anyone else have parents who were young in the 60's?

[CherryPicking]

If so, did you ever feel, growing up, like you'd missed everything?

I've been mulling things over and started to realise how being raised by 60's survivors in the 80's might be something other people can relate to?

I just remember this melancholy nostalgia permeating everything. And all the music in our house was either recorded between 1962-75 or classical... I think I know both my parents mainly my through the music they made me listen to - that's the main insight I have into them emotionally... Anyone else?

[Blueprintorange]

I do, but I don't really understand what you mean by 60s survivors?

[Seeyounearertime]

I cant relate but I thought I'd chime in, I was brought up in the 80s, born 79. I used to joke that my dad was too old to enjoy the 60s
He was born in 1933 so was already 27 by the time they started, with mortgage an house and my eldest brother on the way.
I was brought up with George Formby and big band music.

Damn, my dad was old. Lol

[CherryPicking]

Oh OK, might be best to google.

[timelytess]

Yes I do.
My mum died last year, my dad is 83.
They had a lot of fun in the fifties and sixties, and after. They were self-centred people. They both shagged around. My dad went through a phase, after mother died, of resentment about my mother's adultery (which might have been as frequent as his own) but he's coming to terms with it now, and accepting her as she was, without letting it make him feel bad or feel badly about her.
Sorry about not using DF/DM code. Can't be arsed just now.

[spondulix]

My parents and my ILs were young then. They all say The Sixties happened in London, or the big centres. Hippies and peace rallies and pot weren't part of their lives. They don't look back on it with nostalgia at all.

[timelytess]

Oh, and I didn't feel I'd missed everything. I felt that there was a lot they'd done that I could usefully avoid!

[CherryPicking]

Seeyou - that in itself is telling - people were considered 'past it' at 27 back then - it was a different world in that respect (I imagine)!

[timelytess]

Hippies and peace rallies and pot weren't part of their lives
Don't know about peace rallies but Oldham/Saddleworth had significant amounts of hippies and pot, and we are as far from anything central as you could want to be.

[AnnaMarlowe]

I'm not really sure I follow.

My folks were young in the sixties. And listened to music as you describe.

I don't see why that seems unusual to you? I know lots of 40somethings that predominantly listen to 90s music.

I'm also not clear how that relates to an emotional connection with them? My emotional connection to my parents has nothing to do with the music they listened to...

[CherryPicking]

Anna - thanks for your insight. I guess like a lot of people on these boards I'm trying to work out how much of my subjective experience is normal and how much isn't, hence why I'm posting. If you don't follow, that's fine too.

[Dachshund]

My parents were young in the 60s... but very young - children! They are in that funny group of stragglers who are in their early 50s now - the tail end of the baby boomers who didn't really profit in the ways many other did.

[CherryPicking]

Daschund I know what you mean. Mine were teenagers so too young by today's standards but apparently old enough to be part of things at the time.

Timelytess sounds like you had quite a few life lessons in what not to do from yours. Mine were both quite secretive about the details - I suspect its not terribly interesting in their case considering they were so young. Also, I suspect half the stuff my dad did tell me was BS anyway...

[KathyBeale]

My parents are proper baby boomers. They were born just after the war and so were teenagers in the 60s and early 20s when the 60s ended. They had a ball as far as I can tell. However they still have a ball. They're both into music and often go to gigs by 60s stars and others. They always watch the Stones when they tour, and Springsteen, and Rod Stewart.

They go out all the time with friends and just themselves. They play sport and watch sport, and my mum goes to the gym three or four times a week.

Maybe being young in the 60s has given them a zest for life? I definitely don't think they're melancholic or nostalgic.

[SenecaFalls]

Well, I was young in the 60s. My children listened to our music and they still like it. In fact, when we are all together, which now includes grandchildren who are young teens, our music compromise is the "oldies" station. The best part is that our grandchildren think we are cool because we were young in the 60s.

