a "simpler time" when men were men and child abuse didn't exist, not counting all the priests who wouldn't be prosecuted until the Litigious Age.

[gollygee]

25. Thank you for that response

These stupid chain letters from people with selective amnesia drive me crazy.

[napi21]

44. Oh comeon! I posted the email because I do miss a lot of the

things that existed back then. I have no alterior motive to slam new medical discoveries, and computer technology! I LOVE my computer, and wouldn't give it up for ANYTHING! You are WRONG in calling me a "conservative" becasue of the implication!

Sure there were problems in the society of the 50's & 60's. Anyone who would deny that is frigging lying! But in all fairness, in many areas, society has gone overboard with restrictions!

[foo_bar]

57. I didn't call you a conservative, unless you wrote the manifesto

I did say "republicans aren't the only folks" falling for the spirit of this mawkish chain letter.

[mrcheerful]

58. Sure we all had good times in childhood, but if your not looking at the reality of the times

and live on the good times, your fooling yourself into thinking that life was better back then. Reminds me of a friend I grew up with who today is a rabid wing nut. His childhood, the worst thing to happen to him was his dad coming home from work and yelling at him for screwing up, which my friend would break out crying over. The first time I saw that I thought "what a pussy" ( sorry but thats was my thought at the time )He would never have lasted in my family. When we both got into our 20's, even though he saw what my family life was like, he was there the day when my dad broke a 2x4 across my back and he was tthere the day my dad beat the hell out of me with the horse harness, He doesn't remember anything but how good our childhood was. He also believes that life was better back then compared to today. He actually told me child molesting was new, even though we knew 6 girls in our area that were molested by a father uncle or older brother. He doesn't remember that.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

185. It's called traumatic amnesia. He forgot the bad parts as a defense mechanism.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

101. Labels aside, what you did in this thread is show who you are.

Don't complain when people see and talk about what you showed of your own free will.

[intheflow]

146. Thanks. I was going to post about polio myself.

I had an uncle die from it and a cousin who's been in a wheelchair since he was 12. That was before my time, but I still knew the history of closed beaches due to polio. The OP was fortunate to have lived such a sheltered, privileged childhood.

[Gelliebeans]

202. Every once in a while

I receive one of these letters about the "good ol days" and all I feel when I read these emails is a celebration of regression. I see no applauding the progress we have made.

It does remind me of the repuke line of thinking that if we could just get back to the old days of having the "little woman" in the kitchen fixing dinner instead of earning money and the children being seen and not heard seem to ring through on this type of nostalgia.
My radar has really picked up on this over the last five years.

As for me I am progressing ALL the way to death. I want to look forward with each new idea and embrace the progression.

[MistressOverdone]

277. I think that those of us who pine for the "old days"

are of a certain age (obviously) and I would dare say that we ALL understand that there have been progressive advances made since then. Perhaps you had to live then to look back nostalgically. I personally DID live the Leave it to Beaver lifestyle and so did the kids on my street. My mom was home and happy to be there. My dad was able to make enough money to support all five of us on one salary, and he was not a professional man. He and my mother were equals in the household. They respected each other, although they did have their chosen roles. I never saw my mother mow the grass, for example, although my dad did the dishes every night. But he couldn't cook and would destroy clothes if he washed them. We ate dinner at the table (my family NEVER does that) and we had a lot of laughter and good meals. We rented our house until my parents were in their 40's. We bought clothes at the church rummage sale and were fine with that. We went to the movies every week or so, belonged to a swim club in the neighborhood. We went "down the shore" for two weeks every summer where my dad wore burmuda shorts and black socks and brogues. On Sundays we "went for a drive" in the country and looked at the houses, dreaming of one day owning one, and one day we did.

ON THE OTHER HAND we also had the basement stocked for the fallout we all believed would one day make its way over from Manhattan. But even in that, we felt a sense (probably in error) of security and self-reliance. I am sure had Manhattan gone under, we would have followed swiftly.

Now, here's my old lady complaint about life today. TV murders! If you watch network TV (I don't) you can see about a hundred murders in a week. But we never had the Science channel or National Geographic TV, either.

I am just fortunate that my childhood was a little bubble of happiness for me. After that, things got a lot rougher.

[trotsky]

240. Perfect response.

:thumbsup:
Thank you.

[Cleita]

24. You did get food poisoning but back then it was called 24 flu.

I was just talking to some of the older women at the gym today and we shared stories of being abused in gym class calisthenics and ignored if we weren't talented athletes, left on the bench so to speak. It made us into gym class haters, instead of giving us exercise tools for a lifetime. As far as the bee stings, a friend of mine died from an allergic reaction to a bee sting before Benedryl was available.

Where did you dig up this RW crap up anyway? It's made the rounds in various forms and can often be found at White Supremist websites.

[mrcheerful]

31. I once sat up all night keeping on eye on one of my little brothers after a bee stung him

he was alergic to bee venom, I was 10 at the time. At 6 am dad told me to go to bed at 7 am mom woke me up slapping the shit out of me for falling asleep and screaming that if my brother died it was my fault for falling asleep. Yeah the good old days, when the neighbor guy came home drunk, found my brother sitting in his house with his kids, grabbed my brother and threw him off his porch, breaking my brothers collar bone. Cops were called after mom went after the neighbor drunk and did nothing as it was a neighbor hood fued. Or seeing the neighbors wife and kids with black eyes, broken bones and bruises all over them and nothing was done.

[Cleita]

48. Back then if you were beaten up it was your fault.

I went to parochial school and some of the nuns were creatively masochistic in punishing us yet it fell on deaf ears with ALL adults. If sister did that then we must have done something to deserved it.

[Art_from_Ark]

196. It's not necessarily right-wing crap

Looking back on my own experiences in the late '60s, I agree with much of the original post.

[Cleita]

232. That is the intention of those chain letters, to find something

many people will agree with, so that by inference all the bike helmet laws and seat belt laws, etc. etc. can be blamed on liberals. This is why RW nutjob websites love these points.

However, there is a reason that many of these things changed. Broken bones and concussions, not to mention deaths were the reason those laws came into being. So just because your brains didn't get spilled out on the road somewhere, doesn't mean someone else's or their kids didn't either.

If you actually reason out many of those points, you will come to the conclusion that maybe this wasn't such a good time after all. I recently had a conversation with a young woman who has a two year old son. She was hesitant to give the child a chicken pox immunization and thought maybe she should just let him get the disease. I told her that I got shingles sixty years after having chicken pox and I wouldn't wish shingles on Bush frankly. It's very painful and takes months to go away. She hadn't thought of it that way.

[Art_from_Ark]

249. I'm thinking about my own experiences in the late '60s,

in small-town Arkansas. Consider this--

The polio vaccine was already developed and in widespread use.
Vaccines were also available against other major childhood diseases.
Health insurance and hospital stays were actually affordable to lower income families like mine.
A working family could reasonably expect to buy a pretty decent house with less than 3 years' income (our 3-bedroom house cost us just $8000 in 1965).
We actually could run around the neighborhood all day without our parents worrying about us getting our picture on some milk carton. As far as that goes, I even rode my bicycle to neighboring towns without incident when I was 8.
When the health department came to our school to give a presentation on illegal drugs, everyone thought, "What the heck are illegal drugs?" The only drugs we knew came from a pharmacy.
Saturday matinees at the downtown movie theater were a quarter, as was admission to the public pool, and admission to the skating rink as well (plus 25 cents skate rental). So summer Saturdays could be spent first at the movies, then at the pool, then finally at the rink-- and all for just a dollar (plus snacks)-- and all within walking distance from one another.
Downtown was actually thriving as a place to go shopping, even though Wal-Mart was just down the street (it was still a mom-and-pop operation in those days). And most people in town lived within an easy walk or bicycle ride from downtown.

On the national level, there was, of course, the spectre of Viet Nam and the King and Kennedy assassinations. But there was also a growing environmental awareness (thanks in large part to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" that was published in 1962), and the Great Society was in full swing, with its message of hope rather than today's fear, fear, fear.

[fishwax]

265. your reminiscences are quite different from those in the OP

what makes it right-wing nonsense is not the act of looking back to another era with fondness, but of couching those anecdotes in language meant to dismiss progressive reforms of recent decades.

Your line about health insurance and hospital stays provides a good example. Progressives generally blame the current health care situation on the consolidation of the insurance and health care industries around large corporations, etc. It wouldn't be right-wing nonsense if some theoretical author were to write something like: "when we crashed our bike and broke our leg, we went--as we did for all serious scrapes and bruises--to Dr. Carson the pediatrician, who let us kids call him Dr. Johnny, whose nurse always had a piece of candy ready to halt the flow of childhood tears, and who never ever was forced to consult with some pencil pusher in the office of an HMO four states away to determine the course of treatment for his own patients." (My apologies if I didn't capture the spirit of the era, but I didn't grow up then :))

I think few, if any, would say a reminiscence like that is right-wing crap. But while liberals tend to blame consolidation and greed, the right (like the OP) blames those people who sue for damages when someone else's negligence causes them injury. That's why the OP is right-wing BS, and the reminisces you offer aren't :)

[Art_from_Ark]

348. You know, when I went back through the OP's list,

I found that there were actually quite a few things I disagreed with. I guess I got caught up with all the replies claiming it wasn't so great back then, I had to put my two cents' worth in, The 50's might not have been so great as far as that goes, but certainly the late '60s would have been a Golden Age for progressives.

For example, December 1967-- the anti-War movement is picking up steam, important civil rights and environmental legislation is fresh on the books, the Great Society is giving hope to families like mine, all sorts of songs about love (for fellow man/woman, not just romantic love) and peace are on the radio, the Senate has some real statesmen on both sides of the aisle, like William Fulbright from Arkansas, Frank Church from Idaho, Mike Mansfield from Montana, Birch Bayh from Indiana, Everett Dirksen from Illinois (a pretty decent Republican), and Bobby Kennedy from New York. There was talk that Kennedy was going to enter the presidential race, and people in my part of Arkansas seemed to be getting pretty excited about that.

[OzarkDem]

342. I like your list

it might be a good counterpoint to the other spam email. I've gotten about 4 or 5 of those in the last couple of weeks, all from friends and family who are conservative or somewhat out of touch with real world issues.

[Art_from_Ark]

349. Thanks

Some of my fondest memories of that era are of the Great Society public service announcements on TV. Truly messages of hope rather than the constant barrage of fear-mongering of today. :hi:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

28. I shared that era and it wasn't so hot if you were poor.

Lunch? What lunch?

I didn't got to a doctor when I was 4 and had mastoiditus until I had a temp of 106 and my mother had to hitchhike to get me to the hospital.

I didn't go to a doctor when I dislocated my knee because we didn't have the money.

I didn't go to a doctor when my ribs were cracked because we couldn't afford it.

I had to stuff newspapers in my shoes because the soles were worn through and new ones, even U.S. Keds cost too much.

My stepfather beat me with a belt and, on one memorable occasion, with a 2x4, and no one complained about the "parental discipline".

We lived in a variety of trailers, garages, and our car, and ate lots of pasta and spuds..when we could afford them.

Yeah, those were the good old days, indeed.

[Madspirit]

30. You Need To Read

You need to read "The Way We NEVER Were" by Stephanie Coontz. "Leave it to Beaver" was NOT a documentary. ...and I'm 53 and I can tell you exactly what a dysfunctional family is. My father beat me every single day of my life until I left home at 15 and never looked back. You can keep your good ol' days.

A Review of the Book:

About The Way We Never Were:

This myth-shattering examination of two centuries of American family life banishes the misconceptions about the past that cloud current debate about "family values." "Leave It to Beaver" was not a documentary, Stephanie Coontz points out; neither the 1950s nor any other moment from our past presents workable models of how to conduct our personal lives today. Without minimizing the serious new problems in American families, Coontz warns that a consoling nostalgia for a largely mythical past of "traditional values" is a trap that can only cripple our capacity to solve today's problems. From "a man's home was his castle" to "traditional families never asked for a handout," this provocative book explodes cherished illusions about the past. Organized around a series of myths and half-truths that burden modern families, the book sheds new light on such contemporary concerns as parenting, privacy, love, the division of labor along gender lines, the black family, feminism, and sexual practice. Fascinating facts abound: In the nineteenth century, the age of sexual consent in some states was nine or ten, and alcoholism and drug abuse were more rampant than today ... Teenage childbearing peaked in the fabulous family-oriented 1950s ... Marriages in pioneer days lasted a shorter time than they do now. Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, The Way We Never Were shows that people have not suddenly and inexplicably "gone bad" and points to ways that we can help families do better. Seeing our own family pains as part of a larger social predicament means that we can stop the cycle of guilt or blame and face the real issues constructively, Coontz writes. The historical evidence reveals that families have always been in flux and often in crisis, and that families have been most successful wherever they have built meaningful networks beyond their own boundaries. --The Publisher.

