To wonder about sunburnt children before suncream was popularised?

There's too much obsession about sunscreen these days. Children play out at school for 15 minutes in the morning and about twenty five minutes at lunch time- yet parents expect them to reapply SPF every time they go out- a 5 year old can't manage to apply it anyway and by the time they've faffed about it's time to come in.

If they are wearing a t-shirt with sleeves and a hot then they will be fine for a short playtime- legs and arms don't catch the sun that quickly.

In the 70s nobody wore suncream- you built up a gradual tan starting in the spring when the sun is weaker with short exposures and by the time it was hot enough to burn you had a good base tan. If it was super-hot then mum made sure we played in the shade or took us inside if we looked like we were burning. I don't remember ever being burned. Kids played outside a lot more in those days so always had a good tan without burning.

In the 70s would be regularly basted like turkeys with coconut smelling tanning oils (like the oil here) & sent out to play from morning until the streetlights came on.

We burned like bastards. I don’t remember a year until my teens when I didn’t have sunburn bad enough to peel great swathes of skin off whilst sitting in front of Tomorrow’s World.

When I started my family in the 1990s I’d use a minimum of Factor 30, and we still use it today. DD is a rare bird that is allergic to sunlight (even at 27!) so we had to up the sun team strength to hospital grade Factor 50 for her. So many articles and med studies written about her over the years!

A bandage would be thinner to be honest.

I was small in the 80's and when I was with my mum I remember only having sun cream for the beach, not at any other time. My dad was more insistent on me using it on any hot day when we were going to be outside. I did get sunburn quite a lot. My mum is mixed race and goes very brown in the sun so probably didn't really consider it. In her family I'm the odd one out with my pale skin!

I was regularly sunburnt! My parents’ attitude was that you didn’t need sunscreen in the U.K. They would go off abroad (presumably with sunscreen) and we would be at our grandparents house - playing out all day. We’d burn and granny would “treat” it with baby oil.

I let my Dad and his wife take my children to the beach just ONCE. I covered them both in high factor (one is ginger), packed their UV beach wear and more sunscreen. DFs wife declared their sunsuits “ugly” and went and bought “attractive” swimwear from the beachside shop when DD asked for more sunscreen she was told she wouldn’t be “pretty and tanned” - she was SEVEN FFS! This was southern France in August. Of course they were both burned and crying when they came back to me. Wife declared “but they’ll tan beautifully in future”. 😮 She also considered car seats absolutely ridiculous and said parents should just hold children on their laps!

I remember a Jilly Cooper novel (Imogen, perhaps?), written in the 1970s, where the heroine was pasty and overweight. Somehow she ended up going to the south of France with lots of glamorous, suntanned young things - I think it might have been to a tennis tournament - where she was a real ugly duckling. She got horribly red and sunburned and sick, then lo and behold, her skin peeled, leaving her with a beautiful golden tan, the sickness meant that she lost weight, and the young man everyone fancied suddenly noticed her and was smitten.

After reading that I used to let myself burn horribly in the hope that the same would happen to me. Obviously it didn't. Jilly Cooper has a lot to answer for.

I've only read the OP but I'll read the rest of the thread shortly.

We burned. My parents took the approach sometimes that a bit of sunburn would give you a nice tan and then you were protected from the sun. This approach led me to being so badly burned as a toddler that, in their words, I was essentially one big blister.

They only started using Sun cream from the alte 1980s onwards when, as a family, we had such severe sunstroke the hotel called a doctor and apparently (this is gleaned from the joyful retelling my parents do, decades later) he told them off for such stupid behaviour. They have a series of photos, we look like we were grilled for 8 hours. Which we were, to be honest.

After that we had factor 15 or 20 slapped on us, but only on foreign soil. Because UK sun doesn't burn 🙄i don't remember it being applied unless we were spending the day on the beach and only then only if we were visibly red and burnt. Again, being sunburnt led to a tan and that meant we were protected, according to perceived wisdom.

When I send my DC to stay with my parents, they are supplied with factory 50 and baseball caps. The kids have been applying their own suncream since they were at nursery. My parents laugh, a lot, at my over-the-top "barrier cream". But I don't want the kids to have sun damage. We all burn easily and I do my best to protect them.

DH has a skin condition that benefits from not using any SPF but he also burns, so he uses it more than not.

So my recollection is summers being nicely crisped up, and then having some level of a tan afterwards which my parents approved of. Nobody wanted a peely-wally child cutting about the place.

But they would have much less exposed skin - back in the 1800s they would have worn hats, bonnets, shirts, trousers or long skirts. Before the 1920s no-one wanted a tan so the leisured classes would have covered up or stayed in the shade.

