| "I ponder" Probably not, or it would have been more difficult or taken longer. That generation is exemplified in Tom Brokaw's truly excellent book The Greatest Generation. He covers the lives of people of that generation and shows how they took life as it came and when adversity struck they managed the best they could and did so without complaint. I have an interest in the historical aspects of old photographs, those taken in the 19th Century and early 20th, Civil War photos etc. and there's an excellent collection on the Library of Congress web site and among them is a large collection of Lewis Hine's National Child Labor Committee Collection, and I found them very informative—one can learn things from these photos that never make it into the history books. One thing immediately obvious to me was the vast majority of the kids were happy and enjoying themselves. In the photos one sees kids poking fun at other at other ones, a kid in a row behind making fun of one in front of him without his knowledge and so on. They were acting naturally doing what kids do. The photos depict the harsh life these kids led and their work conditions are clearly unacceptable by today's standards but I'd suggest that for most of human history a kid's life wasn't a bed of roses—a century earlier it'd likely have been worse. One thing is clear from the photos is that these kids had developed an adaption and resilience to life's knocks at a very early age and because they were all in the same boat together they accepted their lives as the norm. I've mentioned on HN previously that today's kids are much more mollycoddled and protected than even I was as a kid, I was allowed to do things that kids today would never be allowed to do today and my parents weren't harsh, it was just how things were for all kids back then. That freedom meant we experienced more of life's knocks at an early age than today's kids and I reckon it put us in good stead. I worry about today's society where trivial matters are often blown up to seem as if they are life-threatening events. Incidentally, when browsing through Hine's photographs one thing was very noticeable, many of those kids were dressed in little more than rags but most wore excellent shoes and boots (that is if they wore them, many didn't). I couldn't help thinking I'd like a few pairs of them myself. I've never gotten to the bottom of this, why was the quality of the footwear seemingly so much better a century ago than it is today? LOC's Child Labor collection: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/nclc/ |