[westendlass]

I think things (and life experiences) have changed a lot over the last fifty years or so. People seemed to have more responsibilities and less mollycoddling than today's teenagers, when you left school you started work - you suddenly became a grown up. Times and technology are drastically different now and the hardships faced by previous generations are irrelevant to the current generation. That and the so called 'Nanny State' making people fearful of and needing to be wrapped in cotton wool seem to be breeding a new babyhood of teenagers scared of the realities of the 'big, wide world'.