[CherryPicking]

Seneca sounds like you had fun - I suppose what you describe is how id like things to be with my parents and children. Ditto KathyBeale - your parents sound how is expect mine to be, but there's just that sadness, inwardness, regret maybe..
Different situatiins , different people bit good to find out there is something a bit unusual about my parents attitudes

[isseywithcats]

i was 14 when the sixties ended so though i listened to a lot of beatles and music of a similar ilk my mom was an older mom so the seventies was when i really let rip, going to slade, wizard, sweet concerts etc, nightclubbing it on a saturday night, staying at all night parties wild child, then i became a mom at 18 so my kids had a young mom and they know most of the seventies music and had more freedom when they became teens because my mom being born in the twenties was more strict on me so i had to be sneaky to get any freedom, i knew what i got up to as a teen so was more open with my kids

[BitOutOfPractice]

Surely everyone has some nostalgia about their youth. I think whether it is melancholy or not is dependent on the person.

I guess my kids roll their eyes a lot when I go on about the 80s when I was a teen

I was brought up on popular songs of the 40s and 50s when my parents were teens / newlyweds and music hall type stuff from when they were lirle and their parents sang to them. I love it. I am teaching them to my kids

[60sname]

My parents were young and youngish respectively in the 60s. They have both said that the flower power/pot smoking cliche was nothing like their 'straight' suburban lifestyles

[MotherOfFlagons]

My parents were young in the 50s and 60s. The main thing I remember when I was growing up in the 80s was the music.

For years, I sighed and huffed and muttered about old people music when they played Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, the Stones and Eddie Cochran. But somehow, the music worked its way into my brain and when I was 23 and went to see the Buddy Holly musical, I was the only person under 40 who knew all the words to the songs and knew all the dances.

To this day, I know all the words to Great Balls of Fire, I still listen to Somethin' Else, and I remember me and my dad singing along to the Rolling Stones when I was about 13 in the kitchen as we did the washing up.

[Finola1step]

My dad was 22 and my mum 19 in 1960. I was born 1974. My parents experiences of the swinging 60s were very different to the stereotypical image. They both worked in factories in London from the age of 15. Both lived at home until getting married. From very working class families. My dad would often say that the swinging sixties were for those who didn't need to work to pay their way.

So there was no camping out in fields off their heads on LSD. But they did go to the odd jazz club.

I do wonder if the experiences those born from 1947-55 were very different to those born from 1938-46. Looking at my parents, my ILs and their younger siblings, I strongly suspect that this is the case.

[CherryPicking]

BitOutOfPractise yes I guess so. I suppose what I'm trying to do is work out if what I've experienced has happened to anyone else or whether most peoples parents either continued to live with that open minded fun loving attitude, or never went through it in the first place.

Growing up it definitely felt like "the party's over" to misquote Rob Newman. By the time I came along my parents had embraced Thatcherism - only their record collection and old photos and wistful reminiscences remained. But it was very much a case of "oh it was wonderful and music will never be better than it was back then, but it was also very silly and immature so do as we say, not as we did" and I never really got a straight answer on what or why...got possibly bullshit ramblings from my dad about how he'd been a (misguided) teen anarchist and the same story over and over from my mum about how terrified she'd been when some bloke tried to sell her cannabis at a festival (sigh, they were free back then, festivals she'd digress) also possibly bullshit. But that's it. My relationship with them is nc so I'm just trying to piece things together here really.

[yeOldeTrout]

I think it's more who your folks were in themselves than the generation they were in.

My parents were born in the early 1940s. They are the generation that bought Jane Fonda work out videos & alerted the world to the dangers of military-industrial complex. They're the generation that shriek indignation if you now call them 'Senior citizens'. They wrote the lyrics "I hope I die before I get old" but are now still prancing on the Rock&Roll stage, world tours, at age 70+.

If anything, they're the most addicted to youth generation of all.

tbf, DH's mom is actually younger than my folks, but had an "old" mindset by 1970. She still exalts in being stuck in her ways, which was a strong family trait. Whereas my grandparents were divorced by age 22 or were civil rights campaigners in the late 1940s, so rather different.

[CherryPicking]

Hugs cactus I was also an indie kid in the 90s, which was great, although I wasn't properly a part of it...

[CherryPicking]

Do tell me how you got into a fight with menswear... Did you call them all pretentious twats ?!