To hate it when people hark back to the good old days

[sharksscareme]

Whenever I see one of 'those' posts on Facebook about how wonderful the 70s/80s were and playing out all day and so on - I wonder if my memories are completely different (born 1981.)

Yes, we had a lot more personal freedom but this was very risky. Not just in the sense of potential accidents and stranger danger but also from each other. There was some nasty bullying and intimidation that went on in the groups.

School was a miserable experience for me with sarcastic, unpleasant teachers (not all) bullying, disgusting toilets without soap or toilet paper or even locks on the door. Good thing we didn't have water bottles as there wasn't even anywhere safe and clean to have a wee.

I was walking to school alone from the age of seven and letting myself into an empty house from a similar age. It wasn't fun.

Hitting children was seen as acceptable and sexual abuse was the elephant in the room.

AIBU? I don't think back on my childhood particularly fondly.

[user1482079332]

No its rose tinted spectacles

[wasonthelist]

Yanbu

[ADedicatedFollower]

I never weed in secondary school for the entire 5 years.

Dehydration aside the 70s 80 s were really quite good in my experience.

However i just didn't know is about adult cruelty as i was shielded from the adult world by kind family. Kid cruelty was another matter and we were expected to navigate it on our own terms.

[Tinkerbec]

I was smacked by the teacher in 1987. She would be sacked now.
Agree with the toilets I used to gonall day without a wee. They weren't nice and the older girls hung around in there.

[StillDrivingMeBonkers]

Children still get hit
People still suffer sexual abuse
There are still bullies at school, in public, at home and in the work place

Some things were better back then. Some things are better now.

[ithakabythesea]

Yeah, it is just nostalgic bollocks - childhood seems great looking back because you were young and had no responsibilities - it doesn't mean it was actually a better time.

I believe in looking forward, not backward. When you start reminiscing too much you are living in an imaginary better past, not enjoying your present or thinking about the future. Let it go.

[JamesDelaneysHat]

There's no such thing as the 'good old days'. There's just as many bad things about the past as there is about the present. Some are the same and some a bit different. I don't understand why some people insist things were better in the past.

[spankhurst]

I was born in 1970 and the toilets were fine in all my schools.
I feel sad sometimes that my DS can't cycle for miles with his mates like I did. We definitely had a shit load more freedom. But I had an abuse-free, reasonably happy childhood.

[SharkBastard]

I wonder if the parents of these 'good old days' folk feel the same that the 70's or 80's were easy and good. My mum wouldn't

[sharksscareme]

I'm sure some people had great childhoods. I just personally find it hard to identify. I know sex abuse still happens but I do feel nowadays it is at least taken seriously which wasn't the case in the 80s/90s.

[welovepancakes]

Throughout history, I think people have said that 30 years ago, everything was better.

[FormerlyFrikadela01]

If the good old days were so good then why didn't those children grow up and bring their own children up in the same way?

Rose tinted spectacles everytime.

[blubberball]

No, it's better now over all, mostly. I do sometimes wish that my dc could enjoy the same freedom as we did though. Out playing all day, riding for miles on our bikes. It would just be unthinkable now, especially as we didn't even have phones. But, generally speaking, things are better now.

[VestalVirgin]

And ... what exactly is better now?

You don't have to go to school anymore.

But the children who still go to school are still being bullied, the school toilets are still dirty and girls nowadays are increasingly forced to share them with males, (and the changing rooms, too) so that got worse.

I was walking to school alone from the age of seven and letting myself into an empty house from a similar age. It wasn't fun.

Would have walking to school with your parents have been more fun?
I walked to school with other kids at that age, and I fail to see the problem.

Hitting children was seen as acceptable and sexual abuse was the elephant in the room.

Hitting children has perhaps become less acceptable, but many still do it and sexual abuse still happens.

I fail to see how things have improved that much.


I agree that there are no "good old days", because many things were worse in the past, but your examples don't really show in which way we are better off now. And ... things have not actually changed for the better that much.

I wouldn't have liked to live in the times before feminists had fought for voting rights for women, or the right to hold a job and have our own bank accounts and the like. Those were definitely bad times.

