To think the 70s/80s/90s were better?

I was born in 74, can´t really remember the 70s. The 80s were ok but I loved the 90s. I was a 18 in 92 and so many possibilities. I really enjoyed that decade.

You could get away with a lot more back then. These days there is CCTV everywhere, you can't even vomit in the street on a night out without worrying it'll come back to haunt you. Things were laid back, even in the 90s, because although there was more CCTV it was still recorded on videotape and not stored indefinitely.

YANBU. Things were so much better in the 80s and 90s. Everything is so depressingly shit now and life has got infinitely worse for anyone who isn't rich.

There were a lot of downsides.. attitudes to women, paedophiles, marital rape being okay, homophobia, attitudes to single mums, bullying being accepted, lack of technology for solving crimes etc.

I think they were better times too. Although there are ups and downs to every decade.
I avoid social media, but a lot of people these days seem to spend their lives staring at what everyone else is doing on there, getting the perfect selfie and staging the best set up photo. I think people lived more in the 70s, 80s and 90s because they weren’t wasting their lives staring at a phone and chasing likes etc. I think if you went back in time and told people in those eras that their lives would revolve around a phone in your pocket they would think you were crazy.

@ Saysama

"If you were straight and white, sure. If you were black, brown or gay, you were pretty much fucked. It wasn’t a particularly good time to be a woman or disabled, either"
Aso it wasn't great being working class either!

@A580Hojas
Being gay in the 70s, 80s and 90s was MUCH worse than now. In my liberal school not one person out of the 230 in my year were openly gay. My friend was kicked out of his house for coming out to his parents and twice heavily beaten leaving a gay pub. I lived with some lesbians and none of their parents knew. Another friend only discovered that homosexuality was a thing because of "the kiss" on EastEnders. It was then banned in his house. The TV shows were rife with stereotypes and gay men were either camp and living at home with their Mums or sexual deviants. AIDs led to some hideous moments.
Yes it has a long way to go, and there is much to do, but it is incomparable to now.

As a lesbian I had a terrible time being a teen in the 90's, so no!

60s born

You where allowed to beat your children and it was classed as chastisement no SS knocking on the door. I got a severe beating for telling a teacher once never did that again I can tell you

Belt or cane given at school for the slightest thing. I was given the belt for asking questions ffs

Once I became an adult I was expected to marry and have kids not work or work till I was pregnant.

Husbands could beat their wives and it was classed as a domestic and the police walked away.

Rose tinted classes for loads of folks me thinks

There was a lot that was similar to that list in the UK too. Not quite as brutal but not a lot of fun.

Plus ofc the perpetual thought of the nuclear war that was going to wipe us all out.

And when that faded along came the AIDS to replace it.

Free range childhoods sound idyllic but like you ours was often free range by necessity - no childcare. And kids including us got ourselves into all sorts of bother because kids are fucking stupid and if you leave them to look after themselves they will do stupid dangerous things. Eg recreating Evil Kineevil stunts with a chopper, a load of bricks and an old shed door was never going to end well. Nor was playing on a fucking building site. Or daring each other to go into the nonce's garden (there were nonces everywhere including school, but this one was on our street). Like I said, fucking stupid.

In their prams

Forgot to say, I'm not in the UK so some of the bad things pps have mentioned didn't apply here.

OP, the good thing about living now is that you can enjoy all the '70s music and fashion without any of the social shit that was happening then. For me, as a kid in 1970s Sydney, it was a time of freedom and sunshine, eating icypoles and roaming the neighbourhood. Dogs and kids would be shooed out in the morning and left to free-range until sundown.

For my mother, who had to work full time to support us, it was no fun:

No after-school or holiday childcare
Frequent blackouts and snap transport strikes
Shops shut at 5pm, so she spent her lunchbreak queuing for food
Almost no women's refuges; Australia's first was started in a derelict house in Sydney in 1974, and the managers dealt marijuana to fund it as there was no govt support
Police and courts refused to take DV seriously
Drinking and driving was a man's inviolable right
Cost of food, utilities, clothes and medical care was sky-high compared to wages.

