[nurse34]

Hello all! I just started my Lifespan Psychology class this past Monday and I wanted to get a head start on my research paper but I am at a total loss at what to write about. Basically the assignment is to compare the behavior or attitude about an issue of six people in two different age groups, three in each group. I want it to be something different but I am stumped! I've thought of the abortion issue, political issue, etc but I'm sure those have been done several times over. Any ideas? Thanks for your help!

[Daytonite]

How about the new technologies that are coming out? My mother is 85 years old and she was raised at a time when there was no TV and some radio. She tells all kinds of stories about things they did to amuse themselves (card games, board games, singing). I've noticed that the elderly people are less likely to learn how to use a computer. I can't get my mom to learn to use the VCR and tape TV programs. When I was a kid my mom tended to cook meals and bake things from scratch--something that doesn't happen a whole lot today with the new packaged and frozen foods that are available. In the 1920s they used ice to cool their refrigerators and there were still vendors who rode or pushed wagons down the streets selling vegetables and rags. Their music was much different. I was 15 years old when the Beetles put out their first album and my mother wouldn't let me buy it. She wouldn't let me watch them when they made their first American appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. My mom thought Frank Sinatra was just the cats pajamas. He was very popular and girls swooned over him too. But, his musical style is much different than what the young bands are doing today. Oh, and we didn't have color TV until the 60s. My dad loved watching westerns and there were a lot of them on the TV back in the 60s. It's hard to find them these days. I find it interesting that the terrible music of my youth (Beetles, Rolling Stones, Elvis) has become classical standards played on the easy listening stations! They read a lot in the old days when there was no TV. I've caught my mom reading mags like True Confessions. In the 60s the stories in them were scandalous. I haven't read any of them lately, but in todays world there not much sexual behavior that shocks us.

Out of wedlock pregnancy. It was one of the worst things that could happen to a young girl up until the last 15 or 20 years. There was no abortion or birth control pills. Young girls were sent away to have their babies and give them up for adoption. It was a real stigma for a girl to get into a situation like that. Today--hey! it's still looked on as a mistake, but you don't get ostracized for it. Living with a man back in my mother's day was unheard of. They did try to justify some of the people that did this by calling it common law marriage, but it was definitely a no-no. Today it seems like everyone does it.

Another subject might be the issue of disciplining children. My mother and all my aunts and uncles wouldn't think twice about hauling off and smacking one of us if we were misbehaving. My parents had an arsenal of wooden spoons, hair brushes, belts and the good old broom. The older generation tended to think along the lines of "spare the rod and spoil the child". Try spanking a kid when you're out in public today and you're liable to get arrested!

Patriotism has been kind of revitalized these days. Ask some Vietnam veterans how they felt about the way they were treated when they came back from their tours in 'Nam. It was a very unpopular war unlike what is going on today.

I'm just rattling, but I hope I may have given you a few ideas.