Which bit of the past is this, certainly not during the era of the robber baron industrialists ... maybe between now and then - or before then ..?
--I suppose since I used the word properly I invited an argument of quality. I did mainly mean to refer to to the who and not the how well though.
Your mistake lies in assuming that parents before were somehow a better source of "ethics" than parents now. History books are always exceedingly kind to prior generations.