There is a growing conversation among child development experts about whether today’s parenting culture is actually doing children a disservice. According to the American Psychological Association, children grow into kind and generous adults when they are raised with empathy and thoughtful discipline. However, the modern so-called gentle parenting movement, which prioritizes validating children’s feelings, can sometimes fall short when it comes to building self-assessment, responsibility, and a healthy tolerance for frustration. When children are shielded from every discomfort and have every problem solved for them, they develop an expectation that someone else will always step in, rather than learning to navigate challenges on their own.
Parents raising kids in the 1960s and 70s took a noticeably different approach. They instilled discipline and integrity in their children while simultaneously giving them the room to practice patience, delay gratification, and show empathy even when it was hard. The results, many argue, were children who entered adulthood better prepared to handle adversity. Looking back at those practices reveals several habits that contributed to raising more grounded, capable, and emotionally resilient individuals.
One of the most significant differences was around material desires. Children who had to wait, save, and work toward getting something they wanted learned patience and how to manage disappointment. When every wish is granted immediately, kids miss out on developing emotional regulation and the ability to cope with being told no. That sense of entitlement can follow them into adulthood and show up as financial irresponsibility or an inability to respect other people’s limits. Older generations learned early that wanting something did not mean receiving it.
Kids growing up in those earlier decades were also expected to entertain themselves. Without constant screen time or parental orchestration of their every activity, children developed creativity, problem-solving skills, and genuine independence. Today, the expectation that parents must fill every idle moment not only encourages dependency but can contribute to social and emotional difficulties down the road. Research has shown that excessive screen use is linked to rising rates of self-centered behavior in children who have never had to sit with boredom long enough to figure out what to do with it.
The way conflict was handled in the home also played a meaningful role. Children in the 60s and 70s witnessed adults argue and then reconcile, which gave them a real-world template for managing disagreements in their own relationships later on. Today’s parents often believe they are protecting their kids by keeping all tension behind closed doors, but in doing so they deprive children of watching how grown-ups repair ruptures, apologize, and move forward. Observing conflict resolution, rather than being shielded from all conflict, is one of the ways children learn to handle their own emotions and relationships.
Perhaps the most important shift from that era was that children were allowed to solve their own problems. When a dispute broke out at school or on the playground, parents stayed out of it and trusted their kids to work through it. Studies have found that excessive parental intervention, particularly in school-related conflicts, can actually harm a child’s social and cognitive development. The resilience that older generations carry into adulthood was built precisely because they were expected to figure things out without someone running interference. Praising children for every ordinary task, replacing broken things immediately, negotiating household rules, or allowing kids to quit the moment something gets difficult all chip away at the same foundation of inner strength.
There was also something to be said for the open-ended nature of childhood schedules back then. Kids whose every hour is packed with structured activities rarely develop the internal motivation and identity that come from unstructured time. Parents of that era trusted children to choose how to spend their afternoons, and in doing so gave them space to discover what actually interested them, build their own sense of self, and practice the kind of independence that no organized activity can teach.
The term “helicopter parenting” was actually coined in 1969 by Dr. Haim Ginott in his book ‘Between Parent and Teenager,’ based on a teen who described his mother as hovering over him like a helicopter. The concept of delaying gratification was famously studied in the Stanford marshmallow experiment starting in 1972, which found that children who could wait for a reward tended to have better life outcomes decades later. Studies have also shown that children who regularly perform household chores develop a stronger sense of responsibility and empathy than those who do not.
If any of this resonates with your own childhood or how you are raising your kids, share your thoughts in the comments.
