Children weaker than their parents?

Found this cartoon in one of the newspapers in Hong Kong yesterday. It say, "If Hong Kong children are so fragile and weak, how come adults can shoulder so many burdens?".

How true! I mean even we as parents are so protective when comes to issues that may so called "harm" our children, may it be at school or their association with their friends. We always "screen" their friends' backgrounds, which class are they from, who are their parents, what do they do for a living and so forth. To come to think of it, my parents were not like that and it was never in their culture to ask those questions we dare to ask nowadays.

I was hiking the other day at Bukit Jambul and I overheard a conversation, a one sided debate I would rather put it, about how different the teachers are in comparison with those of 15 years back.

"I tell you the teachers nowadays don't bother if you (students) pass the exams or not! They are fed up of the frequent complains received from parents about how they scolded or punished their kids." said a woman in her 60s.

"They just don't care anymore, but can you blame them?" she continued.

"Those days, if we kena caning, we don't even dare to tell our parents, we always say we fell and got the bruises." said another lady.

"You tell you kena caning or punishment at school to my mother ah, sure kena whacking from her again, double kena and she will say that you deserved it!" she said.

So, tell me why are we so over protective? Aren't we supposed to educate and train our kids to face this ugly world? Aren't we supposed to prepare them to be tougher as the future is not going to be easy as it looks?