Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tiffany bottoms on June 23, 2012 at 7:18pm

Believe it or not, most parents STILL spank. Very, very few don't. as you can see by your response, non-violent parenting is a very unpopular opinion. I have been more ridiculed for being a non-spanker than even being an open non-theist. why? Because people are good at justifying their bad behavior.

What are your sources for "the downward plunge in children's behavior pretty much coincides with YOUR hippy-dippy hit the kid, produce a criminal". By the way, I like how you said "your" making me personally responsible for the misbehavior of this decline.

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Permalink Reply by Unseen on June 23, 2012 at 7:29pm

Tiffany, I've LIVED through this period. I'm 65. This spare the rod thinking rolled out majorly in the 1970's and the kind of behavior these kids evidenced, and similar stuff, started happening (surprise, surprise!) 10-15 years later on and has been getting worse as those kids became parents. I'll be gone in a few decades and the parents who bought into that horse pucky will be living the hell they've created for themselves.

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Permalink Reply by Karen Lollis on June 23, 2012 at 7:34pm

Correlation is not causation. And every generation has complained about "kids these days" and their bad behavior. The truth is that the younger generations may have a different set of problems. Maybe they are 'worse' in some ways than we were. But they are also better in some ways - (in general) less racist, more atheist, more concerned about the environment, etc.

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Permalink Reply by Unseen on June 23, 2012 at 9:42pm

Correlation can certainly be evidence of a functional relationship. While there have always been badly behaved kids, today it seems bullying is rampant, disrespect of elders (even those charged with their care and protection), kids even in middle school are having sex sometimes right in school, virginal high school seniors are apparently as rare as hens teeth. These kids may be less racist and more concerned about the environment. However, I wouldn't wear their atheism as a badge of honor and suspect it's mostly theistic apathy: not believing in much of anything.

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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on June 24, 2012 at 9:16am

@Karen - I'm not sure which and it's not important enough to look up, but I recall one of the early Greek philosophers, some 300 years BCE, complaining about the "new generation." How mild is '50's Rock, compared with today's Rap? And yet some pieces, in the '50's, were actually banned from radio - it never ends.

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Permalink Reply by Karen Lollis on June 24, 2012 at 11:45am

Yep, the details change but the story remains the same.

According to American Decades: "Juvenile delinquency was considered a major social problem in the 1950s. Americans under the age of eighteen were committing serious crimes in growing numbers; their elders were horrified at the severity of the crimes and at the young criminals' disregard for authority."

And there's this:

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Permalink Reply by Unseen on June 24, 2012 at 12:34pm

Hey, not only was I around all those years, I was in what was regarded as a tough high school, the Collinwood HS in Cleveland, and believe me, kids did not disrespect adults nearly as badly as the kids in the video. Why? The crack of the paddle on the ass. That's why. Sure, we bullied and were bullied kid-on-kid, but kids bullying an adult? You've got to be kidding! That never ever happened.

If you wanted to prove how tough you were to your cronies, you had to beat on someone who could put up a fight. Anyone who picked on helpless old ladies would have come across as ridiculous and really a pathetic sissy pants.

Statistics are meaningless in this case because they almost certainly reflect changes in reporting and in approaches to treating juvenile misbehavior. Also not reflected in the statistics is HOW the nature of reported crimes have probably changed. A common property crime in my childhood was TP'ing someone's front yard or putting a bag of dog poop in front of someone's door, setting it on fire, and ringing the doorbell. Today, the reported crimes could be far more serious assaults and batteries on helpless victims.

I bet you won't find much agreement for this post among the older members who've lived through 5 or 6 decades. It's not just the same.

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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on June 24, 2012 at 12:58pm

I taught in Harry Wood High in Indianapolis, in your neighboring state, where ghetto Blacks met immigrant Kentucky Red-Necks - fun times --!

Permalink Reply by Unseen on June 24, 2012 at 4:27pm

@archaeopteryx

Collinwood HS, when I was going there, was in a neighborhood of mostly Italians and Eastern European immigrants. There was tension between them, but the blacks were moving in and soon became the focus of prejudicial tension.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on June 24, 2012 at 12:41pm

I'm having a hard time making sense of the graphic. Apparently in 1980 (to take an example), while there were 2500 property crimes total, 4000 of them were committed by males. That seems nonsensical, and yet there's a similar problem for every single year in the gaphic and for the violent crimes as well. Make sense of it for me, please.

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Permalink Reply by Karen Lollis on June 24, 2012 at 6:26pm

It's numbers per 100,000 population. That is, for every 100K kids age 10-17 (male and female) there were 2500 prop crimes. Singling out just the fellas, the rate is 4000. (By extrapolation, the rate for the gals would be 1000.)

Going from over 4000 to under 2500 in one generation is huge. (And, no, that difference is not accounted for by differences in the types of crimes being reported, as you suggest above.)

Our perception that kids are worse now is partly due to exposure - like the youtube vid that started this discussion.

The truth is, kids - even good kids - will do crappy things sometimes. And the complaints about how horrible the young generation has become are nothing new:

Permalink Reply by Unseen on June 24, 2012 at 4:31pm

When did threatening to cut an elderly woman's belly open with a knife become a trivial offense?

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