[AX10]

51. I'm sorry to hear that.

At 15 years old, where did you go when you left home? If you don't mind me asking?

[Madspirit]

62. Well

All that beating and OTHER kinds of abuse made me crazy so I spent 2 years in a state mental institution in Texas and this was 35 years ago...so I can tell you horror that would stand your hair up on end. I got out of the nuthouse 17 days before I turned 17 and went to the streets, where I lived, off and on, until my early thirties...
Lee

[Evoman]

201. That is a terrible story.

I'm glad that you got through it. Your a strong person.

[OzarkDem]

343. So sorry about it

I'm glad you had the strength to overcome all the adversity and hope your life is better.

[misanthrope]

188. Very good book**nm

**

[Gelliebeans]

203. I will be asking for that

book for my bday in a couple of weeks. Thanks for the tip looks like an interesting read.

[Az]

32. Part of progress is uncovering injustices and issues that were hidden or concealed

Many look back fondly on the past as being less troubled because they either didn't experience any of the problems or were not aware of them. This does not mean they didn't happen. Just because you didn't get a major infection while playing king of the hill doesn't mean other kids lost limbs or lives due to untreated wounds.

Here is a tip. Anyone that died from an illness isn't around to reminisce about the past. Only those that survive get to wax nostalgic.

The past often looks happier and content to a progressive society because progress uncovers the dirt that no one saw back then. Today we see the turmoil and are aware of it. Ignorance is often blissful.

[Matariki]

33. Please read these studies on the effects of corporal punishment before defending it.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/spankin5.htm

1985: Study of teenage corporal punishment and adult depression
1986 to 1990: Study of corporal punishment and child anti-social behavior
1986 to 1990: Corporal punishment and child IQ
1995: Corporal punishment and adult addiction and psychiatric problems


2002: Result of meta-analysis of 88 studies:


The American Psychological Association issued a press release in 2002-JUM concerning the publishing of a large-scale, meta-analysis of 88 studies on spanking of children by psychologist Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University.

She searched for associations between parental use of corporal punishment and eleven factors, including:
bullet In childhood: immediate compliance, moral internalization, quality of relationship with parent, and physical abuse by that parent, child aggression;
bullet In adulthood: abuse of ones own children, abuse of one's spouse; and
bullet In both childhood and adulthood: mental health, aggression, and criminal or antisocial behavior.

She found "strong associations" in each case. One factor -- immediate compliance by the child -- was positive; the other ten factors were negative. She suggests that these observations give insight into why corporal punishment is such a controversial matter:
bullet Many parents strongly support spanking because they are rewarded with immediate compliance by the child whenever this discipline technique is used.
bullet Many researchers strongly oppose spanking because of serious negative affects on the child during childhood and later in life.

The APA comments:

"The meta-analysis also demonstrates that the frequency and severity of the corporal punishment matters. The more often or more harshly a child was hit, the more likely they are to be aggressive or to have mental health problems."

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

34. Is this yours, or some weird chain e-mail?

[Az]

38. Its from the net. Trying to track its source now n/t

[Az]

40. Yep, its a net chain mail thingy.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

41. It's amazingly out of touch with reality.

Remember when schools had nurses and kids went swimming outdoors? ZOMG!

[foo_bar]

49. there's even a Snopes thread on the subject

http://msgboard.snopes.com/message/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/15/t/001979/p/1.html

The OP edited out a few key passages:

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (Remember why Tonka trucks were made tough .. it wasn't so that they could take the rough Berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.

[napi21]

59. I don't know if it's a chain or not. I got it from a friend. n/t

[blues90]

36. I had similar experiences being a child in the 50's

I lived in Chicago then later in the suburbs . It really did depend on where you lived to describe your experience but even in chicago there were a few bums but never masses of homeless . I imagine many children of that time did not have the same experiences .

I am grateful I had a fair childhood even with the occasional school yard bully or the militent gym teacher . I don't recall cars with smashed in corners or mass traffic or accidents being that common and I recall small independent stores all well kept with people who knew what they were talking about and food that you could eat right out of the garden and never got sick .

It was truely a different world back then with all it's faults it was much better than now living in this insecure , surreal complex state of madness without much real hope in sight , you can never go back . I do wish we never went forward because I don;t call what I see now as progress .

[Madspirit]

43. One More Time

You need to read "The Way We NEVER Were" by Stephanie Coontz. "Leave it to Beaver" was NOT a documentary. I suggest you REALLY read the below review:

A Review of the Book:

About The Way We Never Were:

This myth-shattering examination of two centuries of American family life banishes the misconceptions about the past that cloud current debate about "family values." "Leave It to Beaver" was not a documentary, Stephanie Coontz points out; neither the 1950s nor any other moment from our past presents workable models of how to conduct our personal lives today. Without minimizing the serious new problems in American families, Coontz warns that a consoling nostalgia for a largely mythical past of "traditional values" is a trap that can only cripple our capacity to solve today's problems. From "a man's home was his castle" to "traditional families never asked for a handout," this provocative book explodes cherished illusions about the past. Organized around a series of myths and half-truths that burden modern families, the book sheds new light on such contemporary concerns as parenting, privacy, love, the division of labor along gender lines, the black family, feminism, and sexual practice. Fascinating facts abound: In the nineteenth century, the age of sexual consent in some states was nine or ten, and alcoholism and drug abuse were more rampant than today ... Teenage childbearing peaked in the fabulous family-oriented 1950s ... Marriages in pioneer days lasted a shorter time than they do now. Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, The Way We Never Were shows that people have not suddenly and inexplicably "gone bad" and points to ways that we can help families do better. Seeing our own family pains as part of a larger social predicament means that we can stop the cycle of guilt or blame and face the real issues constructively, Coontz writes. The historical evidence reveals that families have always been in flux and often in crisis, and that families have been most successful wherever they have built meaningful networks beyond their own boundaries. --The Publisher.

[JuniperLea]

60. Cigarette smoking didn't used to be bad for you:)

Running joke in the family because so many women smoked while pregnant... just because you didn't hear about it back then, doesn't mean that cigarettes weren't killing a hell of a lot of people or damaging a lot of fetuses.

[Madspirit]

63. ...and "one for the road"

...was cool too as well as drinking while pregnant. Hell, you could drink and smoke and drive and be pregnant...yup...the good ol' days.
Lee

[mrcheerful]

65. I remember an uncle from Ohio that refused to come to michigan after michigan

started the no open containers of alcohol in car law. 2 years later Ohio passed a similar law.

[Madspirit]

67. My Uncle

My Uncle Jack was THE town drunk...I am so proud. Cops would find him passed out in his car and they would just bring him home and stick him in bed. He could have killed someone.
Lee

[Autobot77]

340. A professor told me he used to have a car w/o floor boards

And he loved because he could drink beer in the car and if he saw a cop, he'd drop the can.

[JuniperLea]

84. Without a seatbelt even...

And/or in the back of a pickup truck...

[Madspirit]

89. Except!!

My favorite car and what we drive now...a 19 year old one but still...

Volvos drove off their first assembly line WITH seat belts. They have always had them...and the roll bar.

I don't know about the new Ford Volvos...yuck...but REAL Volvos have always been about safety.
Lee

[Sapphocrat]

317. I'll echo that, and go one further.

To this day, my mom is grateful she never got morning sickness while pregnant with me -- or her doctor might have given her Thalidomide, then commonly prescribed for nausea... and today I might be tapping out this message with a pencil held between my teeth.

[blues90]

66. I agree and I am well aware that those times had many problems

No illusions here , i am aware and was aware at the time that Leave it to beaver was certainly not a picture of reality by a long shot . I was aware of broken home and abuse , my family life was no picture of perfection .

What I allude to is my past memories which are still solid and being a child eyes view at the time I would say that life I had is something I would not trade with a child of the same age today .

When the country as it has become more crowded and sterile and the personal me becomes the most important attribute where caring and community breaks down and is sold out to corporate control then I say we have not progressed .

Certainly one can argue that medical and technical advances do help but do they really add more than they take away when viewing the overall picture ?

We still have many if not all of the same social problems and then add some , it is not oh my and i had a wonderful apst and life it is instead , what have we really got now that is better and an improvement to the human as well as the life of nature and this planet .

[Odin2005]

39. Warning, warning, "idealising the era one grew up in" alert!!!

:yoiks:

[treestar]

80. Exactly! Older people have been saying this from time immemorial

It was always better then.

Except it wasn't. It's only because people with happy childhoods remember that time with fondness and nostalgia.

But they're not going to throw away the pharmaceutical and medical and technological advances that their children and grandchildren have from childhood.

This era is today's children's "better" era. Some poor kid born in 2025 will be hearing about how wonderful the early 00s were!

[Odin2005]

212. It seems to be mostly Boomers (especially right-wing Boomers) that do this BS now days

[maxsolomon]

50. no it didn't

nostalgia distorts.

[Madspirit]

55. ...and furthermore

Life totally sucked if you were a minority, gay or a woman. My fully adult cousin, with a job, on her own, had to get the signature of a father or husband just to buy a car.

Gays/lesbians LIVED in the closet.

The Civil Rights Act had not been passed.

Rape in marriage was a RIGHT.

etc.

Jesus fucking wept man. Times passed sucked. Teen pregnancy was at a PEAK. Divorce was comparable to NOW.

Grrr...what a crock.
Lee

[lukasahero]

56. Yeah! The days when women had to have

their husband's permission to get birth control! The days when a black man couldn't marry a white woman! The days when we just dumped our garbage into our rivers and streams! Killed our songbirds and eagles with DDT! Boy howdy, what a great time that was!


(For those that don't know me, seriously heavy :sarcasm: here.)

Is life perfect today? Hell no. But idealizing the past requires ignoring a great deal of it.

[Matariki]

61. More links

http://www.stophitting.com/disathome/factsAndFiction.php

Spanking argument #2 - “I got hit when I was a kid and I turned out OK”

Being spanked is an emotional event. Adults often remember with crystal clarity times they were paddled or spanked as children. Many adults look back on corporal punishment in childhood with great anger and sadness. Sometimes people say, “I was spanked as a child, and I deserved it”. It is hard for us to believe that people who loved us would intentionally hurt us. We feel the need to excuse that hurt. Studies show that even a few instances of being hit as children are associated with more depressive symptoms as adults (Strauss, 1994, Strassberg, Dodge, Pettit & Bates, 1994). A landmark meta-analysis of 88 corporal punishment research studies of over six decades showed that corporal punishment of children was associated with negative outcomes including increased delinquent and antisocial behavior, increased risk of child abuse and spousal abuse, increased risk of child aggression and adult aggression, decreased child mental health and decreased adult mental health (Gershoff, 2002). While most of us who were spanked “turned out OK”, it is likely that not being spanked would have helped us turn out to be healthier.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

69. I mostly agree

Of course, for poor black kids who had to go to segregated schools and whose fathers couldn't find decent work, they weren't such "good ole days". But I do agree that life was simpler then and more enjoyable. I would hate to be a kid nowadays.

And as for spankings, I received only a few and I know for a fact that I earned every single one. My father never physically hurt me but the spanking was more of a humiliation, one that I richly deserved because sometimes I acted up and talked back to my parents, disrespecting them. I'm glad that they took the time to get through to me in the most direct way possible.