But walking to school alone? Um, not really what I would call a horrible childhood, sorry.

[sharksscareme]

Vestal, I didn't walk to school with other kids, I walked alone, and I let myself into a house alone when I was seven.

Yes, I certainly would have preferred to have had a parent with me. I got very frightened at home alone, especially as our house was remote.

You're being really rude, as you know walking to school alone at a very young age was only one example I gave, and have extrapolated it deliberately to minimise and to mock.

[ArchNotImpudent]

I think many of the bad things thirty years ago have simply been replaced by cyber equivalents rather than being eradicated - online bullying, internet fraud and identity theft, internet grooming and the distribution child pornography. Much of how nostalgic you feel will depend on how happy your childhood was as an individual, so I think YABU to suggest no one should look back fondly on those days.

It will also depend on how happy the children of the 70s and 80s are now - if their lives have turned out as planned, or not. I think being in your 40s is often when you start assessing how your life has turned out - it hits you that perhaps 'this is it' for your adult life - so your childhood/teens seem rosier because even if you were unhappy, the future - you as an adult - was still an unknown and potentially glorious quantity.

Overall, if you're happier now than you were then, of course YANBU to disagree with the nostalgia.

[ArchNotImpudent]

^ distribution of

Forgot to add that I was born in the mid-70s.

[PrancingQueen]

I don't think Vestal was mocking OP.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and look back on those times fondly. Mostly because of the freedom we had as kids (mostly enabled by 'relaxed' 70s parenting).

[Derlei]

I'm one of those people who harks on about the 90s and early 00s as being he golden years and how I'd love to turn the clocks back. For me it's mainly because the last 10 years have been challenging in that life changing things have happened and life is very different for me and my family now. And for me I think it's also a coping mechanism for accepting that I'm aging. I find it difficult to accept sometimes that I'm almost mid-thirties. I will admit, old age scares me and regressing back is probably a method of denial for me. It's like escapism for me really

[onemorecupofcoffeefortheroad]

YANBU - I can't stand all that nostalgic bollocks. It's insufferable and I grew up in the 60s and 70s and had an idyllic childhood, wasn't abused, liberal parents, cycled everywhere bla bla bla
I just can't stand the message those posts send out - that our generation were great and this generation are not. Rose tinted nostalgic romanticised nonsense.

[FeliciaJollygoodfellow]

My husband likes those posts where it says 'in my day we didn't have tablets, we had outside!' or something similar.

He likes them generally when it's after school and the kids are watching tv or playing on their tablets while he sits on his arse congratulating himself .

Irritates me no end.

[sharksscareme]

I had a lot of freedom even by the standards of the time (older parents!) but mostly it made me feel quite uncertain and scared.

[Birdsgottaf1y]

""I fail to see how things have improved that much. ""

Well my DD lives with me, unlike the children with LDs that lived in the institution behind my house and didn't get an education, or therapies.

Women aren't terrified to leave their abusive DHs because they'll lose custody of their children, have to leave their Council house and if lucky, will find a LL who will rent to them.

Maternity leave/protection exsists.

The racism that I suffered in School (that the teachers joined in with) and in work, can no longer happen.

My DDs didn't have to do Cookery/sewing whilst the boys did Woodwork etc.

Employers can't refuse to employ married/pregnant women.

The benefit system means that children can remain with their Parents (Mother) and not go into Foster Care.

Schoolgirls and vulnerable women aren't held up by the media as fair game. Unwanted Slap and tickle is now sexual assault.

The list is endless.

[BackforGood]

But the fact that you were walking home and letting yourself in to an empty house, at 7 yrs old was not typical at all. I was teaching when you started school, and safeguarding concerns would have been raised in my school if we knew that was happening then, just as now.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of nostalgia. It's how our brains work, that we remember fun things and happy times more than sad. It's nice to reminisce with people of a similar age, and doesn't harm anyone else, so YABU for you to "hate" it, yes. Save such a stong emotion for something serious.

[sharksscareme]

Gosh, Birds, the racism was awful. Even when not intended to be unkind there was always a sense of condescension towards those of an ethnic background that wasn't white!