I’m 63. About 2/3 of the boys I grew up with broke an arm or a leg in childhood at least once. We did this by doing something stupid, daring, exciting and dangerous. Most of these guys had access to a BB gun, a pellet gun or a real .22lr rifle. Many had all three. We rode bike or walked when we wanted to go somewhere. We slept in the woods, built fires, swam in ponds, smoked cigarettes we didn’t actually enjoy and grew up to be responsible adults. I see my daughters boyfriends and am pretty sure I could kick their asses even today.
Maybe it’s estrogen in the water supply from birth control pills. Maybe it’s feminized education. Maybe I’m just an old fart who misremembers. I think I grew up with better men.
You aren’t an old fart who mis-remembers (and I don’t even know you personally, muir_redwoods...
Many of the things that boys were suited for and that prepared them for manhood have been discouraged in society.
Kids aren’t encouraged to go out and play on their own with other kids. It seems like every hour of the day has to be scripted from front to back so there is no time for them to be “boys”.
Being in the Boy Scouts is now looked down on, as belonging to a homophobic organization. And the Boy Scouting that remains is going to be changed very soon.
Tackle football is going to be eventually made unavailable for boys at any level, because girls can’t compete in it, and you can actually hurt yourself playing it via broken bones or concussions.
Soccer is the game of choice, because all kids can play.
In my day, if a kid filled something up with match heads to try and make a firecracker, most adults would roll their eyes. Now they are viewed as fledgling terrorists.
In school, if you act even the least bit rambunctious, they fill you with Ritalin or funnel you into a special class.
I don’t have kids. If I did, I would never let them watch television. I would make a deal with them. You want to get a pilot’s license? Skydive? Scuba? Mountain climb? You name it, you can do it if you really want to, but you cannot watch television.
The portrayal of masculine men as idiots, and the glorification of pussies, if not outright teenage homosexuality as the ideal is appalling to me.
It isn’t just you. Things have changed.
63 years old huh?
Welcome to the club of undomesticated males. Back in our day being called a “sissy” was a good reason to knock the snot out of the ass who said it.
Now, the majority of males coming from the past 2 generations have been politically and emotionally castrated by masculine man hating women.
In today’s age anything that comes natural to a “real” male is taken as animalistic behavior and must be cured by either counseling or some other physiological treatment or drug.
With all of that said, no wonder we find ourselves in this world of gun confiscation attempts. Women fear the cold steel of guns (not knives) and the males of today are right with them and think just as illogically as their mothers.
It’s a sad, sad world we now live in.
Every item you listed here, I too did the same. We also put firecrackers in corncobs and threw them at each other. It ain’t estrogen in the water; it is feminized education, the stifling of male behavior, ridiculing masculinity, the blatant favortism shown for females (don’t get me wrong, they all deserve an equal chance), and now—the homosexualization of males—homowood and the old media play a major role here.
We grew up in a good time—things were different and seriously better. Our kids future is in serious trouble and getting worse. The nutjob politicians seek every means of control and ever newer methods to extract money from the working class to buy the votes of those who sit in a cesspool of dependence.