I just tried something new. Usually I have searched the Times archives online for names. This time I tried the steets in Little Italy that my family was from during the years that they lived there. The articles are real eye openers and give you a taste for life there at the turn of the century.

Great advice. I think I might try that.

Here's a great link to a pdf article on what life in the tenements was like in Little Italy, NY.

query.nytimes.com/mem/...946196D6CF

I totally agree Charlie.

Life must have been very hard and perhaps they would laugh. Then again, we are dealing with a whole new set of difficulties today. While it must have been hard to be a single parent back then, now it so common. The nuclear family as we knew it is no more... And kids today aren't the same as they were back then. Too smart, too mouthy and so totally disrespectful in many cases.

There was an incident at my daughter's school yesterday where I witnessed an almost riot like situation which ended with almost 20 students in the Office (these are 10 and 11 year olds). One child ran in hyperventilating and hid under a desk to get away from another child while yet another screamed for an ice pack because he believed he broke his arm in a fight. And the language that was coming out of their mouths (the girls were the worst). Parents that did go to pick up their children were told off by some of the other children and some even by their own! It was a nightmare.

This is just one example of things that have gone terribly wrong with this generation...the other is big screen T.V's, Wii's, Playstation and cell phones! Hardships ...hardly!

I think you are right Nuccia, being my age, I see the lack of values and respect most kids have. It is a shame that the values that were clung to in the past are now looked upon as out dated, and old fashioned. It is to much about items, who has the best this or who have more of that, we are headed down a bad road, because my generation lacks the high class of their parents and grandparents...It's a sad thing. That is why I have nothing but respect for the older generation, they struggled for what they had, where as my generation expects things to be handed to them.

I’m sure that many of us just cannot conceive the hardships our ancestral families suffered. Those accounts of the immigrants ‘lot’ in a new country where they had to learn a new language very quickly, must have been so frightening…. And even more so when, as we now know, many of the couldn’t read or write!

It must have been a hard life too for those who didn’t have the means OR the opportunity to escape to a promised land somewhere.

My maternal forebears – it seems – didn’t fare too badly – being involved within a military life. At least that ensured that there were the so called ‘three square meals’ a day for great granddad, his wife and his three children – all of whom travelled with him on his postings!

Now my paternal forebears were a totally different kettle of fish. Granddaddy clearly knew what he liked and my poor Grandmother produced no fewer that 17 children for him…thirteen of whom survived. He was a bricklayer by trade – and she (poor soul) was probably a constantly exhausted housewife!

But just a couple of weeks ago, when looking into the background of this side of my family, I came across a quite chilling revelation in the English Census of 1901 – at least two of my uncles, 10 and 13 years old (one of which was always my favourite) had been PAUPER INMATES
>Census page< in what was a huge school (entries 23 & 24) for what I presume may have been for people who were in the ‘workhouse’. Now I don’t know if that IS the case, but I haven’t yet found any record of where their parents and the other children were in that census.

No – the kids of today have no conception of what sacrifices have been made over the centuries so they can lead the life they do today! But try telling many of them about it and what do you get? You get all the “So what”, “I don’t care!”, “It’s not MY fault!” backchat , lack of respect and foul mouthed replies, as some of you here have pointed out, even from children as young as TEN! Can any of us imagine the reaction we would have invoked if we had spoken to our elders in such a manner? I’m sure we can. So what has gone wrong? Why are parenting skills no longer taught by parents or learned by their children?

I’ll tell you why…. Because we have ALL, over the years, wanted the best for our kids and so have spoiled them ROTTEN. And now? Well the worm has turned and THEY are in charge of US! Unless we put a stop to it now and MAKE them understand that “life ain’t a bowl of cherries – no way, no how!”

OK - OK - don't shout, I'm getting off....

Carole wrote:

Can any of us imagine the reaction we would have invoked if we had spoken to our elders in such a manner?

The belt, no dinner, my mouth washed out with soap and grounded for a year! And the belt again.