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"Having said that, I still think the 50's & 60's were the golden years for childhood - THEY WERE GREAT! We've been the luckiest generation ever."

They were more than just great, but such freedom was earned by the Boomers' parents. Boomers rightly exploited the peace dividend, but they committed their sin in demanding their childhoods last forever. "Don't trust anyone under 30"? Since when is 20, 25, 29 not an adult? (Answer: since the mid-1960s.)

In offering this analysis, one must NEVER discount the contribution and sacrifice of the greater half of the Baby Boomers:

Most people didn't go to Woodstock and did not dress or act like hippies.
Most people didn't do drugs in the 1960s.
Most people were not promiscuous in the 1970s.
Most people did not work on Wall Street in the 1980s.

They were raising families, playing with the kids, out on vacation, earning degrees in medicine, teaching, engineering, and - of course - not just fighting the Cold War... but WINNING IT.

And never forget that the pied pipers of hippiedom, who brainwashed generations into believing that abysmal stupidity: "DON'T TRUST ANYONE OVER THIRTY", were all in their 30s or even 40s, at the time!

Previously, especially in France, after the age of 35, a woman was called "A WOMAN OF A CERTAIN AGE"; which conferred on her a certain air of mystery and sexual prowess. In America, 35 was the onset of middle age; though 40 was specifically middle aged.

And for hundreds of years, 21 had been the age of adulthood; a time when one could vote, put away all childish things, and be responsible...if one hadn't done so already, at the age of 18. But with the crazy hippies/Yippies influence, adolescence has now been pushed into some people's 40s or 50s.