Thursday, December 29, 2011

How Society Changes: Imperceptibly

The Post has an advice columnist, Carolyn Hax, who today had this bit from a reader:

On parenting in “the good old days”:

I had two children in the 1960s, then two more in the 1990s, a generation later, and noticed in wonder that I was a different kind of father. With my first family, I was a fairly typical parent for the times. Thirty years later, I was also a pretty typical parent for the times. The change, though I was aware of it, happened unconsciously. I was not imitating or trying to be like anyone else but had adapted, it seems, to a new parenting environment, responding to new cues.
 I think the observation is true of many things: we are attuned to our environment, particularly our social environment, so whether it's fashion (observe women's fashions, tattoos, men's hairstyles), child rearing, acceptable social etiquette (jeans are okay today but smoking is not), we change.

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