I'd be interested to see a study of people, like my folks, who were in their teens in the 60's and 70's. Up north where my family is from, you generally left school at 16, got an apprenticeship with a company like Caterpillar, or hit the coal mines or shipyards. There was no coddling, no indeterminate hiatus from responsibility, and it seems to have produced a generally successful group of people who rank amongst the top contributors to a variety of industries the world over, some of the largest and most successful companies ever brought to light having come from people within this generation. Something else I find interesting, and something I see in my own age group (30-40), is that a lot of the South Africans who were forced to undergo conscription into the armed forces seem to have a deeper level of self-discipline, which you'd expect from a military experience of the kind that they were subjected to. I'm not saying that you require a drill instructor to develop self-discipline, but it did have the advantage of forcing you to take responsibility for your assigned tasks, even if only to avoid a run and indeterminate PT to sooth the ruffled feathers of your shouty DI.