To having been born in the 1970s and see how much the world has changed?

@Deeperthantheocean

Now we do generally have to work as parents but please don't forget our Mums and grandmother's also did, but after looking after children. Unsociable hours, after hours, basically anytime husbands were home to listen out for anything.

I was born in the 60s and my mother always worked, so don't know where you got the idea that mothers didn't go out to work? From what I remember of my school friends in the 60s and 70s, plenty of mothers went out to work. I think there's a bit of "rose tinted" glasses going on here maybe overestimating the number of mothers who were lucky enough not to have to work??

That’s so fascinating and really puts into perspective how much progress has happened.

I am going to disagree.

I was born in 1970 and I had a lot issues that would be easier to address today: poor mental health (I am neurodivergent), bullying at school and abusive parents who thought it was fine to hit me in the face. My father was racist, misogynist and violent.

At least nowadays there is much more awareness of these issues and support for kids who are going through that.

If I had had the internet as a kid I could have sought and accessed support more easily.

The only think I miss when looking back is the music of the 90s! beyond that I am happy in the present.

Born in 1969 and grew up in a village in the Home Counties. We didn't get lots of new toys or clothes but parents could afford a big detached house. Houses cost more and food/toys/clothes cost less now I think.

I like a lot of current music: rock, punk, indie. I used to feel nostalgia for 80s music but I'm bored of it now, just as I was bored of 60s music when I was a teen. I do still cling to the punk and ska stuff from the 70s though.

The village primary school was great. Secondary school was awful. Teachers were on strike so we were kicked out every lunchtime to wander the streets. I don't know a single person from my school who went to university. Same at DH's school. My parents' only ambition for me was to go to secretarial college. I really envy my son's education experience compared to ours.

I think a lot of this depends on personal experience too.

I was ridiculed for having the 'wrong' clothes in primary in the 90s. Mocked for having cheap trainers/wrong brand coat in high school in the 90s. No social media then.

Didn't need social media to knock my self esteem either- other kids were perfectly capable of doing that. Magazines and TV provided lots of opportunities to compare yourself and find yourself wanting.

Yes sm can be dangerous, but kids are well versed in how unrealistic it is than adults often realise.

I was born in the mid 70s and remember when Snaps crisps were 6p and 7p!

It was a weird decade. My mum was a very hands off parent! She had no idea where i was half the time.

I think the 90s was the best decade by miles. I'm sad my kids aren't having an Internet-free childhood. In some ways anyway.

My memory was that I was pretty well behaved on the whole. Possibly because I knew that if I wasn't, I'd get hit. That being said when my DCs were that age in the 2000s they were pretty well behaved without the threat of getting hit.

But that wasn't the point I was making. In the 70s there was so much necessary administration that could only be done by travelling to the relevant place and waiting in a queue. If you were lucky and you were prepared to wait weeks, you could do some of it by post.

Yes this, nostalgic twaddle and the 70s were not that great with our 10p crisps and qwenchy cups. I was flashed at from the dirty old man who lived outside primary school that we were allowed to walk home from ,hit by teachers for talking. I could go on.

I was a teenager in the 70s and over the last decade or so I've become very nostalgic for that time - I think this is just something that tends to happen with age (surely the only reason I can look back fondly on 70s fashion). Of course it was a mix - better and worse.

I use the internet all the time for leisure and work -but I worry for dd who is glued to it and spends so much less time out irl. I tried to give her as near that childhood as possible - but it's hard.

I travelled and worked overseas a lot 80s-90s and I really miss that experience of travel before the internet - when information about where you were going was pretty limited and basically just fewer people travelled anywhere. I would queue at the special office for my once a month call home. Sometime the world just feels so incredibly overcrowded and busy.

I was born in 1963,and I can remember that in the early 70s you could buy a can of coke for 7 pence,a Mars bar for 4p,a Marathon (now Snickers) for 3p and a packet of crisps for 5p. Can't say that there was much to enjoy about the 70s though,apart from the music towards the end of the decade (punk,new wave, electronic music). I can recall refuse collectors being on strike and piles of rubbish building up in the streets,power cuts a couple of nights a week,and casual,everyday sexism being the norm.

I was born in the early 70s. My mum was working when I was in Primary school. She didn't have childcare costs because we lived in a small, safe village, nobody cared about young kids walking home alone from school. At 7 I was letting myself in the back door using the key left under a flowerpot. On my own for an hour until sis got home on the bus from secondary school. If I was ill, she had to tell her boss she was ill because it wasn't acceptable to say she had to look after the kids. In the summer holidays she took two weeks off, at the end of which we drove 5 hours up the motorway for two weeks with grandparents, then a week with my father, then a week being vaguely watched by my teenaged sister.
Parenting was a lot more hands off then. At weekends you were out with friends. At primary school age, I was out round friend's houses or up the playing fields with no adults in sight (some of this was thanks to our very rural location. Not many cars, etc). We weren't in after school clubs or breakfast clubs. If our parents went to work before we went to school we got our own breakfast and went to school on our own.