[Matariki]

71. “I got hit when I was a kid and I turned out OK”

"Being spanked is an emotional event. Adults often remember with crystal clarity times they were paddled or spanked as children. Many adults look back on corporal punishment in childhood with great anger and sadness. Sometimes people say, “I was spanked as a child, and I deserved it”. It is hard for us to believe that people who loved us would intentionally hurt us. We feel the need to excuse that hurt. Studies show that even a few instances of being hit as children are associated with more depressive symptoms as adults (Strauss, 1994, Strassberg, Dodge, Pettit & Bates, 1994). A landmark meta-analysis of 88 corporal punishment research studies of over six decades showed that corporal punishment of children was associated with negative outcomes including increased delinquent and antisocial behavior, increased risk of child abuse and spousal abuse, increased risk of child aggression and adult aggression, decreased child mental health and decreased adult mental health (Gershoff, 2002). While most of us who were spanked “turned out OK”, it is likely that not being spanked would have helped us turn out to be healthier."


“Spanking is an effective way to manage behavior”

Hitting a small child will usually stop misbehavior temporarily. However, other ways of discipline such as verbal correction, reasoning, and time-out work as well and do not have the potential for harm that hitting does. Hitting children may actually increase misbehavior. One large study showed that the more parents spanked children for antisocial behavior, the more the antisocial behavior increased (Straus, Sugarman, & Giles-Sims, 1997). The more children are hit, the more likely they are to hit others including peers and siblings and, as adults, they are more likely to hit their spouses (Straus and Gelles, 1990; Wolfe, 1987). Hitting children teaches them that it is acceptable to hit others who are smaller and weaker. “I'm going to hit you because you hit your sister” is a hypocrisy not lost on children.

http://www.stophitting.com/disathome/factsAndFiction.php

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

77. I don't agree

In my case, I earned every spanking I received. I don't look back with anger or resentment. I look back on the spankings with complete approval. Children have enormous egos and think they are the center of the universe. I think teaching a little humility, at least in my case, was great. I remember two spankings: on one occasion I whipped a wet towel at my father's face at the breakfast table when he refused to buy me something I wanted; on another occasion I threw a metal sprinkler at a little girl and busted up her nose and made it bleed (my father spanked me and immediately drove me to the little girl's house to apologize). In both cases, not only am I very, very glad I was spanked, but I would spank any child of mine who had done similar disrepectful things.

[Matariki]

79. Your parents countered violence with more violence

what does that actually teach, except that the biggest person wins?

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

81. Not violence - love

I don't consider what my father did as violence. Sorry. It didn't hurt. It stopped me from being violent. It taught me humility. I look back on it as an entirely positive experience that showed love and caring. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm sure speaking about my own experience.

[Matariki]

87. You don't think that a lecture and taking you to apologize would have worked as well?

You really can't see how hitting a kid sends the message that physical domination of someone smaller or weaker is okay?

Humility indeed.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

90. What do you want from me?

Do you want me to change my mind and feel anger and resentment because that's what some psychologists' theories say I should feel? I'm not going to change what I emotionally feel about how my father taught me things, something that I feel to the very bottom of my being. My parents always were telling me right from wrong. They were always lecturing me on how to treat little girls and how to treat others. Apparently, the lectures didn't always get through. But the spankings stopped that behavior immediately.

[Matariki]

What do I want? Stop advocating hitting children - that's what I want

Good for you that you survived your parents hitting you. But plenty of people have not - there are plenty of broken people because for generations it was acceptable to hit children.

Hitting other people except in self defense is NOT acceptable, even if they're your kids. It's not good parenting - it's lazy and abusive. Your parents could have easily taught you respect for others without hitting you.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

96. I am NOT advocating hitting children - I am talking about my own personal experience

You are not going to change my entire outlook regarding the way I was brought up by continuing to badger me here by telling me how to live. I'm tired of people on DU telling other people how to live their personal lives. Keep your theory. I'm not opposing your theory. I'm talking about my own life. Period. Honestly, some of you guys on DU can't stand to even hear someone voice their own honest life experience without feeling that their pet theory is being attacked. I'm not attacking you and I didn't even address you. You are the one telling me how to live my life and how to feel emotionally about my own life based on what a theory says. Bullshit.

[Matariki]

102. I'm not 'badgering' you, I'm responding to your posts just as you are responding to my posts.

You are giving personal anecdotal evidence that spanking isn't bad. I don't think hitting people, except in self defense or bdsm play, is ever justifiable. I'm going to state that whenever I see people arguing in favor of hitting people - even if it's anecdotal experience of how being hit was good for them. That's my prerogative on a public forum. I'm not telling you how to feel about getting hit, I'm telling you I think your parents were displaying poor parenting skills for doing it.

If you need to have the last word to not feel 'badgered', have at it.

[Karenina]

139. My parents had a "counting technique"

that resulted in them rarely having to hit any of us.

Clean up your mess. One
Clean up your mess. Two
Clean up your mess. Three (Dad whips off the belt, Mom grabs the paddle)
Clean up your mess. Four (Kids pushing the envelope start moving, KNOWING THAT)
Clean up your mess. FIVE means a stinging swat to the hindparts.

They "counted" on compliance. AND GOT IT.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

100. They should read books by Alice Miller.

She is a German author who has studied the childhoods of famous people who were abused.
She said that because Hitler was beaten severely as a child, and the standard childraising practices of the time were to beat the will out of children because they needed it, this produced a nation of sheep who did not question authority and became good Nazis.

They were beaten, learned cruelty, and passed it on.

[Matariki]

104. Oh, that was just 'tough love'

:eyes:

[Xenotime]

358. That's exactly how the politicians played as well..

...the I have the bigger bomb game

[CRF450]

82. I'm with you on that!

I had many a spankings when I was a little brat back then. Now at 20, I dont feel anger or anything looking back at those moments. I deserved them.

[Matariki]

85. It's funny - that is EXACTLY what the article I posted is saying

That people prefer to look on those experiences as 'deserving' corporal punishment over processing the fact that someone they love and is supposed to love them is physically hurting them.

Point proven really.

Can't you think of any better way your parents could have made their point with you than hitting you?

[Matariki]

88. Read this

http://www.religioustolerance.org/spankin5.htm

more:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=studies+on+hitting+children&btnG=Google+Search

[Iris]

94. 20 is still young.

you never know what might come up later in life.

[CRF450]

109. And?

I calmed down ALOT since early high school and hardly ever got in trouble. Last time I got spanked had to be around 7 or 8 years ago. Did spanking turn me into a troubled person? Not at all. It taught me desciplin and respect.

[Matariki]

113. Do you mind if I ask how?

How did getting spanked teach you discipline and respect? What was it about getting hit that taught you those things and do you think you couldn't have learned them any other way?

[CRF450]

138. Simple

It was humiliation, not the pain.

[Matariki]

143. How is humiliation a good learning tool?

I can't help but think that again humiliation is the result of being overpowered by someone bigger or stronger, especially when it's the result of physical domination. Although verbal humiliation isn't any better. How does it teach values? You really feel you were humiliated into having good values and ethical behavior - or do you think it just gave you the sort of 'respect for authority' based on fear of punishment and humiliation?

[CRF450]

154. Monstly respect for authority.

Anytime I thought of doing something bad or stupid, the consequinces (yes, the spankings) made me think otherwise most of the time. You cant always get the point accross to kids verbally desciplining, or just grounding them.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

309. Unquestioning respect for authority enforced by violence produces good little Nazis.

Read German author Alice Miller. "For Your Own Good" and "The Drama of the Gifted Child" are just two of many of her books. Good little Nazis are the 28% who support Bush unconditionally that we rail about here.

Read John Dean's "The Authoritarian Personality" too. He's quite familiar with unquestioning & undeserved loyalty among Republicans, since he was Richard Nixon's lawyer during the Watergate days. Unlike the others, he had a conscience and spilled his guts. Because of that I have great respect for him.

[Iris]

147. could it be that you kept acting out because you were being spanked? n/t

[CRF450]

155. What?

How would I be acting out from getting spanked?? All that would've done is get me into more trouble!

[Zuiderelle]

220. When I was 20, I said the same thing.

I couldn't bear to think that my father had actually abused me. Until I began to remember all the ways he did.

[gollygee]

230. When I became a parent

and as my daughter has gotten older, it's really hit home (so to speak). She'll do something, and I'll think, "I would have been hit for this." It does bother me sometimes. I wasn't spanked all that often, but the threat of it was always there, and the threat of violence doesn't teach any better than violence IMO. It's still a bad kind of relationship to set up between yourself and your child.

I don't hit. I don't have to punish very often anyway, but when I do it is very specifically related to what my daughter did. If she misuses a toy, I take that toy away for a bit. If she acts up in a restaurant, I take her out of the restaurant. One time she acted up just as we were going to get dessert. She and I ended up sitting in the car while everyone else enjoyed their dessert. I didn't even yell at her. I just quietly said, "I can't keep you in the restaurant when you behave like that. People are trying to enjoy their dinners and can't do it around you when you're yelling." She hasn't acted up in a restaurant since.

Not only is it easy to discipline (which by the way means teach, NOT punish) without spanking, I think it's much more effective because your reaction can be more specifically tailored to what lesson needs to be learned. No one learns anything from being hit, except to avoid being hit. But if you have to miss dessert because you want to yell in a restaurant, you learn that you can't stay in restaurants if you're making a lot of noise.

[Zuiderelle]

231. I came to parenthood relatively late.

And I'm glad I did, as I am not entirely sure I would have been such a good parent had I not dealt with the psychological effect of my own childhood first. Like you, it goes through my mind "I would have been hit for that" when our child does something wrong. And I think, Sheesh... I was hit for THAT? No wonder it took so many years to regain my self-esteem.

I can't even imagine one thing I did as a child to warrant being hit with a belt that left welts and bruises. Not ONE thing. And I cannot imagine one thing any child could do to warrant that. I will NEVER hit my child. The type of discipline you describe is much more effective, and doesn't damage the child's self-esteem.

[raccoon]

228. I agree with everything you said in your first paragraph. I'd hate to be a kid nowadays too.

But I wonder if this is something that middle-aged/elderly people always think, regardless of when they were born?

[Matariki]

70. HEY - My greatgrandmother HAD A GLASS EYE!

From playing cowboys and indians when she was a little kid. Got a toy arrow in her eye. When my mom used to tell us to stop doing something because we'd lose an eye, she really meant it ;-)

[mitchum]

92. I had a greatuncle who was THAT kid you always heard about...

yep,the one who lost an eye from a paper airplane. Seriously.
I assume, after that, he always waited the full half hour before going swimming after lunch :)

[MistressOverdone]

279. I can beat that!

My aunt died because she got a lima bean stuck in her ear, didn't tell anyone and it grew! She got some kind of brain infection from it.

or so I'm told...

[Javaman]

72. Oh yeah, so much better, I miss polio, measles, small pox, shall I go on? nt

[Az]

73. Anecdotal evidence, Personal Testimony, and Marketing

Anecdotal evidence is not recognized as significant evidence in the field of science for the simple reason that our ability to interpret events is flawed. We get things wrong. Isolated cases do not make for good evidence.

Personal Testimony is a form of anecdotal evidence used in advertising. Look at these people. They were happy with our product. You will be too! But the truth is no advertiser would ever give voice to someone that did not like their product so you only hear the positive reviews from them.

Just because someone stands up and says everything turned out fine for me does not mean their actions or experience are typical. You need to use much more rigid means of examining things to determine what is going on. You need to use critical thought. You need to use Reason.

And this is why advertisers and politicians hate reason. It picks apart their claims. It is why Corporations despise critical thought as it slows down their attempts to influence the Supply/Demand curve.

This chain letter is a perfect example of the death of reason in America. It calls out to an emotional response and reminiscing back to a better time. Only it wasn't a better time. We are just more aware of the bad things that happen now and try to work to limit them. Back then there was no effort to limit the troubles because many were simply not aware of them.

[Jim Warren]

75. Interesting thread.

As much for the reactions to it, kinda like a Rorschach test for the makeup of DU.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

103. And what's the diagnosis on that test, Doc? -nt

[Jim Warren]

181. Lets just say

why we set up a series of appointments and talk about, hey? :evilgrin:

[treestar]

78. You were happy then. Other people were unhappy.

But now, some of those people don't have to live with the misfortunes that your neighbors of the time did have to live with. But obviously you don't care about that.

