On the other hand I knew someone who toured the USSR in the seventies (no ideological fellow traveller), mostly in Russia, and this person said that USSR children were highly prized and endlessly spoiled. Maybe life was more secure then. But apart from that everyone does say that Russians don't do fake smiles. Actually, that reminds me of the saying that to genuinely praise someone's intelligence and application in German, or to damn them with faint praise in English, you say that they are 'earnest' and 'serious'.