The much heralded “greatest generation” wasn’t so good at raising kids?
That is an interesting observation.
I suppose they thought the example they set through their service would serve as inspiration enough for their kids, and that they would naturally follow.
Or maybe they were so worn out by WW2 that they just weren’t up for it.
We saw our parents living their lives according to strict social rules (which most didn’t even question, much less dare to challenge) and they ended up bored at best and often quite miserable. Didn’t inspire us to live our lives by the same rules. The pendulum certainly did swing too far, but it urgently needed to swing.
I think you have hit on something. I grew up in the 60's. There was a lot of denial going on with the adult generation. Everybody was in denial. According to the culture of the day, there was no child abuse, no incest, no spousal abuse, etc etc, it was all not talked about.
Everybody was concerned about what the neighbors thought. We were sick of the mentality to a great extent
“The much heralded “greatest generation” wasn’t so good at raising kids?”
Bingo! but they are good at writing history books and giving themselves cool nicknames.
Few have the balls to point that out.
Yup, they were too easy on them. The greatest generation wanted their kids to have a better life but they did not make their kids work for it.
Actually I think they broke the chain (in the general cultural sense) in transmitting love of God and country to their children. I suspect that the trauma of WWII, a conflict they may have ascribed to the fierce sense of racial and national superiority displayed by the Germans and Japanese led them, after that massivly deadly conflict, to play down pride in ones nation and culture when it came to their kids. I think they wanted to believe, despite (or because of) their own experience with grim reality, that people are for the most part good if you don't give them some difference to wave around and beat one another over the head with. This played right into the hands of Alinsky types who infest the political artistic and education systems, laboring against the good of American Culture since day one. The greatest generation took for granted their own rational, deep and steady love of America and expected their children to know it by some osmosis rather than the teaching and inculcation that their own parents saw to. But Nature hates a vacuume. When the "hippies" first started showing up one thing they all seemed to have is a pure white hot HATRED of anything of traditional America.
You said — “The much heralded “greatest generation” wasn’t so good at raising kids?”
Exactly and precisely so...
“The much heralded “greatest generation” wasn’t so good at raising kids?”
Of my siblings and my wife’s siblings we number eleven. All boomers.
One never married. One married a few times. Nine married and stayed married.
Our parents (WWII vets) stayed married. Two parent intact families spawn intact families.
Pretty much the case with extended family and friends, too.
That is very much contrary to any stereotypes, and in California no less.
Based on my observations, the “greatest generation” was far better at parenting than subsequent generations.
All my life I have had this firm belief that my parents were great parents. Yet my parents and all their friends drank alot and almost all of their socializing centered around drinking and the agony and drama that goes with serious drinking was always there. My parents fought over my dad's drinking, yet my mother would drink with him. I spent a lot of my childhood running around with kids in the area with no adult supervision from early morning until evening. My parents and my friend's parents were very strict with us when they did supervise us. When I raised my children I was much more hands on and hubby and I gave up the party lifestyle. My parents probably weren't that great as parents but since all of my peers had the same sort of parents it didn't seem like there was anything wrong with mine. If I really study the way I was raised I surely don't recommend it as an example of good parenting.