The sexualization of children is the absolute worse change, IMHO. Montel Williams interviewed a man in prison for impregnanting a 10 year old. His defense. “She dressed like Britney Spears and had a crush on me and was always sitting in my lap.”
Right. The ten year bitch was asking for it.:rolleyes:
I suspect sleeze-balls knocking up young children is a phenomena as old as the hills.
There are some really disgusting clothes being made and marketed to prepubescent girls, I’m continually surprised at the garbage parents clothe their daughters with(shorts with “juicy!” on the butt). It makes me feel like a prude, which I’m not.
I hear you. My nephew (I’ll call him Donny) is old enough for a learner’s permit, but he doesn’t want one. He’ll get a driver’s license eventually, maybe when he’s in his twenties.
Why? Because his mother (my sister) has convinced him that the outside world is full of predators, pedophiles, and so on; all of whom would just love to get their hooks into him. The only protection is to have his Mom drive him from here to there, to approved meetings or extracurricular activities, as required. So Mom (i.e. my Sis) drives, and he doesn’t mind.
When I ask how he’s going to take a date to the school prom, I’m informed that either Sis or the girl’s parents will drive; and that the young people don’t mind in the least. They expect it. What happened to the chauffeur-driven limos and rented hotel rooms outside of parental supervision that my generation had for such events?
Donny may be only 16, but he might as well be 10. I have half a mind to give him a mickey of Scotch, a pack of smokes, and a Racing Form. All of which I had used at his age (as had Sis). I guess I’d like Donny to experience a rumspringa, even though we’re not Amish, but it doesn’t seem likely.
When I was a kid, it was still perfectly legal to make “negroes” sit in the back of the bus. Or not sit at your lunch counter. Or drink from different drinking fountains. Or go to a different school. Or be lynched.
And within my lifetime, we have a Black President.
At the risk of starting a raging firestorm of debate…
It is astonishing to me how much the USA changed since 9/11, it still makes me feel weird to hear people casually talk about being dissapeared by homeland security for internet searches or whatever, not that I think it is likely but just the fact people casually joke about and accept it.
It is just a daily part of life, it sometimes feels like some alternate reality novel or something. Even the names like homeland security, total information awareness, those Soviet style see something say something posters, I can’t tell if these are tongue in cheek or the creators were just unaware.
You would have thought no way would Americans swallow that, Homeland Security? Whatever you say comrade lol.
Legalized, and (more-or-less) socially-acceptable gambling.
When I was a kid in central Illinois, if you wanted to place a wager, you could
[ul]
[li]Go play bingo in the smoke-filled basement at St. Mary’s.[/li][li]Drive over the the bad side of town and find a poker game/numbers racket in a back room.[/li][li]Book a flight to Vegas.[/li][/ul]
Nowadays I have lotteries, state-sanctioned video poker machines, online gambling (which is still technically illegal but, let’s face it, there are ways around that), and about half a dozen riverboat casinos within an hour’s drive one way, and an hour and a half’s drive the other way.
Also, mentioned upthread but still relevant:
I was in junior high and high school in the 80’s, during the Regan Era. Thanks to government propaganda, I left high school being absolutely convinced that even a single toke of marijuana would lead to addiction, homelessness, and probably being placed in a mental institution.
The reality is that it mostly just leads to giggles and hunger.
Regardless, I never thought that the day would come when anyone could walk into a corner store with a few bucks and walk out with a few grams, perfectly legally.
True. I was a high school student when Atlantic City legalized gambling and it was big news. Now there were two places in the country where you could legally gamble!
Unless it was “It’s A Wonderful Life”. That one movie, you waited until it wasn’t on twice a night. Seriously, was that Public Domain for a decade?
But, seriously, my kids (who don’t own TVs; they watch shows on Hulu on their laptops a couple of days later) cannot imagine missing a show or movie and never seeing it, or waiting years til it happens to show up on a tiny TV screen with bad color.
And, y’know, kids, if there were two shows on TV at the same time? Well, we don’t like to remember those painful times…
Indeed. I remember friends were chosen partly on the basis of which show they watched in a given time slot.
With a “foreign” name!
Or if your family only had one TV and your sister wanted to watch The Brady Bunch when The Flip Wilson Show was on. So you had to “take turns” and only got to see half the episodes.
And what’s more, last month’s election was the first in history without a single one of that old American standby, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, on either major party ticket.
There’s also been a major change in the Supreme Court.
Catholics Justices are nothing new. The first was Roger Taney back in 1836. But the unofficial rule has been that there was a Catholic seat, with one Catholic Justice being appointed to the Supreme Court. Later additions were the unofficial Jewish seat, black seat, and women’s seat - each of these groups were unofficially represented by one member on the court.
But this changed in the eighties. As recently as 1986, there was only one Catholic Justice, William Brennan. But six of the ten Justices appointed since 1986 have been Catholics.
The current Court is the 1st Protestant-less Court in history!
panache45 writes:
> Divorce. I can remember when divorce was rare, and a huge stigma for the
> woman. Being known as a “divorcée” was severely looked down on by society.
>
> And bearing a child “out of wedlock.” Another huge stigma. Only a slut* would
> have a baby outside of marriage, but today a woman can have multiple kids
> with multiple fathers and remain single. As long as she’s able to take care of
> them, no one cares.
Divorce was never rare in the U.S. within the lifetime of anyone on the SDMB. In 1930 the divorce rate was 16%. In 1940 the divorce rate was 20%. The divorce rate peaked at just over 50% in 1981. It’s actually gone down since then, although not by much.
I think you exaggerate about illegitimate children too. I remember what it was like in a moderately conservative community in the 1960’s. No one was happy about births outside of marriage, but they didn’t go out of their way to make it that hard for the mother. And today, living in a moderately liberal area, it’s still true that no one is going to make it that hard for the mother, although they may still silently disapprove. The real difference is that the out-of-wedlock births were among teenagers in the 1960’s and the baby got adopted. The out-of-wedlock births now are among adults and the baby stays with the mother.