300 Million People

According to various news reports on Tuesday the 300th Million American will be born. So CNN.com asked people to send in memories of 1967 when we had just hit 200 million people. Now I am one of those people who love to hear about the Human Interest stories, so I eat this stuff up, but as I was reading the various stories, I began to get sick of reading about the good ol' days, how everything was great. Here are some of my favorites

In 1967, we believed that our ministers and police would not do any harm. Good jobs were everywhere for anyone who wanted to work. We were concerned about "hippies" and this Vietnam thing which seemed to be getting bigger and bigger. Believe it or not, our world was pretty much like Mayberry and the Andy Griffith Show. But on the other hand, our world didn't have any non-white people. In our world at that time, we did not speak about when a man beat his wife or when some girl was forced to go to some back-door abortionist. The mentally ill were to be locked away and not seen.
Rick Lundeen, Galesburg, Illinois

Back in 1967, we could sleep at night with our doors unlocked and our cars unlocked, and our children were able to play out in the neighborhood or walk a mile to school without worrying about pedophiles, rapists and more. It was happier times in the 1960s. Most moms were at home manning the helm while dad was the breadwinner. Since moms have to go to work to help support the rising costs of raising a family, crime has gone up and morals are sinking ever so low.

Give me back the days of stay-at-home moms (until the children were in their early teens), and we would see less juvenile delinquency and crimes committed, and children would have better moral judgment. There is a definite lack of supervision by parents today because they are so overwhelmed with having to make ends meet and multi-tasking everything they do.

I think any stay-at-home moms, who have that luxury, should be given many accolades for doing the best thing they can for their family.
Shirley Cleaves, Punta Gorda, Florida

All the couples in our neighborhood in 1967 had the men working and the wives as full-time homemakers. Twenty homes on our one-block neighborhood with 60 some children.

Year 2006 -- All the children are married and all the young married couples I know have both the husband and wife working. This makes for a lot of babysitting by us grandparents and we love the babysitting. We can go home at night. We helped raise our older grandchildren and only have two young ones under 2 years old.

Traffic is 20 times worse in 2006 versus 1967. Expect traffic to be 10 times worse than now when 400 million is the population.
William Smith, Shoreview, Minnesota

Now don't get me wrong, I clearly have no idea of what life was like in 1967, I was born in 1984, but I no for sure it wasn't all great. I know all those stay at home moms didn't want to stay at home. I know all those moms didn't want to have all of those kids. I know that there were women being stopped from having children against their will. I know that many brown women did not get the luxury of staying at home. I know that the civil rights movement was still going on for a reason, I know that a year later when Dr. Martin Luther King jr. was assassinated, this went on to prove that everything wasn't so great. I know that two years prior Malcolm X was assassinated, and I know that four years prior Medgar Evers was assassinated and his killer wouldn't be arrested for another 30 years. I know that my grandmother who was currently the mother of 7 children, was feeling the burden of being poor, Black and woman in an abusive relationship. So excuse me if I'm not so nostalgic for the good ol' days of 1967.