As much as I would like to think I wrung all of that out before it had time to get stuck permanently, how do I know?

I wonder if it makes you a better person to have a little bit of that in you still, where even though you might not believe, the habit is still there to do the right thing - just in case.

I came to terms, through trial and error and wasted effort and failure, that making excuses robs you of any power.

Yep. And yet, people fight to be labelled a victim of something. They want to have a disorder...

Maybe this generation of parents wanted to preserve childhood so bad that it is a contradiction when we see them failing as they learn, later than we might think they should?

The problem I often see is that parents want to be friends with their kids, rather than parents. Friends don't teach you the skills of adults, they are trial and error support along the childhood paths.

Painting a whole generation with the same brush is one of the things we hated about boomers.

Sure, but there is only so much granularity to add here. There are some who have good heads on their shoulders and will go far, but they are definitely outnumbered.