Were people more mature in the past?

To me, maturity relates to responsibility for oneself. People were more responsible in the past cuz there was no gov't social safety net to support them, and there was a societal stigma attached to any person who didn't work to earn money. That's gone now, so were people more mature in the past? Yes.
 
Yes! God! We rode or bicycles with NO HELMET!!! When we got our DLs we drove with no SEATBELTS!! We drank water STRAIGHT OUT OF THE HOSE! We played baseball IN THE STREET!! And that, dear friends is just the 'tip of the iceberg' of all the UNSAFE shit we used to do.
None of that is all that dangerous.
 
I hear this discussion quite a bit. For example, people on the plains 150 years ago married in their teens. They had lots of work well before age 18. They started families in their teens.

Fast forward 75 years later and people were still marrying early, working, and starting families in their teens. As kids, they dated in their teens.

And what about dating? At what age should a child begin to date? When should they go out on their own? At what age should a parent chaperone a date? What about group dates? What is the maturity level? Biology hasn’t changed all that much in the grand scheme of things, but how much have norms and culture changed?

Thoughts?
Young people were more mature at least by the standards of the day because they had to be. When you were 18 or younger you were expected to get a job and provide for all your needs. Today maturity is more than biological. Both employers and society expects more.
 
How many "males" on this site have boasted (many times) about spending their entire lives avoiding the responsibilities of a MAN?
 
Absolutely they were.

People were more mature just 20 years because they didn't have parents hiding and coddling them and telling schools to make things easier on them. They didn't spend all their time behind a phone screen, they had to actually go out in the world and face it. They didn't cry about having to work 40 hours a week. Kids constantly went out every day and did shit that would be considered dangerous and life threatening now. They had parents that still had values and standards handed to them by their strong parents. If you wanted to get ahead in life you had to work for it and so on.

Kids today on the whole are sad, pathetic, weak willed, soft pussy ass bitches that care more about their phones than anything else. They are cowards about everything in life and all act like victims.

They are the weakest generation this country has ever seen.
Old School: Manifest Destiny
New Age: Many Fuzzy Desktops
 
Young people were more mature at least by the standards of the day because they had to be. When you were 18 or younger you were expected to get a job and provide for all your needs. Today maturity is more than biological. Both employers and society expects more.

Were most marriages made by teens in the American West? Nope, the average age was about 20 for women and a couple of years oldr for guys.

Yes, there were teen marriages, but the average was not 14 and 15 for the girls.
 
I hear this discussion quite a bit. For example, people on the plains 150 years ago married in their teens. They had lots of work well before age 18. They started families in their teens.

Fast forward 75 years later and people were still marrying early, working, and starting families in their teens. As kids, they dated in their teens.

And what about dating? At what age should a child begin to date? When should they go out on their own? At what age should a parent chaperone a date? What about group dates? What is the maturity level? Biology hasn’t changed all that much in the grand scheme of things, but how much have norms and culture changed?

Thoughts?
I was responsibly baby sitting when I was 12. I had my first real job at 15. I had to work for most that I had. I worked my way through college without help from anybody, not my parents, not my government. And it never ever occurred tome that this wasn't the way it was supposed to be. I married young and had my first child 10 months after my wedding day. We were dirt poor and struggled to put food on the table. It never occurred to me that this wasn't the way it was supposed to be.

The government provided us with nothing whatsoever other than streets and streetlights, a water and sewer supply, police and fire protection, all of which we paid for by paying taxes which we paid even when we were at our poorest. They sold us a fishing license when we could afford it.

Almost all our friends were pretty much in the same boat. Almost all of us are still married to the first person we married unless our spouse died. And within a few years we all had worked our way into the middle class and could afford to provide our children with a bit more than we had as children. And every one of us has retired fairly comfortable financially and almost all our children grew up as normal, unconflicted, responsible citizens who depended on themselves and not the government or anybody else for what they have.

And none of us thought this wasn't the way it was supposed to be.

I don't know if many young people now are that mature?
 
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I have no idea what small or middle town white America was like for youngsters growing up.

On the rez, you grew up quickly. And stayed away from alcohol, period. That is, if you wanted to succeed.
 
Probably the youngsters that you raised. I know mine fit your descriptions perfectly and they are teaching their kids the same values.
Yes. But it is getting harder because we and our children grew up in communities that shared pretty much the same values and those values were reinforced by the media, by teachers, churches, neighbors. Today's kids don't have a lot of that.
 
Yes! God! We rode or bicycles with NO HELMET!!! When we got our DLs we drove with no SEATBELTS!! We drank water STRAIGHT OUT OF THE HOSE! We played baseball IN THE STREET!! And that, dear friends is just the 'tip of the iceberg' of all the UNSAFE shit we used to do.

That was my point. Kids figured stuff out for themselves and ran around being kids. They didn't hide behind phones, they were out with other kids learning how the world works. It made for tougher kids.

I'd say most of today's 18 year olds are the equivalent of a 12 year from 30 years ago.

I grew up in the country. When I was 10 I would go off and spend the night in the woods and grandma would make me sandwiches to take with me and remind me not to forget the gun. When I was 12 I had a 67 Ford falcon I drove to school, I wasn't allowed to leave our town but I drove. Rode horses, hunted deer and did a lot of shit before I was even 13.

But parents and society today seem bound and determined to raise cowardly, weak and dumb young people anymore.

When kids grow up tougher it makes them more mature and responsible adults. Kids should be absolutely kids, but the sooner you start making them mature the better off they are when they graduate school.

Kids are pussified now. They sit on social media complaining about working 40 hours a week, how they are offended by everything, how they are non binary placiosexual centered, how they have stress and anxiety, how they are neurodivergent, how they need therapy, and blah blah blah. Most people between the ages of 16 and 30 today make me sick.
 
That was my point. Kids figured stuff out for themselves and ran around being kids. They didn't hide behind phones, they were out with other kids learning how the world works. It made for tougher kids.

I'd say most of today's 18 year olds are the equivalent of a 12 year from 30 years ago.

I grew up in the country. When I was 10 I would go off and spend the night in the woods and grandma would make me sandwiches to take with me and remind me not to forget the gun. When I was 12 I had a 67 Ford falcon I drove to school, I wasn't allowed to leave our town but I drove. Rode horses, hunted deer and did a lot of shit before I was even 13.

But parents and society today seem bound and determined to raise cowardly, weak and dumb young people anymore.

When kids grow up tougher it makes them more mature and responsible adults. Kids should be absolutely kids, but the sooner you start making them mature the better off they are when they graduate school.

Kids are pussified now. They sit on social media complaining about working 40 hours a week, how they are offended by everything, how they are non binary placiosexual centered, how they have stress and anxiety, how they are neurodivergent, how they need therapy, and blah blah blah. Most people between the ages of 16 and 30 today make me sick.
We live in a matriarchal society today where kids are coddled and protected from anything deemed 'bad' by women's standards. The pro women's organizations and movements have gutted our patriarchal society completely. They are myopic androphobes with too much power.
 
When will we hear from the "men" who frequent this site who boast about never having had children (by choice) or never having married, or giving up on the idea after a divorce? How about the people here who crow about dropping a job at the first inconvenience and leaving without a moment's notice? Then there are those who feign righteousness when they "choose" to destroy a human life if it's inconvenient for them. All of which is to say nothing about the frightened children who are scared to tears of anyone who looks in any superficial way different from them. Are any of these kinds of losers "mature"?
 

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