AIBU to think that children and teenagers were not better behaved in the (mythical rose tinted) good old days?

[Schwabischeweihnachtskanne]

If they were, why can we see badly behaved children and defiant teens throughout literature:

Emma - not a spoilt teenager who thought she knew it all?

Romeo and Juliet - the story of teenagers not affected by their hormones?

Agnes Grey - no unpleasant teens in the Bloomfield family?

Max and Moritz - good boys who always listened to their elders?

The lion and Albert - a poem about a well behaved boy doing as his parents said for fear of a clip around the ear?

Obviously literature isn't fact, but if the entitled brat/ naughty child/ selfish teen were really a recent phenomenon then the type wouldn't appear in literature going back centuries...

Or do people perhaps believe that children and adolescents were uniquely respectful and law abiding in their own youth or that of their children and things have deteriorated from the heady examples set for us by the teenage mods of the 1960s ... :o

Not denying aspects of childhood and society have changed over time of course, and that while some if the changes have been for the good others have not, but MN seems peppered with comments on how children / teens used to be, in one way or another, better (better behaved, more respectful) at some vague point in the past (due, it is often implied, to mollycoddling ).

AIBU to think this is just sloppy cliche and rose tinted nostalgia, and that kids have always been naughty (sometimes), teens have always been stroppy and defiant (sometimes - and almost certainly even before the term teenager came into use) and every single generation since the dawn of time has believed that society is going to the dogs, as proved by the dreadful behaviour of Young People These Days?

When I was young, it was sniffing glue and other solvents that was the big thing. Illegal drugs were available, and I knew kids who took heroin and speed, but it wasn't common then.

"Teenagers weren't really a thing until the 60s though were they? You were a child then you were an adult. It was only then they started to rebel!"

Really it was the 50s, according to my DM who gets very miffed at the idea that the Beatles and mini skirts are credited with the first teenage rebellion when really it was her with her puffed out skirts and sinched waist kissing boys on the tube!

50s also saw the Teddy Boys (Teddy Girls were also a thing - seriously stylish in their preppy jeans and fitted jackets) who led to a consumer market for teens...oh and Elvis with his gyrating hips!

Sorry for the aside - I could just hear my Mum's indignant voice in my head

I'm from the olden days and my brothers were awfully behaved. They would literally swear every other word, did no chores and left school without a single qualification. Both were unemployed for years. My sister and I were not like that at all.

Funnily enough I got on better with one of my naughty brothers but that was a sibling ...I would have hated to be his parent.

This was in the 60's.

It's not for nothing that teens today are known as generation sensible.

Apparently they drink much less than we did and get into less trouble. They take school and university more seriously too.

My own teens and their peers certainly seem to back this up.

In the 50s and 60s though, it was rare for young men to be unemployed. Unskilled jobs were easy to get in most places. When we lost much of our industry, that changed.

Hmmm

My kids are also all better behaved than I was (so far... eldest is only 11) and also appear to be far more open with us (when I was a child and teen it was automatic to seriously filter what you told your parents - so as not to get in trouble perhaps, but also somewhat because you thought they'd be happier that way :o )

I also tell other people's kids off occasionally, though it doesn't often seem necessary ... I don't recognise the timid or disengaged adults some people describe on here any more than the kids :o I did experience the ridiculous parents when teaching of course (the one who would storm in raging that darling Abigail/ Oli could not possibly have got an E for her/ his coursework because all the other teachers love her/him, and she/he loves all the other teachers , so the problem must be with the teacher who gave her/him the E, not darling Abigail/ Oli.... except of course every teacher is being told the same thing and darling Abigail/ Oli is misbehaving and failing across the board... I am pretty sure such parents have always existed - though the huge mess that has been made of the UK educations system and the twisted ways of measuring teacher performance in recent decades have probably convinced a lot of people that teachers really are solely responsible for getting children/ young people the grades they need, rather than teachers being responsible for teaching children/ young people being responsible for learning and doing the work set...

The first time I saw an adult clip a child around the ear I was 36 (it was her own child)... I don't know who was doing all the ear clipping in the 80s but presumably they weren't in North Yorkshire...

My aunt was a wild teen in the 1930s. Her dad was local (church) minister, so very embarrassing. My mother followed suit in the 1950s.

There's a passage in one of the Little House books (L.Ingalls Wilder) talking about her lazy rude insolent cousin (1870s).

Here in the US at least, it's demonstrably untrue that teenagers are committing more crimes, having sex earlier, using birth control less, or using illegal drugs more than teenagers did when people now in their 40's were teenagers.

It's harder to say whether they're more entitled or less respectful or whatever, because it's harder to collect objective data on those things. Though if kids are more entitled and less respectful, but less likely to commit crimes or get pregnant as teenagers, that actually sounds like a pretty good trade to me.

... or are crimes more recorded now, GeekyMum? We live in the paperwork age & a cuff around the ear or a quiet word is no longer considered acceptable; cops have to produce statistics about their productivity.

Some cities in the US like New York, had a terrible crime problem 20-30 years ago.
I have read quite a bit about this and many people put the reduction in down to better policing. Although the authors of Freakonomics argue that it is due to better access to abortion.