I have to say, the example they show from 1948 made me giggle. (It's WAY too goody-goody for today.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/06/goofus-and-gallant-american-parenting-highlights/674536/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

"The Comic Strip That Explains the Evolution of American Parenting"

"What eight decades of Goofus and Gallant illustrate about society’s changing expectations of children"

By Julie Beck

Excerpts:

The boys are prepubescent, but their exact age is unclear, as is their relationship to each other. Though the style of their illustration has changed over the years (they were briefly elves with pointed ears before transforming, unannounced, into human
boys), they have always been essentially identical to each other. Are they twin brothers? Friends? The same kid in alternate universes? Or is it more of a Jekyll-and-Hyde situation?

It doesn’t really matter. Goofus and Gallant are symbols more than characters. In every issue, they play out a sort of Calvinist destiny. Their essential nature was preordained by a higher power long ago—Goofus forever doomed to be a screwup, Gallant
to be a smug little do-gooder. What can they do but play the roles that were laid out for them?

...But a lot has changed. Technology is an obvious example, and the strip has guided kids through the etiquette of sharing the TV with your family and taking a polite phone message all the way through to being quiet during a parent’s Zoom meeting and
not giving out personal information online. (Poor Goofus has fallen prey to a couple of scams over the years.) Gender roles, in the world and in the magazine, have also grown more expansive over time. The boys’ father seems more present in modern
strips, after an unsurprisingly long time in which I only ever saw their mother doing domestic labor.

Less immediately obvious are deeper shifts in the nature of childhood, and in adults’ conception of the ideal well-behaved child. For instance, the range of a child’s independence has shrunk considerably from Highlights’ early days. Goofus and
Gallant ran amok in old strips, with little to no parental supervision. They completed errands on their own in 1955; they stayed out until the streetlights came on in 1965. As recently as 1990, Gallant simply left a note for his mom on the counter
letting her know where he’d be, and peaced out. By today’s standards that feels more like Goofus behavior.

...Cully told me that at Highlights, they sum up what a child ought to be with what they call the “four C’s”: “curious, creative, caring, and confident.” Those are the traits the magazine tries to encourage. She added, “We try to keep our
finger on the pulse of what concerns parents, and right now it’s mental health, making sure kids are kind.” Kind not just to others, but to themselves. Goofus beats himself up for being “bad at math” when he makes mistakes on an assignment, while
Gallant admits his mistakes and instead says, “I need to study this chapter again.”...

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