We were taught from a young age to stay in the shade when it is too hot. I don't wear suncream now and have never put it on DC unless they were going to be 'caught out' eg having to queue at a theme park on a hot day. I think suncream is great for very fair skinned people and when the sun is unavoidable but it is better to learn to understand your body's warnings that it is to hot imo!

Born mid 60s, family of pale blonds and gingers. We burnt then peeled, we enjoyed picking off the dead skin on our shoulders, tops of our ears. Eventually as the summer went on we would be tanned. From about the mid 70s we used suncream but even factor 15 was considered high so we still did burn. Even when my children were born in the 90s you could get factor 50 for children but hard to find for adults.

As children in 60s and 70s, we were outside all the time, every day and evenings until sundown in spring and summer when not at school so our skins became used to it. That was the culture then. Dad used to put zinc cream on our noses before we went out, like mountaineers and surfers did. I don't remember sun protection until late 1970s.

There seems to be more power in the sun now. Even though I have been outdoors an awful lot ib my life, my arms are now burning in half an hour. I have to cover up.

I was put in a t-shirt because I was a fair child, then wore one because I was a tomboy and self conscious. Avoided sunscreen if I could but rarely burnt enough to peel, just to turn brown.

Born 1976. We burnt every summer - sore red back with skin peeling off. It was pretty normal then. Never went abroad, just uk summers. I probably started using sun cream in my teens when it was mainstream.

Clothing gave more coverage in those days though.

We had spf8 from when I was a baby in the early 80s. We were generally covered in the midday sun but I remember being tanned with a little white bum right into my teens. Everyone else was the same apart from a family whose parents were doctors and they wore very high spf and had hats. We felt a little sorry for them. Nowadays DC and I are slathered in spf from spring to autumn and I wear it on my face daily.
My poor little dad has had several skin cancers removed from his face and this is of a direct result of the sun in Wales and Scotland in the 60s. He didn't holiday abroad until the 90s. I also have several elderly relatives who have leathery skin from sun damage.

I remember holidays abroad in the 70s where everyone would go out early and grill in the sun round the pool or on the beach endlessly until they were lobster red. The idea was to wait for the red burnt bits to subside and then it would (sort of miraculously!) turn into a tan, and you would go home brown and proud. Some hardy types stayed out at lunchtime but most people went for a nap in the shade of the bedroom. If we got really red raw, we jumped in the pool to 'cool off'. Happy days.

Calamile lotion. Pink and smelly, liberally slapped onto red skin. We never went abroad, but still burnt. No in our 70s, virtally everyone we know has had treatment for Basal Cell Carcinoma, ranging from an aggressive cream which kills the cells, either just on the affected area, or across the whole face, to surgery. It wasn't just not using sunblock, we would slap olive oil on if sunbathing - we were frying ourselves!

Agreed, though perhaps ozone depletion has meant higher levels of UV-B. I must go and have a Google!

I don't remember using suncream until we went abroad as a teenager. I don't remember burning until one day a friend had come with us when I was 16. We couldn't find the suncream for the pool my mum had taken younger sister out so we risked it.

My poor friend got blisters on her legs. I've only been burnt once since. Though always made sure DC have plenty on they have never been burnt. But my friend doesn't think we need suncream in the UK unless going through a heatwave.

I've tried telling her it's the same sun. As when we go abroad. She has a DD and 2 grandchildren. Her daughter does put cream on her DC and herself now though.

76 was a particularly hot year and I remember seeing children with blisters and scabs all over their back from sunburn. We went camping in Brittany in 82 when i was 11. I have the type of pale skin that never tans and I remember my skin being swollen where it had got burned.

I remember the bottles of suncream were a split bottle with a little section of SPF 15 then some SPF8. I don’t remember SPF higher than 15 in the early 90s.

My brother, was a red head born 1974, my mother put him in a big sun hat and t shirt with long sleeves,He still got burnt, my mother feels guilty still.

We were out to play all the time, I always had a tan in the summer and never burnt but I am of Indian heritage on my dad's side so maybe this contributed to it. It was crazy looking back on it, knowing what we know now about the sun and the harm it can do. I can recall putting real effort into getting brown legs and all my mates being jealous of me. I have travelled to some very hot and sunny places and always used high factor cream because by this time t was common knowledge how damaging it can be. I'm a sun hat and factor 50 girl these days.

I'm in the US, born in the 50s.

There were products available back then that contained zinc oxide which is a sunblock. Grew up in SoCal spending days at the beach and pool and Mum always slathered us with "Sea & Ski" so we didn't get sunburnt, although we did get tanned. Surfers used to coat their noses with pure zinc oxide.

Of course once we became teens it was cocoa butter and baby oil. Got beautiful tans but paying for them now!

'Bergasol', that was it.

It contained bergamot oil, and - at the time - it smelled of summer!

I ended up with sunstroke on holiday one summer. My parents laughed for ages about my hallucinations!