Yes, parents are the key. My dad taught me bike-repair, auto-mechanics, even repairing central-heating & AC in our house. And what to do when your basement floods from the rain-water.

Then having a sailboat in college really showed me and my friends what being hands-on requires as things tend to fall apart when you're far from shore with a storm coming in quickly!

Heck, my first thought when anything goes wrong with the car, motorcycle or bike is "cut and weld as necessary!".

It's only going to get worse and worse unfortunately. The "Idiocrary" movie sums it all up. I think more and more non-mechanically-adept people are having kids than the mechanically-inclined ones. We'll be extinct in a couple generations.