You were lucky. You were happy. So why are you miserable now because more children are happy as you were?

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

83. There are things I loved about those days, and things I didn't...

It's true that you could bike or walk as far as your legs would take you and never run into serious trouble - unless you were looking for it. There was a river and a seldom-used railway line near our house where we hung out, big piles of coke to climb on, empty pint bottles left behind by the bums to smash against the tracks. A factory a few blocks over had huge unsteady stacks of lumber stored behind it - a great place to play fort and get splinters. Good times.

But my folks, despite their many, many good qualities, were so authoritarian - physically and mentally - that every one of us kids acted out in a different way. And we were hardly the only dysfunctional family in our working class neighborhood. At least my parents weren't drunks like the people across the street, and none of us wound up shooting at anyone like the guy down the block.

Could have been worse. I envied one friend, an only child whose feuding parents competed for her love with extravagant gifts, and let her do anything she wanted, no questions asked. When we were 17 she told me what her father had been doing to her since she was 13. I didn't believe it at first because I simply couldn't imagine trust being betrayed at that level. Life is never as idyllic as it's recalled, or as it looks for others.

[mitchum]

86. You forgot "no waiting" when there are two water fountains

[MistressOverdone]

280. Did you grow up in the South?

Up north, in my memory, just one set of fountains.

[mitchum]

307. Yes, I was born in 1960 and I remember separate fountains being...

around when I was 4 or 5 years old. I also remember doctors having separate waiting rooms. Absurd and monstrous.

[MistressOverdone]

326. A different world, wasn't it?

I guess the North had worked some of that out during abolitionist days.

[mitchum]

331. Except for those integration riots in Boston in the 1970s

[MistressOverdone]

333. Gosh, yes, they were awful

New Jersey didn't go through that, although we had some riots in Newark, but not over school integration. Other issues, mostly housing.

[MedleyMisty]

91. Did you like the burning crosses?

And people who weren't white having to sit in the back of the bus, and women being even more oppressed than they are now?

I am sure that many people who are not rich or white or male are not sorry for missing that era. I am very grateful that I wasn't born until 1980 - my mother told me all about it. About how she got married and had two kids right out of high school even though she didn't want to, because that's what you did then. She told me about how her father wouldn't let her come home when her first husband started beating her and my half-brothers.

She also told me that it's still a man's world, and that's certainly true. It's also still a white man's world, and I'm sure she would have included that if we weren't white. But I wouldn't give up the progress that we've made for anything.

Have you ever noticed that when people groan on and on about how things have fallen from some Golden Age, the Golden Age is always when they were around their late teens and early twenties? It's a personal Golden Age. It's okay to miss being young. Just don't go around assuming that the entire world was better then and that everyone wants to go back to when you were young. Maybe your personal life was better then and maybe you want to go back, but you can't extrapolate that and say it applies globally.

[renie408]

99. Is that what they said? Cause I didn't see that part.

The part about everything being better 'back in the day'.

"you can't extrapolate that and say it applies globally"...Here's what I can tell you that I CAN extrapolate from that comment...You REALLY need to lighten up.

[Zuiderelle]

224. That part was in the title "Life used to be bettter!"

And throughout the entire OP. Did you actually read it?

Another quote from the end of it: "LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T- SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED.I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING"

[MistressOverdone]

282. I never heard of a burning cross as a kid

and our schools integrated back in the 1800's. But you have an interesting point about the golden age. It IS a personal thing. For me, however, it was younger than adolescence. That kind of spoiled everything for me!

[AX10]

305. 1980? This happened to you mother in 1980?

:wtf: Sad. I understand fully why Reagan won that election.
I do believe that we all have our personal "golden ages" though.

[cedahlia]

306. Couldn't have said it better

I don't know how many times I've been forwarded one of these trite "Oh, Those Were The Good Old Days" emails. I received one the other day where one of the "golden" memories was that "back then, EVERY kid had a Mom waiting for them when they got home from school." No mention of how bad many "happy housewives" suffered back then (abuse, oppression, virtually no freedom, choices, or control over their own lives, etc.) And this was all socially acceptable, because women (second class citizens) were property of their fathers and then their husbands. Things certainly aren't "Golden" right now, but the pre-Feminist Revolution decades were the dark ages for women. Your mother's situation is a perfect example of this.

I completely agree about it being a "personal" Golden Age, too. I am a child of the 80's/90's, and while I'm a total 80's/90s pop culture junkie (of course, I think we had the best cartoons, movies, music, toys, etc.) ;-), I recognize that the 80s were really a shitty time in many ways, for many people (the AIDS epidemic, Reaganomics, to name a few examples.) Like you said, nostalgia can be fun, but enough already with this picture perfect, idealized version of history.

[lse7581011]

93. Oh, How I Agree!

Those were the best of times...at least for me!

[Matsubara]

98. This reads like one of those e-mails people send around.

I don't know about your mom, but my mom cooked our foods well, which was why we did not and do not worry about slmonella & e coli.

We still use hydrogen peroxide on our kids and don't sue when they get a scrape.

I have never been told that I came from a dysfunctional family. Have you? While you were playing in construction sites, your parents were reading even worse psychobabble than today's in the newspapers of the time.

Bored? Yeah, I was bored sometimed - I miss boredom, never have time for it anymore.



SOme of this nostalgia resonates with me, but most of it seems like pining for some great past that never was.

And why is a phone in a jail cell better than a cell phone?

Whatever.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

107. Right wing bullshit.

I still shiver with fear when I recall what my mom did to me. She gave me horrible stinky permanents to make me look like Shirley Temple. Then I came home crying when they picked on me of course. I wasn't supposed to fit in with the other kids. She was a jailer. Didn't want me to go outside and play with the neighborhood kids. Of course, when I did play with them -- "run off" was her term -- they picked on me and I went home in tears. If I went out the front door to play I was a "bad girl". She spent all her time telling me what a bum my father was. He was the only sane, competent adult in the house. I didn't believe her.

I remember her and dad running down the sidewalk with a bamboo switch in hand, looking for me, shrieking and looking like fools, and hiding at the neighbor kid's house.

We didn't have anyplace to swim. No neighborhood pool in suburbia.

Nobody gave a damn about my self esteem. My teachers told me I was lazy and stupid (I was sick & exhausted all the time--they didn't know that). The P.E. teachers and kids in P.E. pulled all sorts of evil stuff picking on me. They tried to kill me in Red Rover and basketball. I never learned to fight because I was little and a year and a half younger than the other kids, because I started school a year early.

I got called a "nigger-lover" for doing a book report in 9th grade English on "My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr." by Coretta Scott King. This was about 1969, just a year after he was assassinated. We had a de facto all white school district and town.

Some little redneck picked on me, and I called them "white trash". They immediately called me "nigger trash". I happen to be extremely white. Actually I'm pink, and always sunburn.

My grandmother and mother nagged me constantly about being lazy and stupid and not eating what they fixed for dinner. I was supposed to be a susie homemaker who just knew how to cook, because I was a girl. Sorry.

They yelled at me for reaching for the sugar bowl for my iced tea. They insisted that I use liquid saccharin and INSISTED that it tasted just like real sugar. I told them they were wrong, which made them more pissed at me. They told me my reality wasn't real. I craved sugar because I had low blood sugar, but they didn't know about that.


Well was I stupid? How about some objective evidence? It turns out that I was an outstanding musician, played two instruments quite well and sang, and I scored 146 on an IQ test when I was five years old. That's three standard deviations above normal, about 1 out of a thousand people get a score that high.

Schools didn't do a damn thing about bullies and they still don't. You have to sue them to get their attention.


I have no love lost for my miserable childhood. I was emotionally abused. And I had college educated parents and grandparents. My other grandmother died in the "good old days" of 1918, when my dad was a little kid, due to the worldwide flu epidemic. My other grandfather died in the 1940s from throat cancer caused by smoking. My mom's father died in a car wreck in a model A when she was twelve years old. No seat belts, no safety equipment, no antilock brakes. I only had one living grandparent when I was a kid, and she was the bossiest woman I've ever seen. I was scared of her. She was also quite sexist, expecting me to be a domestic slave, wait on some man hand and foot and infantilize him, and learn how to boil everything to death. I was a social outcast because I refused to eat watermelon, collard greens, metallic-tasting black eyed peas, stringy, crappy meat, and raw onions, bell peppers and tomatoes.



Some "good old days". Bullshit.

[jgraz]

120. Right on

:thumbsup:

My first thought was that shit couldn't have been written by anyone but a white male.

[raccoon]

229. I could identify with a lot of what you said. I had 2 grandparents still alive

when I was a kid. (Though a grandmother died when I was 3. I'm not counting her.)

Let me tell you, grandparents were NOT the doting, loving people like they are these days!

[trotsky]

243. Thank you for that dose of perspective.

I'm sorry to hear what you had to go through - but it's very helpful to let people know what it was REALLY like "back in the day."

(P.S. I don't like watermelon either. :))

[MistressOverdone]

284. What an awful life you had!

I'm glad you survived.

But I'm kind of confused why talking about good times is right wing? That kind of plays into the whole "Dems are malcontents" screed to me.

[flamingyouth]

108. I remember Mercurochrome stinging.

And I think my mom, who was born in 1941, would beg to differ about the dysfunctional family part.

And my dad's always been nuts about food safety (of course, he worked for years in the food industry).

Wait - why am I picking this apart point by point? :crazy: :D

I did play with Jarts as a kid, though, AND I SURVIVED! :D

[Book Lover]

110. "Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious..."

pile of gravel where it was such a threat. "


My nephew suffocated while digging in a pile of dirt left ungated by a construction company. Good. Old. Days.

[renie408]

131. I am sorry for your loss. It was a pile of dirt. I think it

is reasonable that it might have been hard for the construction company to recognize that as a safety problem.
Was the pile of dirt on their property? I really don't mean to be callous, but this sounds like an accident to me.

[Book Lover]

133. I did not say that it was not an accident

And I really don't care to share details. My point in posting was that "complaining" has merit.

[malaise]

112. Everything except being spanked

was a part of my lovely childhood. And then Madison Avenue took over.

[glowing]

115. I was born in 1979 and I find myself saying I wish it was like this

when I was younger.. But the reality is we get older and wiser and with that we shed the naiveity that shrouded our youth. As well, memory is fuzzy.. I remember saying in college "you know how every adult says these were the best years of their lives, well if these are the best years, shoot me now"... and I look back at college and they were some of the best years of my life because I remember the great parts that were college (those that I can remember).

[MistressOverdone]

285. Good point

Would I trade the wisdom and calm I have now for those good old days? Not a chance. But that is a personal thing rather than a societal thing. I like being old! Except arthritis. That sucks. I love having grandchildren. I like being able to balance my checkbook after 40 years of failing at it. I like knowing how to say no. (a skill I needed for years) And I like being able to look at a person and kind of size them up and know when to give a wide berth.

But I wish I could roller skate and ride a bike and sit and talk to my dad again. And eat fried chicken without feeling like death was around the corner.

[ThatsMyBarack]

116. How could you ever watch TV....?

....without a 48-inch plasma screen? Also, how could TV possibly be watchable with rabbit-ear antennae and only three major networks? Oh, yeah, you had UHF stations, too, right? At least the ones the rabbit ears could tune in....

[snappyturtle]

136. Are you being sarcastic? I really can't tell. I was born in 1947...

my childhood was ideal. We got a TV set in 1952. We didn't have a lot to watch but it was fun when we did. Other time was spent playing softball in the streets, backyard badminton, croquet, catching fireflies, fishing,ice skating at the city parks, swimming, going to the library, camping out in the backyard, playing "house", roller skating on the sidewalks(!),playing 78's and 45's on the family Hi-Fi, board games, so many things to do. I think what I liked the most was that we had freedom to do many things without constant parental supervision because times were safer. We had a city bus system to go to the movies or we could ride our bikes almost anywhere....we could trick or treat without fear of being poisoned, drive-in movies was a family treat if the family piggy bank had enough coins in it. At least health care back then was affordable. I lived in a city of 150,000 and knew of one polio case and one girl who was mauled by the family's pet German Shepard. I think the massive immunizations kids take today isn't what it's cracked up to be.

