Over coffee one morning recently, a friend and I – both relatively young mothers – agreed that our generation of parents had begun to do it all wrong.

“My kids say things to me that I never, in a million years, would have dreamed of saying to my parents. I may have wanted to say these things, but I knew there was a line and I didn’t dare cross it,” she said.

The line between parents and children seems to have blurred. Children seem increasingly impudent, self-centered, disrespectful, and demanding. Shouldn’t we be worried?

“It’s hard for me to figure out exactly what my own parents did that made me know exactly who was in charge. I even try to adopt their tones and styles, but still my kids are far more disrespectful to me and the adults in their lives than I would like them to be,” my friend admitted.

Everyone I spoke to with young families agreed that their children were occasionally rude, causing frequent moments of embarrassment.

“I asked my 8-year-old to go and give my mother a hug when she walked into our apartment yesterday, and she didn’t even look up. I was ready to kill her,” a mother of three said.

“My 4-year-old son passed gas, and instead of saying ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘That’s your birthday present,'” a mother of two told me. “I was stunned. My husband swore that he didn’t get that kind of language from him. He’s not American, and he often can’t believe how ill-mannered Americans are. He notices that they don’t hold the door; that they come to the table without a shirt on; that children don’t rise when an adult enters the room,” she said.

It’s hard to know who deserves the most blame for ill-mannered children: the parents or the lackadaisical environment that surrounds us.

“Our society doesn’t value the importance of doing good deeds anymore, particularly in New York. It’s all about winning things and achieving different levels of success,” a child psychologist on the Upper East Side said. “Having a solid character or being courteous used to mean a lot. Today it’s all about getting straight As or being captain of this or president of that. If society doesn’t value these kinds of upstanding moral traits, then parents don’t take the time to teach their children these manners,” she said.

The parents or the society? It seems a bit like the chicken and the egg.

Corporal punishment, even an occasional spank, is frowned upon these days. Time-outs seem to be the most acceptable form of punishment, and the parents of any feisty child will tell you that a time-out is about as effective as a Band-Aid is for a broken arm.

“I think part of the problem is the television our children watch,” a friend ventured. “As much as I limit the amount of time they watch, they still watch those obnoxious cartoons on Nick Jr. I grew up with ‘The Brady Bunch’ and my husband watched ‘The Laurel and Hardy Show.’ You can’t compare the influence of those shows to ‘The Rugrats’ and ‘SpongeBob,’ where one character is ruder than the next.”

Still, though, I can’t let parents – or myself – off the hook. Parents should be authoritative. They should be a little intimidating. Even a little scary.

“When we used to ask for a piece of candy, my mother would say ‘no,'” a mother of two said. “She teases me because she says our generation’s answer to the same request sounds something like: ‘I wish I could give you a piece of candy. I can see you really want a piece of candy.But eating candy is bad for your teeth because candy gives you cavities, which are tiny holes in your teeth.'”

Why does our generation have such a hard time saying no?

“So much of my parenting is a response to how I felt about my own parents’ style. I was scared to death of my father and don’t want my kids to feel that way,” a mother of three said. “As much as I wish my kids were a little more well-mannered, I feel a certain sense of relief that they are comfortable every once in a while standing up to me.”

I can’t help but wonder if some parents today have a certain amount of ambivalence about actually being the ones in charge.

“My daughters are my best friends,” a mother of three girls pronounced to me the other day while parading skintight, low-rise jeans that revealed her thong underwear.

I feel bad for your daughters, I wanted to tell her. They don’t need a best friend. They need a mother.

The friend whose son gave her a “special” birthday present insists that manners are coming back into fashion. The success of the television shows “Supernanny” and “Nanny 911” reflects America’s interest in incorporating more traditional disciplines, routines, and etiquette into their homes.

I have only watched “Supernanny” once, but what I recall learning is that no matter how rude my children are, there are always children who are far, far ruder.

This is not exactly the lesson I think I need. Perhaps I’ll try to find reruns of “Leave It to Beaver.”

sarasberman@aol.com