What is the drinking age where you live? Do you agree with it?

That's because society has over-compensated for the years when children were worked to death in mills and other places. Now we let them play at life until they're 18 and most are woefully unprepared for the real world because of it.

For the most part, kids today have everything handed to them. Cell phones and laptops are REQUIREMENTS of life by junior high. They've grown up always having instant gratification, thanks to DVD players, microwaves and the Internet.

We're not allowed to give them a trip to the woodshed anymore and they are told this in SCHOOL. My kids were told to call DHS if they didn't like any punishment given. Not just if they were beaten or touched inappropriately - ANY punishment.

I mostly ignored the threat of DHS because I'll be damned that someone else is going to tell me how to raise MY children. My son, when he was 14 or 15 (I forget which), threatened to call the state on me when I told him that if he opened his mouth to cuss again, I was going to slap him in it.

I handed him the phone and said, "Here you go - but tell them they need to hurry."

He looked at me, puzzled, and said, "Why do they have to hurry?"

I said, "Because I'm going to beat the living snot out of you until they come so you won't be a liar when you report my abusing you."

He didn't call.

Eventually, society will either balance things again or collapse. I'm not sure which, although I'm leaning towards collapse. Most people aren't raising responsible people anymore. They're raising self-centered, needy children in adult bodies.

There's no control anymore. If we don't exercise it when they're growing up, they won't learn it. That's why they're drinking at age 12 and having sex by 14. They see it all around them and no one reins them in.