No, TV was not my life and I will say most of the crap of TV today is just that HOWEVER, I truly love the History channel, Science channel, PBS stuff like that....that's an improvement.

[rudy23]

117. This seems like an e-mail meant to prepare us for the aftermath of deregulation

As in --"Walk it off, America!"

[mitchum]

195. Yes indeed

[MistressOverdone]

287. Elaborate?

I don't quite catch your point.

[rudy23]

300. All of these chain emails have a subtle political point. The point of this one seems to be

to get people in the mindset that all these horrible chemicals that are now allowed in our food supply shouldn't be a big deal. This nicely counters the recent stories we've been hearing about cutbacks at the FDA, and beef companies that refuse to allow testing for Mad Cow disease.

I think the email covers an all-encompassing message against regulation--telling us that, in the old days, people wallowed in toxins all day long, and it didn't hurt them, so stop your whining!

Notice the email isn't accompanied by any graphs or data that shows us how much life expectancies have increased since "the good ol' days", and no data to show how much more common it was then to die of toxic poisoning than it did once we started paying attention to those sorts of things.

I can appreciate that it still takes a lot of readers, even pro-regulation Dems, back to a time where we weren't so afraid of every little molecule of a toxin, but the email reads exactly like all the other emails in this category that are crafted, and sent out for more nefarious purposed. I've been getting them a lot lately.

[MistressOverdone]

303. Ah, I see

and you make a good point. I do think the OP writer was not looking at it from that level. As a senior citizen, I can see the yearning for what seems like a simpler time. (and of COURSE it was simpler, we were KIDS!)

There is no doubt that regulation can (usually) is a good, even great thing. For example, I heartily endorse seat belt laws.

On a broader level, though, this makes me think. The right is always coming down hard against governmental regulation. And yet, they have the rep (well-deserved, I think) of expecting a lot of self-regulation, particularly when it comes to social issues, sex, etc. And the dems appear to be
very interested in fostering more and better regulation for some things, but want no governmental interference in other aspects of their lives. It is kind of a paradox, isn't it? It would appear that neither "side" is really opposed to regulation...where their differences are is as relates to WHAT should be regulated?

[rudy23]

329. I definitely don't think the OP saw it that way--they probably related, like I do, to the idea

of not living in fear of our environments. I can definitely relate to that.

[MistressOverdone]

334. Yes, we can take it too far

like all the caution signs printed everywhere, which of course have their origin in the courtroom.

[onecent]

119. K & R, Yes those WERE the days. Thanks for the memories. n/t

[Subdivisions]

121. Your essay has brought back

the fondest memories of my life. You and I could have been best friends for you have described my childhood just as you had been right there with me.

Thank you for reminding me of the good old days!

[jgraz]

122. My favorite part?

Was when my grandpa had to start his own business because nobody would hire a Sicilian Catholic -- even one that was a decorated war veteran.

Those really were the good ol' days. What crap.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

127. Why stop there? Let's bring back "blood letting"!

Remember when people hadn't even HEARD of germs? Ahhh, those were the good ol' days.

And part of the reason there were no "dysfunctional families" is because people were ashamed. My mom and her brothers and sisters got the shit beat out of them by their father. They were taught that that was normal. My grandma was also abused. Society told her to "stand by her man".

[piesRsquare]

165. And forced sterilization!

Ahhh, the good ol' days of government eugenics programs, where the so-called "mentally ill" and disabled were sterilized against their will!

[AngryAmish]

219. "3 generations of imbeciles are enough"

[Sapere aude]

128. It seems like we all can remember things in a different way.

I had some good times as a kid in the 50's and 60's but I was also aware of the poverty around me and that others didn't have it as good as I did. I didn't know we were poor also until I saw what my father made each week.

I learned that the world and life isn't fair.

[nashville_brook]

129. lets deconstruct --

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning...My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting ecoli.

no job for mom other than cutting chicken, chopping eggs and feeding kids -- nice anti-feminist sentiment -- i'm sure he enjoyed that, but what about "mom"?

We all took gym, not PE...

maybe if you would better fund schools with local taxes, our kids could have PE as well. as if "physical education" is The New Math.

and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries...

wonder if can he recall any activity because, even a walk around in a pair of Chuck Taylors is enough to have me in pain.

Flunking gym was not an option...

kids these days are pussies.

we all sang the national anthem

SANG THE NATIONAL ANTHEM...of course, the reason we are flunking PE is b/c we aren't patriotic enough. btw -- not surprising, but nostalgia-guy never mentions academics as a moral value -- just PE.


and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

wag of the finger for our culture of permissiveness where punishment has no meaning!


Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

nurse uniforms are hot

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

no one these days has anything to be proud of (and corollary) no one accomplishes anything anymore

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

technology and media are evil.

where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit

real men love germs and swelling.


We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites,

all kids really need is a pile of gravel.

...and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome... got our butt spanked.

kids aren't hit enough after getting hurt these days.


We didn't act up at the neighbor's house both because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

kids REALLY need to be BEAT around more.

...Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house! Instead, she picked him up and swatted him

trial lawyers are EVIL (and likely liberal). oh, and beat your kid some more.

not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.

see, if you don't acknowledge how fucked up you are, then, you can just hit your kid some more with impunity.

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

anger, depression and suicidal tendencies were our friends!

everyone who disagrees is a pussy.

[bvar22]

137. Nice deconstruction.........

.....REALLY Nice!
:patriot:

[Zuiderelle]

226. Excellent deconstruction.

:thumbsup:

[renie408]

130. Can't there be some kind of balance?

Why is everybody so black and white? Yes, modern safety advances are good things. And deserved self-esteem is a damned good thing. But there has to be some middle ground between protecting kids from the 0.005% chance of injury they have from doing XXXX without a chest protector, elbow pads and a helmet and ignoring them. And is undeserved self-esteem EVER a good thing? I KNOW I have read studies which said that the movement to raise self-esteem without raising accomplishment that began awhile back has had disastrous effects on many young people. Do good and you can feel good about it. Sit around and do nothing and...I don't think you should feel so good about that.

I don't *think* I am a conservative fundamentalist who wants to go back to the days of Jim Crow, I just think there WERE good things about times past. ALL times past had some good things about them. And some really horrible things. Same with now. There are some pretty horrible things happening now. And some pretty damn good things. Can't we try to keep the good things and ditch the bad things?? And can't we look back and prior, simpler times with fondness even as we acknowledge the needed advances that have been made?

[Matariki]

156. I agree that we all shouldn' t go about in bubble wrap

and we should embrace a bit of risk in our lives.

As far as the self esteem thing goes, YES, children should definitely have their self-esteem fostered. What are you thinking, that it's a cookie or something. Self esteem leads to people making healthy decisions for themselves, which in turn allows people to achieve things. You're looking at it in the wrong order.

And this doesn't address a lot of the unfortunate sentiment in the OP's list. All the nostalgia for 'swatting' kids for instance, and I agree with the person who feels it's just an apologia for non-regulation.

[renie408]

323. I checked the definition of 'self esteem' to make sure I was getting it right

and it gave these two definitions:

1. a realistic respect for or favorable impression of oneself; self-respect.
2. an inordinately or exaggeratedly favorable impression of oneself.


I am all for #1, but I think #2 is a problem.

[MistressOverdone]

289. After many, many years

in the classroom I have to say that undeserved self-esteem is the biggest problem I face today. We are so afraid of destroying self-esteem that we tell kids (I am guilty, too) that they are doing a great job when really, it is mediocre. Then they get out in the world and find out that bosses and customers don't quite agree. I do think it is an area we need to be more moderate in. Let kids earn their self-esteem, but be ready with the praise when it is warranted. Some old-time parents went too far in the other direction: you'd spoil a kid if you praised him/her.

[Fleshdancer]

140. For most people, growing up is always better than being a grown up

Granted there are certain kids who have it tough from day one, but for the rest of us, childhood is blissful ignorance. As adults, it's up to us to figure out how much fear we'll let in so here are Gloria's rules for living the adult life you want:


1. Cut your chicken and your eggs too without bleaching anything. Then throw the knife in that dishwasher you didn't have as a kid.

2. Defrost that burger on the counter and eat it raw if you want. Or, defrost it in that lovely microwave you didn't have as a kid.

3. Swim in the lake. People of all ages still do it.

4. Give up your cell phone. If you're not a doctor or a drug dealer, why in the hell do you still have a pager? give that up too if you want. These items are a choice, not a requirement.

5. There's no rule that says you can't buy keds shoes. Go for it. Feel free to not buy expensive shoes for your children either.

6. Kids still sing the national anthem and detention is still a bad thing so there's no need to worry about those pressing issues. We will all live another day knowing this.

7. I don't get the school nurse thing. Schools still have nurses...is it the hat thing? Do school nurses need more hats?? Fine, I'm capable of compromse...hats for all school nurses!

8. You have the right to feel whatever you want about yourself whether you've accomplished something or not. Love yourself, loathe yourself...no one but you can make you feel anything so don't put your hangups on the shoulders of society.

9. Breaking News: Parents are not required to indulge little Billy and Tracy. Don't buy them the TV's and the Nintendo's and the ipods and they WILL find something else to entertain themselves with. I know it sounds strange, but humans are still capable of having fun with a bat and a ball....even American kids. Better yet, give them chalk and show them a sidewalk...it's mind blowing.

10. "Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting?" Um, I thought the point was that life was better back then. Regardless, social services will not take your kids away for not sterilizing a bee sting. I promise.

11. "We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked." So this isn't about how life use to be better? I'm confused now. Well if you can find a vacant construction site, then go crazy for all I care...different strokes for different folks I guess.

12. "Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat." Riiight. I want the name and phone number of this fictional mother.

13. Why is it that I can't read one thing about the "good ol' days" without reading how adults use to spank kids all day? Seriously, what is that? I'm starting to think there was some sort of underground kid spank fetish in the 1950's. I'm not sure why spanking made things better back in the day though. That has yet to be fully explained to me.

14. The original list is leading me to believe that all mothers today are suing everyone and everything they can for a quick buck. As a mom of a 7 yr old I'm proud to say I have never sued anyone and my child is having a better life because I'm not suing! In fact, the majority of kids in America also have non suing moms so the original list needs to shut the hell up about moms already. (and don't think I haven't noticed how fathers have not been insulted once in this insanity, only us moms...that's classy)

15. If someone tells you your family is dysfunctional, most likely this information is coming from either your brother or your sister. Sometimes it comes from an outspoken In-law. Choose to ignore it if you want. You have that option.

16. Life was sooooo much better before the realization of mental health. Yep. REAL fun. Too bad you have to go to those anger management classes but society has decided your involvement in that weird kid spank ring was just too aggressively odd. Oh, and you can't beat your wife anymore. Sorry. As for those group group therapy classes...you only have your brother-in-law to blame since he was the one that claimed your family was dysfunctional in the first place. I told you to ignore him but you just wouldn't listen.

[Zuiderelle]

227. The past 25+ years of my life have been FAR better than the first 18.

I guess there's something to look back on nostalgically after all. :)

[napi21]

141. WOW! What in the world is wrong with you people?

I posted (what I thought was) a cute step back in history to the days where life was simpler, and at least in my case, much more carefree. 140 posters almost all think I'm for child abuse, beating women, owning slaves, and every other bad thing that existed 50+ years ago.

Talk about people who always see the glass as half empty!!!!! GEEESSSSHHHH

[Az]

144. When you post something like this in a progressive political forum

You have to keep in mind that we have a tradition of working to improve the world. That means as we look back we see where we have come from and how things have improved. So when someone says things used to be better it is more in line with conservative thinking where all the changes and advances are dismissed as pointless or worse.

I think people understand what you were tying to suggest but too many people have struggled and paid dearly for the advances we have made to dismiss them by looking back and saying "Wasn't it nice back then?

I am reminded of a Unitarian Universalist(ultra liberal church) event I once attended. It was at the general assembly (big annual nationwide meeting). We were also celebrating the 200th year aniversary of Thomas Jefferson. In honor of Jefferson the organizers planned a party. They decided to make it a period costume party. They sort of forgot that the African Americans of that particular period were .... well lets just say there would be a drastic difference in the costumes.

