Are Americans becoming ... wussies?

Great Debates
1

I’ve been reading the forums here for 6 or 8 years and have rarely posted but my buddies and I got into a heated debate a few nights ago that I’d like your opinions on.

The overall theme was that here in the U.S., really since WWII, there has been a general movement of the people toward being … well, wussies.

There is such a stark contrast to how our parents and grand parents were raised and the majority of differences I can find as to how we turned out have them fairing far better in work ethic, family and personal responsibility.

Some recent examples in the media:

  1. A county supervisor in California wants to ban Happy Meal toys and other similar treats that are given away with childrens’ fast food meals because there should be no relationship between fun and food. Why not let the parents decide?

  2. An Elementary School in Trumbull, Conn. forced the faculty to no longer grade test papers in red ink because it was too stressful for their children. The principal has ordered them to use more soothing colors. Other schools are following suit.

  3. An article called Fat Kids, Failing Health BY CLAUDIA CORNWALL highlights the fears that children these days are performing at a level less than 50% what they were in physical education classes only 5 years before … unable to jog for more than a couple of minutes and unable to do more than 5 situps, for instance.

  4. Dodgeball has been deemed by some schools as too violent and faculty no longer let children pick their teammates for activities because being one of the last ones to be picked is too traumatic.

  5. Not only are spankings a no-no, but teachers and parents are being advised that even raising their voice to children could somehow crush the life out of them.

  6. Not allowing the exchange of valentine cards in school because the children that get less may have their feelings hurt.

  7. Giving trophies to all children that play sports because only giving trophies to children that deserve them sends the wrong message (sarcasm mine).

The list is endless.

I didn’t include links because my point wasn’t to debate the validity of each story, just to gather a general consensus as to whether others were troubled by this.

Have I left out some examples of over ‘correctness’ that we SHOULD discuss?

2

Ok, how about giving jobs to business school graduates?

3

On the one hand, it’s probably worth pointing out that such lists are generally isolated and extreme incidents presumed to speak for a general trend. Your list is really no exception. There are thousands of school districts and millions of people. It’s not surprising some are weird enough to comment on.

Without cites, the incidents may also be wholly fabricated urban legends. I’m not saying you may have knowingly made some up, but oft-repeated ‘common wisdom’ is rubbish as often as not.

On the other hand, it’s not hard to imagine such a trend. The primary factor, at least as I see it, is the advancement of technology. Hardship makes you tough, and technology is designed to remove hardship.

Example: An early car owner would need to know a lot about his car and be able to work on it himself to fix at least minor problems which could crop up too frequently for a mechanic to feasibly deal with. Now, cars run so well that most of them can go for over a decade with only one or two oil changes a year and routine maintenance. Why bother to learn how to change oil when you need to do it so rarely that it’s simpler to pay $20 for a 30-minute job? A person with that attitude (I admit I am one) isn’t going to know jack about changing oil, and working on cars isn’t a skill they’re going to teach their kids.

I realize the above example is only tangential to your post, but the point is this: as technology advances, each generation grows up needing to deal with fewer physical hardships, so when hardships do arise, either in their lives or their children’s lives at school, they’re less well-equipped to deal with them and react to them by wanting to make the hardship simply go away rather than learn to cope with it.

While I think there’s some validity to this trend, I don’t think it’s a very widespread trend. There are a lot of people in this country, and the sensible, tough, non-wussy people just get on about their business; it’s the wussy people that cry loudly and also occasion comment by the media. It’s news to talk about how some parent throws a screaming fit about how their child shouldn’t be forced to participate in PE because the little darling might get hurt; it’s not news when the parent tells the kid to suck it up.

It’s one reason I severely dislike news in its current state. All we hear about are the oddities and outliers from many, many different sources, and so we think that they’re representative of the US at large.

4

All of your examples point more to the problem of our litigiousness. We have more lawyers per person than any other nation:

But, on the other hand, without legal recourse it’s reasonably likely that instead of a foolishly high level of litigiousness that you’d have a foolishly high level of nanny statery.

5

I tend to find wussies rather relaxing, and gravitate in their direction whenever possible.

6

So do you find the Darwin Awards amusing or rude?

7

I think there are a lot of ways that we can say Americans are tougher these days. For example, we are much more likely to travel and live abroad, a truly emotionally difficult experience. I think in general our comfort zones have expanded- we are more comfortable with diverse people and experiences. I think many of us are more comfortable taking risks- for example, taking out loans to finance higher education in the hopes that it will pay off. Or moving to a new city without having a solid plan.

Women have gained a lot of independence and no longer expect a man to take care of them their entire lives. I’m writing now as a Peace Corps volunteer. Peace Corps is a tough and gritty experience that pushes you mentally, physically and emotionally. There are more women than men in Peace Corps. Could you imagine legions of young women in the 1950s headed out to the developing world armed with little more than a sense of adventure and a heap of optimism?

In general I think our outlook has become broader and most of us are more willing to take risky steps towards independence than we would have in, say, the 1950s. We have become very adaptable, accepting and optimistic people. You can really tell this when you live abroad- there is something special about Americans.

Have they really turned out better in work, ethic, family and personal responsibility? In previous generations, an alcoholic dad and a pill-popping mother would be pretty much normal. Sexual and physical abuse was widespread and rarely led to repercussions. All kinds of bad stuff happened back in the day.

Remember, hardship does not always make you a better person. I was teased mercilessly as a child. It did not make me tougher. It made me hurt and bitter. It took me a long time to get past that. I am okay now, yeah, but there is no doubt that I’d be better off if it had never happened.

8

A little of both. Point being…?

9

The idea behind the Darwin Awards is quite heavily anti-wuss.

10

Sadly this leaves us with a lot of people that actually call 911 when their accelerators stick rather than placing the vehicle in neutral and applying the break.

Very good points you all are bringing up. Thanks for the discussion.

11

I thought it was about anti-stupid? WWF is anti-wuss.

12

Good point, but whether it was due to more discipline or respect for authority, these alcoholic / pill popping streets were pretty darn safe to walk on 40 years ago. You would have been hard pressed back then to find a neighborhood where you couldn’t turn your children loose to play in for an afternoon.

Taking the picture as a whole I still might opt for a bit more of the good old days.

13

Kinda depends. Were your children Jewish and the neighborhood Italian?

14

There are few neighborhoods where that’s the case now.

15

I was reading an article a few weeks ago about Army training. They were saying that not only are kids less physically fit, most of them have never been in a physical confrontation in their entire lives.

Kids certainly listen to wussier music than they did 20+ years ago. It’s all John Mayer and Adam Lambert.

16

The World Wildlife Fund is anti-wuss?

17

If it’s any consolation the UK is going exactly the same way, whether we are ahead of you or following you in this regard I am not sure.

18

Wussy people tend to complain about them being insensitive.

19

A nanny state? Bernard Levin lives on.

20

Someone who won’t turn kids loose to play in the neighborhood for an afternoon these days is a wuss. It has nothing to do with whether they’re actually safe unless you can show statistically that they would be less safe than the past. I would bet that they’re more safe today plus most people have irrational fears of things that rarely happen (kidnapping) while giving short shrift to the most likely dangers (drowning and car accidents are two of the most common ways for children to die).