When I was a kid in the 70's, nobody wore a bike helmet. If we saw a kid wearing a helmet riding a bike, we'd probably beat him up. Today, my wife won't let me ride without a helmet. I've either been civilized or emasculated. In retrospect, I don't think we were neanderthals. But we definitely should have been wearing helmets.
When I was a kid in the 70's, there were three kids in my town who died due to bike accidents. I'm betting that at least one of them would have not happened if the kid was wearing a helmet.
On the downside, there's less cost for being stupid which I think is probably bad for influencing cause-effect considerations, even though one effect is potentially death.
When I was a kid there was no nerf-padded society (late 70's into the 80's). If you made a stupid move on a bike, you bled on the ground and thought it over for a while. From that you got a very real sense of the implications of your actions and relied on your wits more, as not doing so would get you really screwed up.
Ask yourself honestly, are you using your wife as a convenient excuse? Or would you be wearing a helmet now anyway? :-) I'd go with civilized over emasculated.
I think the awareness campaigns of the 80's, as well as generally "growing up", in addition to quite a few near-deadly accidents, have changed my (in hindsight, ridiculously stupid) viewpoint on helmets.
In the last 12 months two friends have broken helmets, but survived. If they weren't wearing them, who knows...