[dweller]

178. and sometimes

the cobwebs just need sweeping. There is a bit of silk in the threads. Regardless, sweeping them out and contemplating the connections can be cleansing.

obviously, it's not pc. But, it's the cleansing and release.

my 2c.
dp

[fishwax]

184. especially when the "looking back" is with a deliberate and distinctive hostility to elements of

that progress, things like environmental awareness, public safety regulations, awareness of child abuse, etc.

[MistressOverdone]

291. Here's a question for you, though

In today's progressive world, can you think of any examples where we have gone backwards, lost progress (if that is grammatically correct?) or just plain screwed up as a society?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

149. That chain letter was mind-boggingly out of touch and naive.

Did you even read the thing?

Sheesh.

[JoePhilly]

151. HA ... really!

I was going to post that I don't think it was "better" back then, just different. We look back on youth and the ways it helped form us, with a sense of what we know now, and what we didn't know then. For many of us, our parents recalled a youth with no TV. How primitive.

I try to enjoy the now, the cell phone, the PC games, RSS feeds, the ability to trade thoughts on a forum like this one. And I look back on my "simpler time", often as a way to draw contrasts for my kids. I want them to not only imagine a world that looks primitive to them (like 6 hour drives in a van with no DVD player), but to then also imagine what's to come.

We had some "good times" back then ... but change is exciting :-)

[mrcheerful]

157. TV? We had a 12" on a rolling TV stand that could pick up ABC and NBC well, CBS you had to fight

the rabit ears in just the right position and fine tune it with the channel tuner, remember the dial had a knob with a fine tuner ring. Nothing like being one of the advanced families who only had a 6 party phone line, which meant arguing with some smart ass teen talking to her boy friend when mom heard of a death in the family or an emergency came up. Try an 8 hour drive in the back of a station wagon with a bad exhust system, oh yeah the good old days when cars only had AM radio's with one cracked speaker blaring country music, so dad didn't have to listen to 6 kids in the back, lol.

[Matariki]

160. You want to know why - because that list is a blaring load of crap

I'm sure you are a good person and you don't advocate child abuse, wife beating and racism but really, while you think that list is a cute trip down nostalgia lane it's obvious you haven't given it very deep thought.

Perhaps you should think about WHY so many people are reacting this way instead of just asking 'what's wrong with us people'??

[napi21]

164. You're right I didn't put a lot of deep thought into it, but after you

posted this I went back a re-read my op. I guess I'm just stupid because I still don't see anything in it that advocates anything bad. We really DID only hae ONE cutting board, and I still do today! If the neighbor kid is in my house and doing something he shouldn't be doing I'm going to call him on it. I DO think it was a better time when kids played outside and used their imagination to make up fun games to play. I think it's crazy that people who have active energenitic kids put them on riddlin because they don't know how to deal with them. And it really DOES seem like at least half the country is on Prozac or some other med like it!

Where in all of that does it say anything wrong?

I understand some people had very bad experiences as a child, and they certainly wouldn't want to go back to those days in their case, but I really don't believe that was the situation for EVERYONE or even the majority. That doesn't mean that people who did have a reasonably decent childhood can't tell people that life really was simpler and better a long time ago.

[lukasahero]

208. "life really was simpler and better a long time ago." FOR YOU

Perhaps the "majority" did have a lovely life back then - it sure as hell was simpler and better for straight white men but please please please try to consider that it might not have been as simple and wonderful for a large number of people - those who are/were not straight, white men.

Gays could not live the lives they were born to live. Women did not have options for the way they would live their lives. People of color were legally second-class citizens.

I had a wonderful childhood and consider myself greatly blessed. That said, I wanted to play little league but couldn't - because I was a girl. I remember a petition coming around my neighborhood when the first black family moved in (my mother slammed the door in their face). MY remembrance of my childhood is great but my understanding of how the rest of the world lived back then is clear - life was not better and simpler FOR ALL. It was limiting and suffocating FOR MANY.

[fishwax]

269. I want to take issue with something you said

Actually, I agree with what you said :) :applause:

But I did want to say, in respect to "it sure as hell was simpler and better for straight white men," that I have no interest in returning to an era where women have no expectation of input or equality in a relationship, etc., or where my gay friends have to live in total isolation and denial, or where minorities are separate and hopelessly unequal.

My point is just that the increased participation and visibility of minority-status groups in recent groups has enriched ALL of our lives and our culture (even though some bigots would rather go back to the way things were). So I don't believe that life was better for straight white men at all, except by standards which drastically miss the mark, as far as I'm concerned :) (I'm not trying to imply, of course, that straight white males were victimized in the way that other groups were, but rather that racism, sexism, and heterosexism are damaging to society as a whole, and it's up to all people of conscious to resist it.)

Anyway, I thought your post was great and just wanted to add that perspective :hi:

[lukasahero]

276. Excellent addition/correction to my thoughts

And thank you for it. I suppose that's something I should have remembered myself - that we ALL lose when there are those among us who are not free to live their lives as fits them - even those who don't recognize their loss.

"So I don't believe that life was better for straight white men at all, except by standards which drastically miss the mark," Hear hear! I guess for some it's a matter of what those standards are. Thanks for reminding me of that. :hi:

[renie408]

325. Are you saying that, therefore, since life back in the day was bad for some people

no reference to life having been better in some ways should be made?? That seems a little fucked up to me.

[JANdad]

163. I understand where you are coming from...

Sometimes as an adult, I miss the blissful ignorance of my childhood. My parents were not well off so I did not have a lot of "things", but I was happy. My dad spakned me way too much (I was the oldest, read; guinna pig), but I know he loved (loves) me dearly. I am sorry that my kids can not play as I did: out until dark, doing god only knows what...

I do think that knee pads, helmets and so on for a bike with training wheels going down the driveway or sidewalk is extremly funny (silly), but marketing has a way of making people spend money on goofy stuff...

[Book Lover]

167. Hello! It was more carefree because you were a *kid*

Did you think your parents felt "carefree" when they were raising you?

[lukasahero]

207. I suspect

you are (were) a white middle-class male. Not that there's anything wrong with that ;) but if that is the case, perhaps you have a different view of the past than some of us who don't fit that category because the past WAS different for you.

You point out why your attempt at presenting the past as a simpler, gentler time here failed: "at least in my case". But we didn't all experience "your case". Some of us have a considerably different "case" and your attempt to glorify the past is a kick in the teeth to us. "I got mine, sorry you were screwed" seems to be how your post reads to some of us. Sorry if the reactions here didn't meet your expectations but a lot of people here don't have reason to hold the past in such high regard as you.

Rather than bellowing about how the rest of us are being so negative, perhaps you could give some consideration to what people are saying and take off the rose-colored glasses about what life used to be like for OTHERS. I'm glad you had a wonderful childhood. Cherish it. But it's time to grow up and understand that what made life great for you as a child was not equally doled out to all. Empathy is an aquired skill.

[MistressOverdone]

290. LOL

You should have KNOWN better!

[cynatnite]

150. Oh, yeah, those were great days!

Two childhood friends murdered, teachers laughing while giving swats to students (very common in my school), and dysfuncational family wasn't used, but we knew how fucked up our family was. Grandfather was abusive and an alcoholic, mother had two divorces, moving from place to place (seven schools in six years), father left to find his fortunes only to return on occasion in need money and Elvis died.

Yeah, great days I yearn for :sarcasm:

[MistressOverdone]

292. Wait. Elvis died in 77.

Personally, I was talking back in the 40's and 50's.

I'm the first to agree the 70's SUCKED BIG TIME!

[dysfunctional press]

158. i still don't understand- how did we EVER survive without bicycle helmets

and driving around in cars with wood and metal dashboards, and no seat belts, shoulder straps, or airbags.

[prolesunited]

176. Some didn't

I don't have statistics for 1950, but here's some more recent data:

*784 bicyclists died on US roads in 2005. 92% of them died in crashes with motor vehicles (720).
* About 540,000 bicyclists visit emergency rooms with injuries every year. Of those, about 67,000 have head injuries, and 27,000 have injuries serious enough to be hospitalized.
* Bicycle crashes and injuries are under-reported, since the majority are not serious enough for emergency room visits.
* 1 in 8 of the cyclists with reported injuries has a brain injury.
* Two-thirds of the deaths here are from traumatic brain injury.
* A very high percentage of cyclists' brain injuries can be prevented by a helmet, estimated at anywhere from 45 to 88 per cent.
* Many years of potential life are lost because about half of the deaths are children under 15 years old.

[dysfunctional press]

192. i've never worn a helmet while riding a bike, and i don't intend to start...

i'll take my chances.

[prolesunited]

266. Never said you should

I just posted statistics.

Betcha this guy is glad he did:
We often have heated discussions about the benefits of wearing bike helmets (most recent here) but Ryan Lipscomb of Madison, Wisconsin is alive to tell of a truck running right over his head. "I didn't see it coming, but I sure felt it roll over my head. It feels really strange to have a truck run over your head."
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/cyclists_head_r.php

[eridani]

180. Statistically, quite a few more people didn't survive

http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/disasters/19th20th_accidents.html

[madfloridian]

161. You are right. We did not live in fear of everything.

The society was not as reactionary, and a spanking or the use of a switch did wonders for behavior.

I never remember being so afraid to eat seafood, afraid to eat beef, worried about chicken. Hey, even spinach is dangerous now.

It just never used to be that way.

Ignore the responses from some here. I fear they don't understand that there was a time that was different.

Not better in every way, but real. And in all my school years, I only remember one kid who acted up like so many do now.

[trotsky]

244. There is a reason for the apparent infrequency of food poisioning.

The more deadly variety of E. coli is a direct result of the overuse of antibiotics as well as feeding cattle a grain-based diet. Raw beef was a delicacy at one time, and as long as it was reasonably fresh you were in no danger.

[madfloridian]

162. This was a nice post with gross over reaction to it.

Spanking is not child abuse, or at least it was not just a few years ago. It started with Dr. Spock....and it went downhill.

Thanks for the thread, and don't let them get to you.

Life was very different. It was far better in many ways. And don't start on medical advances, because so many now don't have access.

I believe where I grew up near to where I live now was far more liberated and peaceful and sensible than the fundamentalistic area where I live now. It is almost hateful here.

Things have changed.

[DemBones DemBones]

168. I knew you were just enjoying remembering your childhood, not

saying that society was perfect then. Society isn't perfect now, either. I hope today's kids can enjoy their childhood as much as we did.

It was wonderful to be able to ride bicycles and motorcycles without helmets, feeling the wind in your hair.

Why didn't we get ourselves killed riding bikes and motorcycles and skating without helmets? Nobody I knew ever got anything but scrapes and bruises from falls. I don't know why but we didn't.

Why didn't we get sick when our mothers defrosted meat on the kitchen counter? Safer meat perhaps? Maybe because farmers didn't feed dead cows to live ones? Maybe because farmers cared and giant agri-business doesn't?

All I know is that it was fun being a kid in the Fifties. The Bomb was scary and polio was scary but we still had fun.

Before I was even in school, my parents had made me aware of social inequality, that segregation was wrong, that we had treated Native Americans terribly. I always wanted things to be better and I worried about those problems, sometimes too much.

But being a kid was fun, despite all the social problems, the Bomb, polio.

[eridani]

182. And don't forget the income distribution

The benefits of increased productivity went to everybody, not just those at the top.

[Imagevision]

170. The one thing that never changed was the senseless killings in the middle east

I was about 5 years old when my parents bought our first black & white Television and one day I thopught there was a movie on my dad was watching and it turneed out to be the evening news, when I asked my dad why theyc were fighting? he replied; "they've always been fighting one another and they always will.

[MistressOverdone]

294. Your post reminded me of something funny

even though it is not a funny post by any means.

But when my daughter was about 6 she heard on the radio someone say that 10 South American guerillas died today. It took me a long time to convince her they weren't apes.

But come to think of it, it is a bit odd she was more upset about apes than people! But that's the way little girls are, I guess, when they are very young.

[dweller]

173. We had a sawdust pile

or at least that what we called it. It must have been 30-40 ft tall. In the middle of the woods.
We'd jump off of it into the sawdust and land like on ... sawdust.

