Psychologists say people raised in the 60s and 70s developed a strength many kids lack today

Those born in the 60s and 70s have a unique kind of resilience that the current generation doesn’t possess
There's something peculiar happening in the research on generations. Psychologists are noticing that adults who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s seem to possess a form of psychological toughness that's vanishing from younger generations. And they're trying to figure out why, because it wasn't something anyone deliberately taught. It was something that happened almost by accident.

Researchers tracking people through longitudinal studies like Berkeley Guidance Study and the Oakland Growth Study found that those who experienced economic deprivation and faced challenging childhoods often showed stronger psychological outcomes by midlife than those raised in more comfortable households. This counterintuitive discovery points to something uncomfortable: sometimes hardship builds character in ways comfort simply cannot.

The story starts with circumstance more than philosophy

Mothers were entering the workforce in large numbers during the 1960s and 70s, childcare options outside the home were limited, and divorce rates were climbing, leaving an entire generation with an unusual amount of unsupervised time. Kids walked to school alone. They let themselves into empty houses. They resolved conflicts on playgrounds without an adult referee shouting from the sidelines. This wasn't intentional parenting strategy. Parents weren't consulting child development books. They were just trying to survive.


What's striking is what actually happened. These kids developed what psychologists now recognize as exceptional problem-solving abilities and emotional regulation skills that seem almost alien to younger generations who grew up under constant supervision. When a kid had nothing to do on a summer afternoon, they didn't panic. They figured something out. A fort in the woods. A neighborhood game with no written rules. A bicycle ride in the direction of the horizon. The repetition of these small moments—a thousand tiny leaps without a safety net—created something durable.


Research shows that boredom tolerance correlates with creativity, self-reflection, and emotional regulation. When you're forced to be alone with your thoughts without reaching for a screen, something shifts. Your brain learns to occupy itself. Your emotions learn to settle on their own. There's a building of what psychologists call self-efficacy: the belief that you can handle what comes your way because, well, you've been handling things since you were eight.


The social learning was equally important. Peer groups formed and resolved conflicts without adult mediation or smartphone documentation, creating a robust social immune system through consistent practice in social negotiation and reputation management. When you can't escape your social circle by blocking someone online, when the argument happens in real time and you have to face that person tomorrow at school, you get very good at reading room temperature and talking your way through problems. You develop a kind of social flexibility that comes only from practice and stakes.


But here's where the conversation gets complicated. Those born in the 1960s and 1970s are now finding themselves navigating unfamiliar territory as the language of trauma and resilience has become more prevalent in popular discourse, with some discovering that the very qualities they valued are being reframed as signs of unresolved trauma. A woman in her fifties recalls thinking her childhood independence was preparation for adult life. Her daughter calls it neglect. It's the same experience seen through completely different frames.


The honest truth is mixed. Some children were genuinely neglected, some were lonely, and some were managing situations they were too young to manage, with consequences that show up in clinical literature on emotional parentification and latchkey trauma. Not everyone became resilient. Some people developed anxiety that never really left. The picture is muddier than any simple narrative allows.


What seems undeniable, though, is that this generation learned something about themselves early: they could survive their own lives. Nobody was coming to fix it. Nobody was going to call the teacher or the counselor or launch a whole intervention. So they fixed it themselves, or they figured out how to live with it unsolved. That's not necessarily a strength to celebrate. But it is a strength. It built something in them that the carefully scaffolded childhoods of later generations haven't quite managed to replicate. And now, decades later, as the world gets more uncertain and anxiety more common, there's something useful in understanding how these people learned to sit with discomfort and keep going.