[33girl]

Along the lines of DeltAlum's post, there's a very good essay by Andy Rooney in his first book (A Few Minutes w/ Andy Rooney) called "Youth." I looked for it online but couldn't find it. He quotes President Eisenhower saying the youth was getting lazy & soft, and counters that by saying that when little Ike was planting corn someone was probably saying kids wouldn't work anymore. One of his points is that "elders" like to say kids suck, just because they are jealous of the fact that they are young and have their lives ahead of them. (he put it more eloquently, needless to say) The last line is "it's amazing how long this world has been going to hell without ever having gotten there."

Believe me, all the bad things in the world - rape, incest, fraud, violence - are not new. They've been going on forever. It's just that now instead of having a messenger take a month to go to another village to tell it, it's on the news in 5 seconds.

I will say when I hear about kids having to have "play dates" every time they want to see a friend and regimented schedules from the age of 2, it makes me sad. When I wanted to play with my friends, I called them or just went to their house. If I wanted a day to do nothing more productive than put curlers and bows on my dog, that was fine too. I feel like kids are losing out on being kids, for the convenience of the parents.