I don’t have to stick my head very far out my door, or very deep into cyberspace, to hear something about today’s generation of kids. The gist of the argument is that kids these days are whiny, spoiled little milquetoasts, whose parents have failed in their sacred duty of toughening them up.

I hear things like this: I played outside all day long in bare feet, we creamed each other at dodgeball in junior high, snowball fights were no fun unless you made somebody’s nose bleed, my parents beat me with a belt if I looked at them funny. Kids used to be tough, and just look at them now. They spend their lives playing inside on the internet (this last is usually posted on the internet). Their parents almost always know where they are! And these same parents use positive reinforcement (insert eyeroll) in place of a good old-fashioned whupping.

OK, fine. My childhood was adventurous. Criminally mischievous ponies, camping out in thunderstorms, running through the woods pursued by escaped convicts real or imagined, playing tackle football with older cousins and getting my stuffing knocked out. And yes, my mother kept a willow switch in the same place that my grandmother before her had kept one. (Delightful aside: my grandmother referred to her switch as “the dancing master.”)

Make no mistake: my parents were loving and attentive, but I suppose that in general we had a bit more freedom than kids of later generations. I might submit that my parents didn’t have the internet to fill them with terror at all the possibilities for evil, although they had obviously heard all about polio and equine-related fatalities. They made sure we had our shots and our personal protective gear, and tried to get us to eat our vegetables and learn personal responsibility. My mother made our dresses and taught us to knit, while my father told us our bedtime stories, complete with cartoons, and rowed us all up the river every Sunday for picnics.  

All that notwithstanding, the good old days weren’t always good. I have two anecdotes to illustrate. Here’s the first: one day when I was in seventh grade, I rode a different bus than usual for some reason. A bunch of the cool kids were sitting in the back few seats, putting their feet up on the seats, moving from seat to seat, and making fun of a quiet girl named Agatha who was sitting a few seats ahead of them. They called her “Fagatha,” jabbed her in the back, and made fun of her needlework. The bus driver, rather than calling them on the behavior, joined them, finding ridiculous things to call Agatha down for.

Here’s the other: my father told a story of some bullies in his day who got hold of a smaller child and rubbed hot peppers all over his face. I gather that his sight was not permanently compromised, but his eyes were swollen shut for days. Today’s bullies haven’t really improved on that. I’m guessing that those bullies got soundly whipped when their crimes were discovered. I’m also guessing that these beatings did nothing whatsoever to discourage future cruelty.

So where am I going with this? There’s some good and some bad in every generation, but teaching a little kid to swim by tossing him into the deep end has always been, and will always be, a jerk move.