The trees in the meadow were Pecan trees. Most grew upright, a few were bent, one in particular was horizontal. You could walk up it's trunk. That's where the kids i knew would gather, after the sawdust pile.

There were ponies the farmer/landowner had on his property. We left them alone other than feeding them some apples and bits of candy which they either wanted or not. I think most of us were not familiar with such large 'pets' and kept our distance, but they were magnificent. Small compact horses, we called them ponies. By the time i was driving a car, i forgot about the ponies.

But you made me remember the childhood, in my neighborhood. And i never worried about my food. I was fed something...i was known as 'the picky eater'. LOL.
My parents gardened. My job was weeding. I had to distinguish the weeds from the plants, and they trusted me. I still have that skill. :shrug: We still share plants.

If i had to pick a memory from the earliest of my memories, i'd pick 2.
One, i'm peeking into a basement window while my mom and sister are setting up my birthday cake. It was a train cake with an engine, and two cars and caboose. In chocolate. I can almost taste it. i was 3.

The other was 64. November. I came home to see my mom crying and vacumming the floor while the TV was announcing JFK's death. They sent us home from school. My buddy Joey put his hand through a glass in a door at school that day, and then we were sent home. We didn't know then what we growing up into, nor how the memories would affect us now, but they do.

thanks for the memories, bittersweet that they have become.
dp

[gauguin57]

179. Our dog stayed in his hay-filled, insulated doghouse most of the time.

He knew not to leave the yard, so he never had to even be tied up. He came into one small area of the family room when it was brutally hot or cold. Never cared to have the run of the house.

Most of the time, he lived outside, happy as a freaking clam.

And no one called the SPCA or the dog-control officer on us ... CUZ EVERYONE ELSE'S DOGS LIVED IN THE YARD, TOO! All happy as clams.

Never had to worry about using your lunch break to let the dog out to poop.

[Jim Warren]

183. Nostalgia

It actually reminds me a lot of my own upbringing, I'm guessing from many replies a not so common experience.

Still, I wonder what the future holds in these regards, often I am not optimistic.

[misanthrope]

187. Yeah, the good old days with polio. Mmm, boy!**nm

**

[ToeBot]

189. The only good thing about the good ol' days, was being too naive to know what was really going on.

[MistressOverdone]

296. Well, we thought we were quite

progressive back in the "good old days." Yes, we had polio, but we also had antibiotics and we remembered (or at least our parents did) the days when half a family was gone in a week to a disease like scarlet fever that antibiotics could cure. And after WWII, everything seemed possible. It was a time of great optimism that for many of us came to an abrupt halt on 11/22/1950, which just happened to be my 13th birthday.

So it's all relative.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

191. Yeah, suburbia was idyllic. I'll tell you how heavenly it was.

In the burb I lived in, about a mile away, in a very similar neighborhood to mine, the biggest mass murderer up to that time was killed by one of his accomplices. This was in 1973. Over 30 boys were killed and the cops had ignored the problem as "just runaways". They've still never identified all the victims. The accomplice confessed to shooting the main guy to keep him from torturing and killing more boys, and he's serving life in Huntsville. His name is Elmer Wayne Henley. The older guy he shot was Dean Corll. The house was on Lamar Street.

Then a few years later, in the next town over, Deer Park, another suburb, Ronald Clark O'Bryan murdered his son on Halloween night with a cyanide-laced Pixy Stix. It was mere accident that his daughter also didn't get the cyanide-laced Pixy Stix. He did it for an insurance policy. So he destroyed Halloween for years. He was executed in Huntsville.


Oh yeah, suburbia was just idyllic. The hell it was.

[Arugula Latte]

198. WHAT? Another serial killer with the middle name WAYNE?

:wtf:

Is there some sort of law that if your middle name is Wayne you must grow up to be a serial killer?

[Jim Warren]

199. Well those were horrible things

but they could have happened anytime, including now. Suburbia came later after the fifties and brought change to town life in America.

I think people see school shootings like we've seen an abundance of and see that as a modern perversion. A group of friends and I used to hunt before high school and left our guns in my buddy's car at school. Can't imagine that today.

[mitchum]

200. I've always been fascinated by the Corll/Hendley/Brooks murders...

particularly the way that Corll drew the other two into his sick pathology. How Brooks and Henley brought friends over as victims because Corll would give them money. Unbelievable moral depravity. Also, how the disappearances weren't investigated because of the times and the neighborhood...

[MistressOverdone]

297. Again, I personally

was thinking back about a quarter of a century earlier. I remember those murders. What an awful time. Those were one of the first mass murders I remember hearing about, kind of my first "what is this world coming to moment." I was married by '73, though.

[Dastard Stepchild]

197. This isn't dramatically far off from being a late 70s, early 80s kid...

save a few points. I had a very nice childhood as well. But that said, I'm not going to knock the field of public health for its important contributions to population health and safety. There are some things we are better off knowing, and discussions of food safety and injury prevention top my list. I spent some time as a social worker in a hospital... these improvements (particularly the injury prevention guidelines) do help keep youngins safer.

[Mythsaje]

204. My two cents

When I was a kid we could play kickball in a vacant lot, or play on a farmer's haystack, or ride our horses through the wilderness without a thought about it. Ride our bikes without helmets and all.

These days kids play video games and surf the net and eat and get obese because no one can afford to let them play in their vacant lot or on their hay bales. We've, in a way, forced them to become more sedentary for their own safety.

And, yeah, I'm sure there was food poisoning back then too. But, on the other hand, those of us who pay attention also know this affection for anti-bacterial this and that to the extremes isn't good for us either.

It may have been simpler in some ways. But it wasn't better. Just different.

[Blue_Roses]

222. Yeah, those were the good ol' days...I remember

having to be inside when the street lights came on or else...and riding my bike all over the neighborhood. And the classic was trying to fry an egg on the hot concrete in the dead of summer:)

[AngryAmish]

223. I guess the older generation never changes

Except the young people have gotten a lot smarter then them. We used to think people lost IQ when they got older. Then it was realized that young folks on the whole are just a lot smarter.

Yes,I also did lots of foolish things as a young person. But by any reasonable objective standard things are better now. Look at the average plot complexity of Dragnet v. The Sopranos. Which one makes for more compelling entertainment? Life expectancy is shooting up.

The reason you don't remember getting e-coli is because it was not widely known then.. However you do remember getting "stomach flu" and the like. And you have committed a classic logical mistake: you are ignoring the hidden evidence. The ones who got real sick were buried.

[MistressOverdone]

298. Actually, I learned in a class

on gifted children that the average person adds 15 IQ points during the course of his/her life.

The exception to this is gifted females, who tend to dumb down and regress towards the norm. Probably has something to do with compliance and conformity.

[bleedingheart]

233. you have a selective memory...

My mother (born in 1932) always washed the cutting boards after cutting meat and never mixed meat with raw veggies that would be served raw...

her father was a butcher...he told her not to mix meat and veggies...and he died in 1940

One of my elementary school playmates was severely injured and almost killed for lack of a helmet...he spent an entire summer in the hospital after his bike hit a rock and he went flying off his bike...over his handle bars...he slid a few feet on his face and fractured his skull..broke his nose and suffered other injuries...if not for a neighbor who happened to witness this horror...he might have died...

I prefer pools over lakes after spent summers at a lake that would give you a rash if you didn't scrub off at home afterwards...

Back in the 80's I flunked gym and it kept me off the honor roll (I was a big geek...) and I refused to climb the rope to the top of the gym roof...telling the teacher that I didn't have the arm strength and that I would get killed if I fell... I also remember that it was the same stupid gym teacher who made a kid with a back brace (a huge contraption) play basketball even though he was really uncoordinated...he fell on another kid accidentally and actually injured that kid with his back brace...oh that interesting and the gym teacher did get in trouble for it...because he was trying to make the poor sick kid "more manly"...

there were dysfunctional families...but the name back then was "those crazy folks down the street" ..."the oddballs down the road"...
and they didn't get help for their "oddball behavior" so they generally made life worse for themselves and others...

[AX10]

304. Gym teachers: Oye vey!

I never cared for sports myself. The coaches are too "caveman".

[laylah]

241. Or leaving

the house early on a summer day, hopping on our bikes (sans helmet and kneepads) and heading to our favorite fishing spot. "Be careful and I'll see you at supper" were the words I'd hear my mom say as I headed out the door.

[MilesColtrane]

246. My best reason for nostalgic feelings...

When a 15 year old Cybill Shepherd was my babysitter.
*sigh*

[MasonJar]

247. Wow! I could have written this post. Did y'all play kick the can and

climb apple trees and act like Tarzan? Did you play jacks and pick up soft ball and roller skate down a sidewalk hill and turn just in time to not go into the street? Did you and your brother ride your bikes on the sidewalk (even the policeman told you to get off) because your mom said you had better not ride in the road, and she was more in charge than any anonymous cop. Skip rope or hop scotch anyone? Thanks for revving up these wonderful memories.

[JoePhilly]

310. Yes ... all of these, and ...

Tag. and also "air-tag"
Kill the man (variation of football, all against one)
21, 31, and rough house (all against one basketball)
Milk Crate baskteball (Square crate nailed to tele-poll
Marco polo
Catching lightening bugs
Bikes on sidewalks for sure, ramps too (little ones)
Wiffle ball
Jacks
Home made skate boards (using broken skates)

And Mom knew EVERYONE, so if you did something bad, the news beat you home. :-)

[LeftHander]

248. All that went away when TV became more important than real life....

We wrecked our local economies with malls, mini and mega and with freeways and our unstoppable consumption of automobiles.

We were convinced that the automobile was part of our heritage and culture it was truely part of being American. We were told this by marketing people and we liked it.

We diverted traffic away from city centers to line the pockets of greedy developers and corrupt local politicians.

We killed public transportation projects and allowed our rail corridors to rot.

We built new super highways without ever considering mass transit or 5 dollar gasoline.

Yours and my parents, (the greatest selfish generation) did that and we went along with only realizing too late that the rug had been pulled out from under us.

Now WE are in charge....

So what are WE going to do about it?

[MistressOverdone]

299. Much wisdom in your post

Many of my happy memories had to do with being able to actually GO someplace without a car. We walked to school, the movies, "downtown" and church, even the library. We didn't need to wait for parents and after school sports you walked to and walked home from. No such thing as soccer moms! There weren't many parents at our Little League games. Just the coaches.

There is definitely something to what you say.

[AX10]

302. Europe has two things right. Healthcare and public transportation.

Add a third, they are very hesitant to get involved in any war.

Look at the big European cities such as London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, etc...
You have the city and a semi-suburban area that surrounds these cities for hundreds of miles. You have houses on half acre lots. That is suburbia for them. Because everyone is still relatively close, a mass transportation system remains viable. Outside of the metropolitan areas, you have the rural areas. Suburbia as we know it, is a distinctly American concept. A bad one at that.
Looking around I am not sold on the idea that cars (especially) SUV's and Chrysler sedans with "Hemi's" are needed. Not everyone in Europe has a car. The same with Asia. Also, there cars are not monstrous like ours and 8-cylinders are not offered in most cases. It's 3-4-6 cylinders, that's all you need.

[MistressOverdone]

255. Oh, you bring back memories

Remember (ladies, now) having to spend a half hour IRONING your gym suit so you could stand at attention on Monday morning and not get demerits? Then we'd do really hard gym stuff like Slavic folk dancing.

About bike helmets..I suppose they are a good thing but damn, I'm glad I didn't have to wear one. I don't ever remember wiping out on my bike. And I lived my summer on skates, the kind you had to wear leather soled shoes with so they would stay on. No pads. I DO remember quite a few skinned knees.

I also remember the two next door neighbor kids dying of polio and their father being crippled by it. So there IS that...

[Vinca]

278. Don't forget bicycle helmets - there weren't any!

And no one said you had ADD or ADHD . . . you had "ants in your pants." Treatment: out the door to play baseball in the street. Once again, no helmets. How'd we survive?

[Matariki]

288. Oh really? I was given speed for my hyperactivity back in the 60's

so many people in this thread have no idea what they're talking about.

