Or does it?

As a thirteen-year boy, I was one of the larger boys my age and wanted to play football.  Unfortunately, my mother would not permit me to try out for the football team,  She was afraid I might get hurt.  However, she did permit me to join a bowling league, but that probably just made things worse.  Naturally, when I joined the Army, I volunteered for Officer Candidate School, Parachute School, Ranger School, Special Forces School, Pathfinder School, and Sniper School – capped off by a rare request for service in Vietnam.  While I didn’t get everything I requested, I did get enough to make up for lost time.

There has been much hand-wringing among sociologists that young people are being given an unrealistically optimistic and possibly unhealthy view of reality.  When everybody gets a trophy, somebody has a lesson unlearned.  For reasons beyond my skill set, girls are maturing much faster than boys.  Their college boards are increasing faster than that for boys.  Locally, girls were valedictorians in twelve of fifteen high schools.  Last year, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal complained that men her age reminded her of the kids she babysat — igniting quite a controversy.  My opinion is that boys are being over-mothered.

At the same time, one of the fastest growing industries in country is extreme sports – you know, crawling in mud, swinging on ropes over water, submerging in nasty water, leaping over fiery pits, etc.  In 2013, I did the Spartan Race in Wintergreen, which was a 10-mile obstacle course up and down summertime ski slopes, (winning first place in my age group, mind you!).  I was accompanied by 6,000 other lunatics.  Since 2010, over four million – 4,000,000 – people have done this and similarly insane events, like Tough Mudder and Warrior Dash.  This would be an equal but opposite reaction to what exactly?  Maybe . . . over-mothering?  Other generations never felt the need to crawl in mud, did they?

So,mommies, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys . . . or bowlers!