Parents passed their beliefs, values and prejudices from generation to generation. Children made wholesome friends and learned the proper things in school while parents relaxed, knowing their children were absorbing the right lessons. Americans didn't have to fight to keep the uglier side of the world away as their children grew up. I don't know if raising children really was easier in those days, but the world is much smaller now. Television pipes the misery of war and famine from around the world into American living rooms, and the Internet shrinks the world to the size of the living room itself.
Children are curious.
Their curiosity burns and the children wade into an intoxicating cocktail of information and look for satisfaction. The curiosity of children, however, burns not only for science, literature, games and sports. Children find people with common interests, interests that lure them into treacherous waters, beyond the reach of their parents. They find interesting people, nude images, different value systems, and some people seeming to lack any values at all. Where children of an earlier day were disappointed to find that fuck' wasn't in the school dictionary, today they risk drowning in a sea of cyber-obscenity.