I think when you go back a ways parents definitely gave themselves a lot more slack to do their job and generally were less neurotic about it. Seen and not heard was a favourite phrase of my grandfather, and in general the parenting philosophy my father was raised in was that children should fit around their parents' life, the polar opposite of today. It made him a strong and self reliant type of man, but his memories of childhood are much more mixed than mine.
So to answer the question, yeah children were more tolerable because the oldies and institutions didn't have so much trouble being callous to what they wanted. Doesn't really translate into great parenting though.
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