To think children are kinder now than in the 80s/90s

[Bedheadbeachbum]

As a parent often I see children being kind and inclusive - or even just tolerant of other children they don't know - at play parks, theme parks, parties etc.

I was a child in the 80s/90s & my brother and I remember vividly how mean other kids used to be if you didn't know them or were established 'friends' at school etc. Or just plain picky and 'I'm not going to talk to you'. It was a pattern that ran across our childhoods & I can't believe it was just us. We lived in the south east.

I often see the opposite now. Only today, both my children on separate occasions were included by others when playing in the same area at a theme park by kids they'd just met.

I'm wondering why? Are we parenting differently & supervising our children more? Putting more emphasis on being kind? Are kids TV and films kinder & more good natured now & having an influence? (when I show my kids some of our old shows I think they are questionable by today's standards).

I think there is a much larger circle of inclusion and far less racism and homophobia, but no, I don’t think kids are kinder on the whole. It is still extremely difficult to be a neurodivergent teenager in school and social media is an absolute horror story.

Fair point !

The 80s had significant issues with young adults transitioning to work, loss of industrial jobs, unemployment, recession, social issues/isolation around work and identity especially in young men.

It was not due to children not being “kind”.

Less bullying on names, sexual orientation, forms of ND. If my kids had gone to my school in the 80s they would have had a truly miserable time.

I can’t remember back then, but I do think children and teens are much more tolerant and inclusive than ever before. They just don’t see the issues we did, they haven’t been conditioned to hate others. I think it’s great.

I teach 3-4 year olds and I’m always amazed at how kind and caring they are and I’m glad to say it’s mostly the boys. They are so kind to each other. It’s a good sign for the next generation.

This is not new . It just wasn’t publicised years ago. Boys used to fight each other all the time in the 80s/ 90s with little consequence. And yes weapons were involved.
I definitely think kids are nicer to each other now. Being overweight , gay, neurodiverse, having red hair ,wearing glasses or any other slight difference made you fair game for bullying and ostracism in my childhood. It was brutal.

Agreed, parents are also much kinder to their own children (obviously there are exceptions, but generally there's more emphasis now on this) and so kindness is modelled in the home.

I think human nature is the same, but technology has totally warped how kindness and cruelty manifest. In the 90s, if you said something nasty, you had to watch the other child cry, which naturally curbed a lot of bad behaviour. Now, the anonymity of smartphones etc means they can be vicious in group chats without ever witnessing the emotional wreckage. They might have all the right words for empathy in the classroom, but the online world removes that basic face-to-face accountability.

I don’t think so, my sons autistic and attends a mainstream school hes been bullied rotten since the day he started.

In my experience (DS in late teens now) they are so much more inclusive and just not bothered about differences that would have been a big deal when we were at school (e.g. homosexuality, race, religion, things like
glasses and braces). They also seem so much more accepting of differences like autism and much more likely to stand up for people who are experiencing bullying for such things. I’m sure there are still some kids who are absolute arseholes to everyone, but there is a general shift towards being more accepting and pleasant. However, social media has caused issues such as them (especially girls) believing that they need to look a certain way, do or have certain things etc. so it’s not all good.

I think kids are taught a lot more about empathy and understanding that different people are equal, not scary, and probably very like you at the end of the day.

Also many kids now, like ours, see peers with same sex parents so that being LGBTQ+ is just normal to them from an early age. I literally never had to explain what being gay was to my kids because they just knew some couples are same sex.

It might be area dependent. I was born in the 80s with disabilities and been bullied my whole life.
I reckon the last year and a half round my way has been the worst as a lone adult walking of getting really awful abuse off kids, some of them no even teenagers. Did has to report some to the police it was that bad (threatening violence on me I was actually scared at that point) and I did stop walk the long way round at one point cos they would all congregate on they bikes and e-escooters. These be strangers to me but my visible disability and the fact I be by my own probably make me a target

also issues with kids with catapults killing and hurting all the animals. I no remeber that happen when I was young

I wonder if the definition of bullying has changed. To give an example, a family members kid was accused of bullying recently, along with about half the class, primary school. The incidents were things like saying during a soccer match 'are you stupid she is over there', apparently the girl said she was humiliated and called stupid. Someone said 'why did you snitch' and that was reported as another incident. Kids that sat in a group chatting were accused of excluding because they didn't invite her in, the list goes on. None of this is anything other than normal life and this girl is highly sensitive and instead of learning to cope with life she is constantly accusing everyone and the school have to take it seriously by their policy. Needless to say they all hate her now but have to be nice to her because they are terrified of her. I don't want to sound like I'm victim blaming because most bullying is inexcusable but people have to take some responsibility for their role. I work with little kids and you can tell who is likely to be bullied. To give a few examples, a kid who wont say yes or no when asked a question (eg are you finished with that toy) but responds with a blank stare and then whines to teacher that someone took the toy. One hero worships another kid and follows her around to the point of harassing her. The other kid very nicely says she is busy doing something else and might play later but the other persists until the girl tells her go away then she is in trouble.

