There is a familiar folk observation that people born into the 1960s and 1970s tend to carry a sharper sense of personal territory than many younger cohorts. That impression is more than nostalgia. It is a cultural fingerprint left by a set of institutions habits and pressures that trained whole generations to recognise limits and enforce them. This piece argues that the era itself engineered adults who could say no with fewer apologies and who expected reciprocal respect in ways that now feel almost foreign.
Not just upbringing but scaffolding
Look at the society that shaped someone born in 1965 or 1975 and you see a lattice of scaffolding. Schools were less fused to parents. Play happened unsupervised. Work was more regulated and less porous. The rituals that taught responsibility were public and clear. That scaffolding created repeated low level tests of boundary setting.
Testing limits in the street and at work
When children learned to find their way home from the shops or to navigate the schoolyard they practiced a sequence of small assertions: who they trusted how far they would go what they would tolerate. At work the norms were also direct. Managers drew clearer role lines and unions pushed back on encroachments. That pattern of repeated modest confrontations built a muscle for proprietary limits. It was not grand heroism it was daily muscle memory.
Culture taught restraint and reciprocity
There was a cultural grammar then that linked restraint to respect. To refuse a favour without good reason was rude but to accept every imposition was worse. People learned a modest equation: obligations should be reciprocated and not indefinitely draining. That taught adults to keep margins for themselves instead of being endlessly porous.
Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.
— Brené Brown Research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work.
The research professor Brené Brown gives a succinct moral framing for what many from these cohorts practise instinctively. Boundary setting was not framed simply as selfishness but as a protective shape of love and responsibility. That moral legitimacy helped people hold lines.
Institutions that reinforced boundaries
Schools factories and community clubs had predictable timetables. Punctuality and role clarity were enforced. Adults who came of age in this environment internalised that rules are not arbitrary but tools for mutual living. Those rules were themselves porous but visible. People could see where to push and where to stop because the lines were drawn in public.
The unintended teacher technology was not yet.
Phones without constant connectivity and media that arrived on a schedule created friction. Friction curbed instant entanglement. People could refuse without being cut off from their entire social world. The social cost of refusal was lower because the technologies that amplify shame and surveillance were absent. That structural quiet gave people the confidence to protect private time and emotional energy.
Comparison matters
If you compare a letter based era to a pings and feeds era the difference is obvious. The absence of real time pressure allowed boundaries to harden into norms simply because the cost of saying no was contained. Today the platformised experience means that a refusal often triggers a cascade of public reaction. That makes earlier boundary practice look rugged and almost naïve.
Politics shaped a temper about limits
There is a political story tucked under the social one. The postwar expansion of welfare services and labour protections in many Western countries created a social contract that rewarded predictable citizenship and clear civic roles. People who matured under that contract tended to view entitlements and duties as balanced. That expectation translated into personal life: you give so you may reasonably expect return.
Jonathan Haidt a social psychologist at New York University has argued that sheltering young people from risk and adversity changes their capacity to tolerate friction and to define personal thresholds. He links rising fragility among younger generations in part to different childhood experiences with autonomy and oversight. ([colgate.edu](https://www.colgate.edu/news/stories/jonathan-haidt-speaks-three-bad-ideas-harming-generation-z?utm_source=openai))
Internal logic not moral superiority
It is tempting to turn this into a virtue signalling exercise praising one generation over another. That would be simplistic. The case I am making is structural and conditional: the contexts of the 1960s and 1970s made boundary formation easier and more visible. That does not grant moral superiority. It simply explains why the habit appeared more robust.
How cultural scripts became personal habits
The arc from public script to private habit runs through repetition. Rehearsal beats theory. Saying no at school telling a boss no during overtime or refusing a relative’s repeated favour are low drama moments that accrete into a style. Those raised in the era learned to protect a slice of private life and to expect that others will honour similar slices.
A non sentimental observation
People who grew up in that time are sometimes harshly caricatured as rigid. I think that’s unfair. Many of them were flexible where it mattered and firm where it was necessary. The firmness was not always elegant but it was functional. That functional clarity is what we now remember as boundaries.
What we lose when boundaries soften
When social systems erode those small tests vanish. That creates generations whose thresholds for discomfort are less practiced. The consequence is not merely more anxiety it is a scrambled map for navigating everyday impositions. People are less practised at balancing care with self preservation. They either burn out or withdraw.
Esther Perel a psychotherapist and author has observed that contemporary life often collapses roles and spaces leading to a blurring that makes boundaries harder to sustain. People now carry home into work and work into home with little structural resistance. This collapse has consequences for intimacy autonomy and how people negotiate limits. ([masterclass.com](https://www.masterclass.com/articles/professional-boundaries?utm_source=openai))
Not all boundaries are healthy
I am not romanticising. Some boundaries protect privilege or ward off accountability. The point is nuance. The 1960s and 1970s produced boundary savvy adults but also adults who could weaponise distance. Understanding the mix helps us borrow the useful practices without copying the unjust ones.
How we might recover useful boundary skills
We can cultivate practices that do what the old scaffolding did but without reverting to outdated power structures. Teach small calibrated refusals encourage unsupervised problem solving for children normalise role clarity at work and design technology with friction to preserve private time. None of this is easy but the logic is simple: practice makes limits legible.
A final, restless thought
Part of what we feel when we encounter those from the 1960s and 1970s is a reaction to a different grammar of mutual expectation. They speak a dialect of reciprocity that we can still learn from without imitating everything they did. The past holds useful tools and also broken ones. Usefulness matters more than pedigree.
Summary table
| Factor | How it taught boundaries |
|---|---|
| Everyday scaffolding | Unsupervised play predictable institutions and visible role lines trained small scale refusals. |
| Technological friction | Delayed communication reduced pressure and made refusal less punitive. |
| Political contracts | Clear civic expectations normalised balanced obligations and reciprocity. |
| Cultural grammar | Restraint and reciprocity were valued creating moral legitimacy for limits. |
| Modern collapse | Flattened roles and constant connectivity erode practice and make boundaries harder. |
FAQ
Did the 1960s and 1970s create better people?
No one decade magically produces better people. The point is structural influence. The era offered repeated practical experiences that strengthened a particular skill set. Those skills look attractive now because the conditions that taught them have become rarer.
Are boundaries from that era always desirable today?
Certain principles remain useful such as reciprocal give and take and having predictable role expectations. But some older boundary practices reinforced exclusion and power imbalances. The useful task is to separate functional habits from the unjust structures that once supported them.
Can younger people learn these boundary habits quickly?
Skills are teachable but not instantly. They require repeated calibrated opportunities to practise saying no negotiating obligations and recovering from relational friction. Design environments that let people rehearse these responses and the habit forms over time.
Is technology the main villain here?
Technology plays a big role because it collapses delays and publicises refusals. Yet technology is neither wholly villain nor saviour. It amplifies tendencies that social systems either constrain or channel. Thoughtful design that preserves friction can help restore private margins.
How do we avoid weaponising boundaries?
Teach specificity. Boundaries are healthier when tied to behaviours timeframes and reciprocity rather than identity or blanket exclusion. Practice proportionate enforcement and cultivate accountability so limits protect dignity not privilege.
Who should read this if they want to change their boundary habits?
Anyone who feels chronically depleted overwhelmed or uncertain about saying no. Start small with time based experiments and escalate gradually. The objective is functional clarity not moral perfection.
