http://www.whyboysfail.com/2009/10/30/another-thread-to-the-disconnected-youth-story/ Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:53:49 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://www.whyboysfail.com/2009/10/30/another-thread-to-the-disconnected-youth-story/#comment-12468 Anonymous Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:47:28 +0000 http://www.whyboysfail.com/?p=1136#comment-12468 I am surprised that Judith Warner did not ask what became of those roving gangs of homeless boys in the 1930s or in general to all the children whose lives were so disrupted by the Great Depression. We do know a few things. A lot of the boys of the 1930s became the Greatest Generation, the huge number of people who were in the military during World War 2. Many of them were able, under the GI Bill, to go on to college and to middle class lives as adults. After 10 years of depression and 5 years of world war, those who came of age were seeking normalcy. And they did it by getting married in higher percentages and at younger ages and with more children than in the period before or after. The mean age of first marriage for women went down at one point to just below 20, with the mean age for men only a few years greater. The mean number of children that women were having, at one point, got to be a little less than 4. Then came the 60s and those children, those baby boomers, revolted against their parents normalcy. That led to women's liberation, among other things, and that led, among other factors, to this blog, why boys fail. So, what seems to have happened is that the negative effects of the depression on those boys and on children in general were apparently compensated for to some degree by the whole experience of World War 2 and the whole postwar prosperity. It is interesting to speculate on what would have become of those children if World War 2 and its aftermath hadn't occurred. Being in the military changed a lot of men's attitudes forever. What would they have been like in dealing with the deprivations of the depression without that? Would we have seen more alcoholism, more failure to launch? Since, hopefully, we are not heading towards another world war, can we draw any conclusions from the experience of children during the Great Depression to what will become of today's children, especially the boys, under the conditions present today? I am surprised that Judith Warner did not ask what became of those roving gangs of homeless boys in the 1930s or in general to all the children whose lives were so disrupted by the Great Depression. We do know a few things. A lot of the boys of the 1930s became the Greatest Generation, the huge number of people who were in the military during World War 2. Many of them were able, under the GI Bill, to go on to college and to middle class lives as adults. After 10 years of depression and 5 years of world war, those who came of age were seeking normalcy. And they did it by getting married in higher percentages and at younger ages and with more children than in the period before or after. The mean age of first marriage for women went down at one point to just below 20, with the mean age for men only a few years greater. The mean number of children that women were having, at one point, got to be a little less than 4. Then came the 60s and those children, those baby boomers, revolted against their parents normalcy. That led to women’s liberation, among other things, and that led, among other factors, to this blog, why boys fail. So, what seems to have happened is that the negative effects of the depression on those boys and on children in general were apparently compensated for to some degree by the whole experience of World War 2 and the whole postwar prosperity. It is interesting to speculate on what would have become of those children if World War 2 and its aftermath hadn’t occurred. Being in the military changed a lot of men’s attitudes forever. What would they have been like in dealing with the deprivations of the depression without that? Would we have seen more alcoholism, more failure to launch? Since, hopefully, we are not heading towards another world war, can we draw any conclusions from the experience of children during the Great Depression to what will become of today’s children, especially the boys, under the conditions present today?

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