Gay people had a terrible time. Being sacked from their jobs and told to leave the state was not uncommon. "Poofter bashing" was a sport, as any gay man who survived being thrown off the cliffs at Bondi would tell you. Many did not survive, and the police didn't bother investigating. "Just another bloody poofter ... er, accident, sir."

I was a child/teenager in the 70s and a young adult in the 80s, and I agree that they were great times. Of course some things have improved since then, but life was so much more simple and people seemed to have more time to enjoy life. There wasn't the pressure there is now, and people interacted more - and as we didn't have the internet or mobile phones we didn't miss them! Fashion and music was so much fun.

Yeah it's nostalgia. You've getting old OP 😉

I think it's generally easier to have a good quality of life now: houses are in better condition, less draughty, it's cheaper to decorate, furnish and carpet nicely, cars are much much better (cars broke down all the fucking time in the 70s and 80s), clothes are way cheaper compared to wages, sorting things out is easier. Eg you could easily spend a day paying bills in the 70s, just that and nothing more, or buying a train ticket or something.

That said although it seems easier to make choices now re spending I do end up feeling baffled with the way information is put out to us by corps and orgs and I'm sure that is on purpose. It's like we feel we know more but in fact it's just different kinds of obfuscations and reading everything all through is time consuming and often not particularly elucidating.

I guess in the end we always end up limited by ourselves. Eg I got really excited about kazaa back in the day - imagine! Listen to any music you want! I spent hours doing just that, downloading loads of tracks I hadn't heard in years, suddenly it was all there for me without having to wait for it to hit a radio playlist. I really thought it would open up a new world for me

Now ofc I have Spotify and can do the same, but legally, but actually all Spotify does it let me listen to music I listen to anyway, or music very close to it. I can do more of the same, but not anything different.

As the years go by I've found that the best way of really opening up to new ideas is through the same mediums I always used and that were always there - trying different radio stations, at different times, reading new literature, physically going to live theatre and music, especially if it's an invitation from someone I don't know so well. For all the charms and convenience of the digital world, it's the analogue world that gets me moving forward.

I was born in 1980. My main memory of the 90s was how totally acceptable sexual assault was, and memories of the violence and abuse a guy family member faced.

I'll stick where we are, thanks.

YANBU

Am really enjoying reading some of the posts!

I was a late 70s baby, teenager in the 90s!

Not a fan of 70s music.

Not ignoring replies, just need to go to bed.

I was in my 20s in the 1970s. It was dire. The only good thing about it was that I was in my 20s but I was as bitter as hell that I was too young to have enjoyed the 60s. As for fashion, it was the decade style forgot. Politically it was a shitshower and the music was rubbish (the Bay City Rollers FFS!).

Yanbu. Way better. Quite apart from the lack of lockdowns, before everyone had internet on phones, employers didn’t expect employees to work 24/7, and couples both watched tv together instead of staring at different stuff on their phones.

My MIL used to work in retail. She was pregnant with DH in the early 70s, she had to come off the shop floor once her pregnancy showed as they didn't have maternity uniforms. She wasn't encouraged to come back after having DH.

Many women were discouraged to work either after getting married or having a baby. She also left school at 15 with no qualifications.

I remember strikes and the power cuts in the 70s

I remember 3 children in my class were knocked down by cars during our time at Primary School, one was killed. Children having more freedom outside wasn't always a good thing.

If you were straight and white, sure. If you were black, brown or gay, you were pretty much fucked. It wasn’t a particularly good time to be a woman or disabled, either. Or have mental health issues.

Sums it up perfectly.

Aztec Camera from 1990

If you were straight and white, sure. If you were black, brown or gay, you were pretty much fucked. It wasn’t a particularly good time to be a woman or disabled, either. Or have mental health issues.

Sums it up perfectly.

@A580Hojas I’m I over 40. Please tell me when this time when queer people were less marginalised was, as I seem to have missed it.

As I’ve said, discrimination protections came to pass fairly recently, so unless you’re talking about the noughties (which aren’t the subject of this thread and, as you’re also talking about pre-internet times, seems unlikely), then you’re just wrong. For example, discrimination protections on sexual orientation in employment only came into being in 2003. I’m not sure how any sane person can look at that and still think things are worse for queer people today. We could literally be sacked for our orientation and it wasn’t illegal, and this was whilst I (and all your queer friends over 40) were adults.