ExJG,

It's not a red herring argument at all. What I'm trying to inject here is a generational perspective. The currently unquestionable premise that fit & healthy people are happier and better people, and its corollary that longevity is the most important thing in life, is a set of newfangled idea that has emerged with progress of modern medicine.

From my POV, we have merely traded in one form of Puritanism based on religious standards for one based on wellness. But we've been a nation of snoops, busybodies and scolds for so long that we can no longer imagine what it's like not to live that way. To us, this is normal.

And now we can't even have lawn darts. What a nanny state.

"Hey you kids -- get off my lawn!"

And who dares to suggest that super-parenting has produced a whole generation or two of timid 20 & 30-somethings who live with their parents because independence is too risky?

I have to agree with Nemo on all points, but then you must consider I am 61 and my recollection of the 50's was that baseball naturally was something to be played while drinking beer and smoking or chewing tobacco. We even had ads on those little tvs that would tell you 9 out of 10 doctors liked Camels better than Lucky Strikes or some such rubbish. Of course every other inning of televised baseball was brought to you by either Narragansett or Schlitz beers (Boston Red Sox), and if they would have showed the dugouts you would have seen guys smoking cigarettes on the bench.
I guess my point is this: The very first time I got puking drunk I was 15. I did not like the next few days of my existence after that, but then again, I did drink a whole pint of J&B during a drive home from New York State where the age was 18. After getting in the service, and getting in with the crowd where the peer pressure and the likelihood that we could be killed (way in the back of our heads, I was in Viet Nam at 18) gave me the excuses I needed to go full speed ahead with everything. I didn't think about any of the negative stuff I had learned from my experiences with my first hit of booze or tobacco, i just learned that the more I partook of all things taboo, the more I was getting off, and I enjoyed it to the hilt.
So when you are young and crazy, nothing anybody tells you is going to make any difference to you. You know better than everybody else, and you are basically living for the moment. That is the mindset of a young person in seek of adventure, and Madison Avenue is banking on it (very heavily I might add).

Nemo, I take it you are suggesting that parents who pay attention to what their kids are exposed to and speak up like Scriberheart did are responsible for raising a generation of kids who live with their parents because independence is too risky.

Okay, I am one of those parents. Out of high school my eldest son went to Japan and traveled the country speaking to educators about his school experience. My middle son rode his bike cross country by himself. They take risks to pursue their interests despite having a mom who tried to reduce their exposure to bad influences. (I do get the extreme irony here -- I tried to hide my drinking from them but I am sure I was much less successful than I thought I was.)

And the kids I know who are living with their parents after high school and college are doing so because they can't find jobs,not because they are afraid to step out on their own. It sucks -- in the professional world a new standard is emerging that kids out of college take low paying (or non paying) internships. Makes it harder to move out when you can't afford a place to live.

I think your generalizations are way too broad, jump from one thing to the next and, while they might be interesting observations, do not do anything to refute the idea that we should be careful what we expose kids to.

I am pretty sure that if my kids had grown up in the late sixties at least one of them would be a smoker. The danger of smoking was known, but the exposure to cigarettes via advertising, smoking in movies/television, cigarettes on display, etc. was much much greater. Of course what any one person does or not does is not a trend, and no matter what the exposure, some people will smoke, just as some people will drink and become alcoholics no matter what they are told. My point is that on the whole, the numbers of people smoking in high school has dropped significantly since people started paying attention to the pervasive messaging around cigarettes. Perhaps there could be some movement on drinking as well by paying more attention as a society on how we portray drinking to kids. (Prohibition is a whole other animal and causes a reverse effect.)

ExJG,

I have never won an argument with a super-parent and I don;t expect to now. But if you live long enough, you'll eventually see for yourself how history repeats itself mostly because every generation thinks they're correcting the mistakes of the past when, in reality,all that actually changes is the vocabulary.

Nemo,

So, do you think if Hitler had a nice juicy t-bone and a shot of good scotch he wouldn't have been such a prick?

My father is old enough to have lived through Prohibition and has some humorous stories from that era. It seems there are a lot of humorous stories from that time. I don't believe I've ever read one about Prohibition working.

Agree with your sentiments completely.

The younger generation in my family has rejected the heavy drinking lifestyle they saw growing up because they've seen what a disaster it is for some of us and don't want that.

They don't need to be coddled, they can figure this out for themselves.

No disrespect intended for the original poster, but this is an example of how life is. We have very limited control over outside influences on our children.

Best to give them the knowledge, support, tools and the the option to ask for help without condemnation rather than to hide the existence of all things bad from them.

Just my two cents worth on this......

LuckMan,

Allow me share one of my favorite childhood memories with you.

When I was a kid in the 40s & 50s, the curate or pastor's assistant in our parish in Connecticut was a priest named Francis E. Fenton. Fr. Fenton was what you might call a Catholic McCarthy-ite, and after the bishop got tired of moving him around, he finally accepted an early retirement and became the National Treasurer of the John Birch Society. Even in the late 1940's and early 50's, Fenton saw a clear and causal connection between teenagers necking at the drive-in on Saturday night and the Advancing Godless Yellow Horde of Chinese Communism, and exposs of this evil conspiracy were deftly woven into all his sermons. No Gospel or Epistle reading was so extraneous that Fr. Fenton couldn't extract from it some fuel for his fury, and he could reach an emotional pitch in the pulpit that those Pentecostal televangelists can only hope to mimic. But I digress.

For some reason he always gave the sermon at the 9:00 AM Children's Mass, even though he rarely celebrated it, and his tirades were certainly not for the edification of the children. One Sunday his topic was a movie that Cardinal Spellman had just condemned, and said it would be a mortal sin for anyone in the Archdiocese of New York to see it. The trouble is, we weren't in the Archdiocese of NY, even though we bordered it, and our bishop had declined to endorse the Cardinal's review of the film. And adding to Fenton's consternation in the pulpit that morning, he couldn't remember the name of the movie. But with scarlet face and purple veins bulging in his throat, he shook his fist at us and hollered sternly, "But you all know which one it is!!"

The celebrant then resumed the Mass. Keep in mind, this was the old Latin Rite, so the celebrant's back was turned to the pulpit. A couple of minutes into the Offertory, Fenton strode back out to pulpit, shook his fist once again, and hollered out the name of the movie-- "BABY DOLL!!!" The celebrant jumped, dropped the paten, and it rolled down the altar steps till it struck the Communion rail and spun like a saucer till it dropped. Now I must tell you, that was one very quiet church as Fenton retreated back to the sacristy while the altar boy retrieved the runaway paten.

After being being transferred to another parish where he lasted about six weeks, Fr. Fenton was granted an early retirement from active ministry and had an illustrious second career as the national treasurer of the John Birch Society. More on this Good Father here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Roman_Catholic_Movement