:-)

Although I think we disagree here on less than you might believe. Although I am not a parent, I do care for our young ones (bunch of very odd short people really) and I've had the highly questionable pleasure of having to escort convicted child molesters to and fro whilst working in corrections. It's a test of professionalism to treat them with neutrality let me tell you.

Nor do I believe every parent in Western society is overprotective. Enough are, however, that the way they raise their kids directly impacts the rates of bullying and victimization. I can't recall where I read this, but the research showed that in recent years, the overprotectiveness of Western parents is actually creating "victimize-me" personalities in their kids.

So instead of street-safing their kids and teaching them to think for themselves, to assess and deal with threats on their own, many parents are constantly shielding them from threats, both real and imagined, and it does appear that the imagined ones are outstripping the real ones by several orders of magnitude.

This can't be healthy for the upcoming generation.