[Vinca]

295. I'm talking '50's. Howdy Doody time. nt

[Manifestor_of_Light]

313. I was given speed for my severe fatigue.

My mom was strung out on tranquilizers like many housewives. She and the crusty old family doctor decided that because I was tired all the time in high school, and came home from school and crashed every day for three hours, then I needed to take speed.

They gave me a scrip for Dexedrine and I took one. All day I felt like somebody was poking me in the ass with a fork to keep me awake. After the first day I refused to take any more, because it sure wasn't solving my serious fatigue problem.

I had hypothyroidism which hit me in junior high, and the doctor wasn't giving me enough thyroid to make me a normal teenager with a normal amount of energy. A lot of girls get hypothyroidism when they are in junior high or high school. It also causes brain fog, which is why I had teachers telling me I was lazy and stupid. As I said above, I scored 146 on a Stanford-Binet IQ test at the age of five, which is the score of one out of a thousand people. And it went up some more after that.

If they called me stupid, and I was smarter than 99.9% of the population, I just wonder what they called kids that were actually below average.

[gollygee]

315. Not everyone did survive

When I was a kid, a neighbor kid died of a closed head injury falling off his bike. It did happen. Not all the time, but it isn't that big of a deal to wear a helmet, is it? My daughter wears a helmet every time she's on her bike.

[OzarkDem]

344. And a lot of those kids w/ ADD

and learning disabilities ended up being treated badly by teachers and dropping out of high school.

Glad its better now and those kids have a chance to learn and succeed like others.

[StudentsMustUniteNow]

281. My generation sucks

Indebtedness, unpaid internships AFTER college, spiraling health care costs, demanufacturing, suicide terrorism, student apathy rather than solidarity...the list goes on...

You guys had it good, I think. I'd trade my generation for yours any day of the week.

[Matariki]

286. Damn. Your post is sad. These are the real issues.

I get really depressed thinking about how much debt my niece and nephew (and everyone of their generation) are saddled with just going to college. Huge debt that can never be written off through bankruptcy.

These are the real issues. Not whether 'kids these days' wear fucking bike helmets or not.

[zippy890]

301. No No No your generation does not suck!

My son just graduated from college - I am very heartened by what he & his friend/classmates were and are involved with. In fact they seem much more mature than I was at that age, have a good grasp of the challenges ahead and aiming toward doing things to make the world better; politically, environmentally.

plus the younger generation is much more tolerant about gay rights then we were ( my generation was, and is)

hats off to you young people - I love your energy, you humour and smarts!

[JoePhilly]

311. I'm in 40s now, and had TONS of debit out of college, but ...

Its paid off. Sucked paying it. Bought a house, refinaced it, payed it off. But I know own everything from the neck UP! I'm sure you will too.

And when I was a kid, every wednesday at noon, my elementary school tested the GIANT ALARM on the roof. The Alarm was in case the Soviets Nuked us. We practiced hiding under desks (like that would help). The alarm was soooo loud, that if you were in the school, or outside and within about 3 blocks of the school, you could not hear the person next to you talking. You'd stand and wait for it to stop. A weekly reminder that the Godless Commies were coming to kill us all.

[eridani]

318. It's true about college costs

I paid $3000 a year for tuition at a private college whose tuition is now $15,000 a year. And I had a state scholarship and National Defense Education Act loans at 3% to pay for it. Loans postponed if you went to grad school, and forgiven if you took certain kinds of teaching jobs.

The worst thing about my generation? Failing to preserve the New Deal and the habit of solid public investment in infrastructure for the next generations.

[AX10]

354. There is something called inflation.

[Bake]

293. And now for something completely different ...

There was no OSHA or worker's compensation, so if your parents got hurt at work, that was just tough stuff.

Let's see, many of our parents breathed asbestos fibers - the stuff was just about everywhere. Many of them worked around all sorts of toxic chemicals with no warning, no protection, and no benefits if they got sick from it.

If we or our parents bought a product that injured, maimed, or killed us, that was just tough, because we "assumed the risk" or were "contributorily negligent."

Most of us knew somebody that had a bike wreck and cracked his/her head on the pavement with no helmet and somehow never made it back to school.

Most of us knew the little Jewish kid who was left out of all the cool school Christmas/Easter activites. We didn't even know what Muslims were back then.

Some of our parents' generation took some drug called Thalidomide, which explained why their kids had one (or no) arm, one leg, no legs, etc.

What else ... the river (or was it Lake Erie) CAUGHT FIRE at Cleveland because it was so pulluted.

Yeah. It was a lot better back then.

Bake

[Manifestor_of_Light]

335. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire in the 70s.

I asked my uncle who lived in Akron about that, and he said, "ahhh, it doesn't happen that often!!!"

He was a real smartass. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[LSK]

308. I had a good childhood, but I do not assume everyone did

I just happened to be lucky to have been born to decent parents with a father who had a good union job.

But Im not foolish enough to believe everyone was that lucky. You should never judge the world based on your personal experiences because there are bound to be thousands or millions of people who did not experience what you did.

[Chico Man]

312. We ate peanut butter sandwiches

And for classroom parties brought in home bakes goods. (Seriously - my son's old public school banned all homemade goods from classroom parties, for liability purposes.. geez.)

[Horse with no Name]

350. Well if you had ever watched a child die

from an allergic reaction to a peanut maybe it wouldn't be such an inconvenience.

[gollygee]

356. When I was a kid, in the 70s,

my parents had friends whose son died of a peanut allergy. So it happened back then too. Though it does seem like it's more common now.

I certainly don't mind reading ingredients when I buy snacks for preschool to make sure there aren't nuts. How long does that take?

[Horse with no Name]

361. It does seem more common

and I honestly don't know why. The problem with an allergy to a peanut as opposed to most other things is the severity. Again I point out that most parents would probably take the effort to make sure there weren't any nuts...but it only takes one parent who isn't as vigilant to kill a child.
The thing with a peanut allergy is that many times just touching something that a peanut has touched can send a kid into anaphylaxis.
Those kids are very sensitive.
Here is a very good article:
http://www.allergicchild.com/peanut_allergy.htm
>>>>snip
Research reported in the April 1999 JACI (Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology) estimated that 1% of the population, or close to 3 million Americans, is allergic to peanuts or tree nuts. The JACI is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI). The prevalence of peanut allergies has doubled in the 5 years from 1997 to 2002 according to research reported in the December 2003 JACI, and researchers don’t really know why.

There is the thought that roasting peanuts, as we do in the USA makes them more highly allergenic versus boiling them as China does. There’s also the possibility that pregnant and nursing women who eat peanuts are passing the proteins on to their infants which increases the likelihood of the child developing a peanut allergy. Lastly, there is the supposition that our too clean houses don’t challenge our immune systems to fight off parasites, and instead they turn on themselves viewing a peanut protein as the enemy.

>>>snip
There has been work on a peanut vaccine, which has yet to be approved by the FDA. The July 2003 JACI reported on an important milestone in the development of a peanut vaccine for long-lasting protection against peanut induced anaphylaxis. Xiu-Min Li, MD from Mt. Sinai developed "genetically engineered" peanut proteins that no longer bind Immunoglobulin E (IgE), but retain T cell proliferation. It is the binding of the protein to IgE that can trigger severe reactions in sensitized individuals. Researchers found that injecting heat killed E coli containing the engineered proteins into mice was very effective in preventing a severe reaction to peanut. The engineered proteins may be used as a "peanut vaccine" which would safely elicit a protective immune response to peanut, without the fear of an allergic response.

>>>snip
Until a cure is found, the only “cure” for the peanut allergy is to stay away from all peanuts and peanut products. Read labels of EVERY food that your child eats, and all foods in your house. Re-read the labels each time you purchase a product, because manufacturing processes change continuously. Peanuts and peanut products show up in the most unsuspecting foods.


And then there is this:
http://www.foodallergy.org/Advocacy/labeling.html

A new food labeling law now requires food manufacturers to disclose in plain language whether products contain any of the top eight food allergens.

The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA), which took effect
January 1, 2006, mandates that foods containing milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, and soy must declare the food in plain language on the ingredient list or via:

* the word “Contains” followed by the name of the major food allergen (milk, wheat, or eggs for example); or

* a parenthetical statement in the list of ingredients, e.g., “albumin (egg)”.

Such ingredients must be listed even if they are present in colors, flavors, or spice blends. Additionally, manufacturers must list the specific nut or seafood that is used (e.g., almond, walnut, cashew; or tuna, salmon, shrimp, or lobster). While more than 160 foods have been identified as causing allergic reactions, the eight foods listed above cause 90% of food-allergic reactions.

FALCPA will certainly make label-reading easier for the millions of Americans living with food allergies. Keep in mind, however, that the law only applies to products labeled on or after January 1, 2006; depending on a product’s shelf life, it may take up to a year before all products list ingredients in simple language. Until then, continue to read all labels carefully and be on the lookout for scientific terms (i.e., “casein” for milk, or “albumin” for egg).

[Chico Man]

359. Good point,

But quite the strawman. Do you agree with the school board's decision to completely ban home baked goods? Perhaps it is better that we are serving our children baked goods with imported mystery ingredients, melamine, wheat gluten, from China, poisoning them over the long term?

I'm more comfortable knowing exactly what is in good I make, sans nuts. I don't trust corporations as much as you do.

[Horse with no Name]

360. The only strawman is your insinuation that I trust corporations more than the average parent

Well, that's just nuts.
I wholeheartedly agree with the decision of the school board. While YOU might be careful and diligent, another parent whose kid LOVES peanuts might end up thinking that "just a little will not hurt" and slip it in without intentions of harming anyone, or another one who isn't as vigilante at researching the ingredients might inadvertently put something in that was processed in the same plant where there are peanuts.
For those kids with peanut allergies, ONE SPECK of peanut dust is enough to trigger a deadly allergic reaction.

[Chico Man]

362. As might a corporation introduce a speck of peanut dust

From some imported ingredient from China.

And someone who is not allergic to peanut dust, yet is deadly allergic to bee-stings may be stung on the way home from school.

Who do we blame then?

A sterile environment is probably what is precipitating these allergy problems in the first place. Further isolation from all germs and allergens will only make the problems worse.

[tjwash]

330. **comes hobbling out the front door brandishing a cane** DAMN KIDS GET OUT OF MY YARD!!!

Damn...I'm old and crusty and I don't see the past in THAT rosy a colored glasses. All that old chain letter was missing was "uphill, in the snow, both ways, while getting beat with a leather strap. AND WE WERE GRATEFUL FOR IT!"

:rofl: Thanks...I needed the laugh today :rofl:

[leeroysphitz]

341. Or....

Maybe it was just different before you became ossified?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

345. Everybody didn't have a wonderful childhood.

Busting your bubble.

[wtmusic]

346. Wow...a simple reminiscence turns into a SuperSpankaramaFlameFest!

Best of all--we don't blame our shortcomings on being abused as kids, whether we were or not...

[walldude]

347. So my wife got this "post" in a mass e-mail...

apparently it's going around the internet. Either many people agree with your sentiment or you plagiarized it... Which is it?

[foo_bar]

363. "How did we ever survive the 15th to 19th Centuries?"

Mom had her nine babies delivered without the barber even washing his hands, but she didn't get childbed sickness.

Dad was a hatmaker and used raw mercury to press them into the molds. Nowadays people would try to link his eventual sickness and insanity to that.
(...)
We didn't get fresh in Church either, because if we did, we might be accused of demonic posession, and then face an exorcism or maybe even an Inquisitor. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door having an epileptic fit and falling over on the front stoop. Little did his Mom know that it was a medical condition. Instead, she told the priest, and we all know what happened to Little Donny then!

It was a neighborhood run amuck.

http://agonist.org/forum/how_did_we_ever_survive_childhood

[blues90]

364. there is certainly alot more hostility out there now and

pressure along with insecurity and competition just to get through the day . This country is lot more divided and it a rush . We have lost common curtesy and common sense along the way .

We have lost the media fairness and are forced to do many things that are not for our own good , loss of rights .

So it's not better today in these respects , also with so many workers doing jobs with low pay and no real interest the spirit and pride in ones work is gone . Work was part of life now it's just to pay the bills .

The spirit of community is almost dead , so you can have the new age of the new world order and the global economy and rat race gone out of control , the human was not designed to handle fast pace 24/7 pressure cookers .