reply to post by Aeons
Agree with your well-stated points. Things have changed much -- at least in the U.S. since I was a child. I was expected to work and I didn't
ever get an allowance. I started wanting money for stuff about age 5. I was given a job and it didn't matter how long it took me to perform the
task, just that it was done properly. The price of the job was negotiated before the start of the task, and by the time I was nine, I gave notice to
my father and went to work irrigating fields for our town Doctor. He paid nearly twice what I was getting.
I was driving by age 11, and although I wasn't allowed on the open road unsupervised, I was able to garner better wages in the hay fields by being
able to drive.
All throughout my childhood, no matter where we lived, this was the standard. Only the kids of very affluent parents didn't work, and we were
expected to pull our weight. Certainly none of us paid for ourselves, but we contributed. I hunted and fished for our family's food, and I was
trained to take no more than we needed. Goods were traded for labor and other goods.
It was a fairly balanced system, and I never had a sense of being poor (although we were by today's standard) and I don't recall ever wanting for
anything because our tastes were simple. We entertained ourselves as kids, and valued the time off we had to play together.
Saying all that just makes me feel old, because that world seems far away and removed from modern experience. Even on this simple laid-back island,
there seems a sense of entitlement, that people are DUE things and shouldn't have to work their tails off for it.
In the world I grew up in, children had value, and they learned lessons the hard way, but with nurturing and a firm hand when required. I can't
say I turned out balanced or even normal, but I am happy and a natural-born problem solver and prepared for most that life throws at us.