My Father was an absolute deadbeat who didn’t see us or pay maintenance (self-employed, cash in hand), so she was dealt a pretty crap hand. Because she was by far the better parent, I’ve always thought of her as a good parent, but since having DS I’ve started to realise quite how bad some of our childhood was. At the time it seemed normal, but now I’m not sure if it was normal for everyone then, or just normal to us.
A few examples:
Always poor but never worked – apparently there wasn’t childcare in the 90’s so she had to quit her job and say of work until I was in secondary school. Admittedly she had been doing shift work, which would have been hard to cover, but surly there were other jobs? Ironically she did do several interest courses at the local collage, so me and DSis would often have to wait in the garden or shed until she got in after 5 (didn’t want us to be latch key kids), but she couldn’t possibly have worked during the same time. This one is especially annoying as she is now playing the martyr because her pension won’t be very good due to all the time she “had to” stay home raising us.
Never had breakfast before school – not sure if it was a cost thing or a time thing, she’d shout from her room that we had to get up/dressed about 10 minutes before we had to leave, then get out of bed herself just in time to drop us off.
Always dirty – we had 2 set of school cloths to last the week, she would say she washed it every weekend but at least half the time it would get to Monday morning and it would still be dirty. We would then have to go in wearing the less mucky set whilst she washed the other, but then only have one clean for the next 4 days.
Congenital heart defect never diagnosed – it runs in the family and I had worked out I must have it by late teens, and later had it confirmed. However despite anecdotes such as I always used to turn blue as a baby and couldn’t stay awake more than 20 minutes until I was nearly 1, she never thought to get it checked at the time. Not much they could have done about it but at least if it was diagnosed I might not have got in trouble every week for not been able to run in PE.
Never used car seats, and often no seat belts – obviously don’t remember been a baby but didn’t have any at 3 or 4 when been dropped at nursery and my younger cousins definitely didn’t (remember holding baby in car) which didn’t seem odd at the time, so I suspect we didn’t either. I also remember her commenting how strange the neighbours were for using booster seats for their primary aged children. I remember going places with her friend and kids, so there would be four of us in the back seat (so can’t have had seat belt each), and also remember travelling in the foot well or boot, though less often.
Smoked like a chimney – around us in the house and car, would never even consider moving away from us or going outside. I’ve even seen pictures of her holding me as a baby, with a fag in her hand.
AIBU to feel she could have done better? Written down it sounds terrible, but at the time it didn’t feet out of the ordinary. Can anyone who remembers the 90’s tell me if it would have seemed bad to you at the time, or were standards generally lower back then?
AIBU?
Was this “How things were” in the 90’s or was DM a bit Sh*t?
ForeverBubblegum · 09/08/2018 14:12
This isn’t 90s stuff. The no car seats and sitting in the footwell were definitely normal in the 60s and 70s, but not by the 90s. Smoking around children was common but declining rapidly by the time I had dd in 1995.
The rest sounds like either neglect or depression or both. But no, not typical of the time. Or of any time, really. 
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