Ah that's great to hear, so glad you had a great childhood, and these bullies were just a small sample of your life growing up. I had run ins with bullys too, I would love to go back, as you learn over time that as soon as you confront a bully, they stop..

I think the molly-coddling is partly a result of us being over exposed to everything that happens all around the world everyday, and this promotes feelings of fear that something bad could happen to our children.. Bad things have always happened around the world, and it is no more common today than twenty years ago, but today we know about everything that happens locally, nationally and internationally. When we were growing up, our parents knew about what happened locally, and some who had time to watch the news and read the papers knew about what was happening nationally...

Fear sells, and the newspapers and news hows on TV know this, and this feeds into a culture of fear, which I think has a knock on affect on how people parent..

There are plenty of other factors, but I think this is big one..