In some ways yes, in some ways it’s just different. Not better. Not worse. Just different.

@JillThePlantKiller Indeed, “question their world without fear of being smacked”. Before, children who dared to question things were punished for “answering back”.

I think more kids have just learnt to weaponize it - they aren't doing what I want so I'll get them in trouble saying they are bullying me.

DD2 kept distance from a friend/peer when they started bullying people over pronouns - they came out trans and were in care - because even they were getting confused with pronouns constantly swapping and it became a way of lashing out at other kids. DD2 was one of few still interacting with the child at the end of Y11 mainly because she took a step back seeing how it was going - she was polite but distant.

DN was socially isolated by another kid because everytime she went to play with someone else that child moaned to staff she was being bullied and excluded and that child was a problem for staff at times - other child mother was delighted she had a friend and enrolled her into everything DN did to point DN refused to do anything. It got sorted as DN parents managed for once to put on a united front and go into school and say DN was being bullied by this child - there was more awareness after that but only really stopped when they were in different classes.

I largely agree with @Hatty65 and the PP who have taken her point further.

Research is showing that young children are genuinely kind, and my (limited) understanding is that Early Childhood Education is beginning to incorporate and use these results. That’s exciting.

But the kindness of young children isn’t nee, and education can only go so far. I think older children and teenagers today are more dependent on adult approval than in the past. Whilst there has been some genuine progress on inclusiveness, particularly around sexual orientation and, in some circles and to a lesser extent around disabilities, a lot of bullying has just gone underground.

I don’t know that the feelings motivating the bullying are worse than in the past, but tech has made some of the outcomes much worse.

Yes I think so and I think perhaps because children are parented more gently. It’s always coming under scrutiny that gentle parenting means we are either raising thugs or snowflakes but having been doing so before it had a name, my oldest and his generation (18) are so much nicer to each other than my generation were. I see it in my youngest too.
Sure there’s bullying and meanness sometimes but on the whole there’s more acceptance and kindness than tended to be the norm when I was younger in the 80s and 90s

I think we also have to factor in things like cancel culture. It’s all well and good saying kids are kind and inclusive but it’s not kind to socially ostracise someone because they don’t hold the right views. There’s a lot of that about. There’s also a lot of disgusting misogyny from teen boys and pressure on teen girls to perform extreme sex acts that wasn’t as prevalent as when I was young. There’s also quite a lot of bullying in schools. My nephew was nearly strangled by a fellow pupil who also threatened to kill him. He’s 9. I think many of the people going on about how kind kids are live in a middle class bubble.

I would hope not, we want her to be a functioning member of society, but she has had two mental breakdowns already and she’s only 21. She is AuDHD. I cannot overemphasise how broken she is from the relentless bullying all the way through school, she is destroyed. We have tried so hard to get her the help she needs, but she is fundamentally broken. The damage is very deep.

I agree with this. It happened to my daughter. They might be “kind” on other things, but definitely not on this.

To clarify, my observation is about Primary aged children. We all know hormones kick in and peer pressure / less dependence on adults in teen years means they change a lot.

To deter though to teenagers and data on bullying. Bullying was rife in the 80s/90s but it was shameful to admit you were being bullied. Kids are far, far more likely to talk about it these days so the culture of reporting is completely different.

To go back to children, it's interesting posters think kids are brow beaten and that it is superficial. The things I've seen seem innocent and genuine. Maybe there is a massive change from children to teens in terms of attitude.

I found secondary school kinder than primary for my dds. At Primary school there was a pecking order in the class. At secondary with 8 forms per year, the mean kids were probably still mean, but dds were able to find a big bunch of kind kids and the mean ones didn't bother them as they were too busy having dramas with each other.

I remember racism and homophobia being quite open at school back in the 80s and 90s. It wouldn't be tolerated now.

Was teaching in the 90s and still working in primary education now. It is worse.You clearly haven’t experienced the horrors of online bullying that is very much happening in primary schools
now.