Compared to 50 years ago, are children today better or worse at delaying gratification?

If you answered “worse,” then you have company.

Roughly 3 out of 4 parents believe that self-control has decreased .... Likewise, when given a brief description of the famous marshmallow test, the same proportion of parents guess that preschoolers today are less able to delay gratification than their counterparts in the 1960s.

Here’s how one older gentleman described the decline of self-controlled behavior among kids of his generation.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

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