I remember when Cornettos were launched, saving my pocket money for two weeks, and my dad driving me to the newsagents so I could buy one. I can’t remember if it was 20p or 30p. It was around 1975 / 76.

This thread just reinforces the point that nothing pleasant happens on social media after 9pm!

There were good things about the 70s but also bad. Waiting with my mum in endless queues in the Post Office to pay bills, or in the bank to get money out, or in the council offices for god knows what. It was incredibly boring for me but it must have been torture for her.

All that waiting around with no entertainment means children of the '70s know how to wait patiently- I'm not sure children today will know how to wait quietly with nothing to do, as it's not something they often experience. But maybe it's a "skill" they'll never need to have.

Well, no…but I was having a ball! I wasn’t paying any attention to the poll tax riots etc! I was living my best life in the 70’s/80’s/getting married in the early 90’s! Great days for me…

Born mid 70's. There's always good & bad. My parents were the generation who never had any idea where we were & parenting was very lax. I had so many bad experiences because I lacked the communication & care from my parents. It was also still very penis oriented - DB had much more opportunity than me & my DF pretty much ignored me.

However, I am glad I missed the social media, pressure to have trendy clothes etc. in my teen years. I was oblivious to it, although 'trendy' was a rara skirt or denim shorts and massive scrunchies.

I did wish I was born later as tech made finding jobs/accommodation elsewhere easier & I would have moved. Plus booking travel & finding off the path things are much easier online.

I was born late 60s and remember; power cuts, strikes, left outside pubs, smacked in school and at home and runaway inflation (obvs didn't know the terminology but remember my mum crying coz bread had gone up to 25p or summat).

I was born in the 70s and was getting pissed up in fields at 14. Most of us lost our virginity way before 16. Smoking at about 12 and tried cocaine at 17. Was groomed and used by a 45 year old bloke and his mates at 17.

Yes some aspects were good but honestly I think you were lucky if your youth really was that innocent.

The kids today know a lot more about consent and boundaries. Yes there are issues with social media but at least they are safer.

I was born in the mid-50s.
My memory of the 70s is it was "the decade style forgot" and politically and work-wise a total shit storm.
Glad they're gone.

Possibly a side effect of talking drugs at 14? 😄

Though seriously, OP it's just nostalgia of a pleasant childhood - which gave you a life without demands and worries. Different from being an adult now (and then) and also very different from the life of a child then who didn't have the good fortune of a pleasant childhood.

Yes, child today don't do the same things as we did but hopefully they are lucky enough to have a childhood which allows them to be wistful and nostalgic as an adult (and feel sorry for the children of their adulthood!)

Yes, and yet the government has just announced it's shelving £1.3 billion that was supposed to be spent on tech to try and keep up with all the issues of cyber attacks etc.

So far all labour has done has been shit. Cut pensioners fuel allowance even for those who are living on only the state pension, given doctors large pay rises that the Treasury will only partially fund while not doing anything to sort out the root problems, large pay rises to teachers while again not looking at any of the other aspects that make teaching a misery. TA's and Support staff still working for next to nothing. Windfall taxes on the energy companies will just mean they find ways to charge people more for gas and oil. And Labour have now already started talking about having to make 'difficult decisions' whatever that means.

I loved the 80's and 90's OP it always felt like things were on the up, it felt like there were so many possibilities and buying a house wasn't completely out of reach. It was the best time to grow up IMO.

I've lived in the same place since my birth in the 70s and not much has changed (in London) except there was a lot of hope in between, then after "austerity" we went back to the poverty and fear of Thatcher's 80s. The main difference I notice is that individualism seems to be more ingrained in society and things have shifted politically, so that what was considered very right wing is now centre, what was considered centre is now seen as far left. And differences in politics in recent years mean the left and right aren't as clear any more, as single issues and culture wars divide people instead.
Also, the internet. I liked the old days of not being able to look things up without an encyclopedia, good old broadsheets and library books. But I must admit, people who grew up with the internet seem so much more knowledgeable and educated! Also, there's much more awareness of emotional intelligence and mental health nowadays. :)
And things like hot water and central heating are good, rather than those dodgy oil heaters.

I'm 1971. Had a fab childhood

Easy to get a job in teens

Fairly easy to train and get work as an adult. I could run a small house/flat alone aged 23 with one wage.

There were bad things but I think we had a mix of new tech (no social
Media to ruin our self esteem) Freedom as children and teens that we don't have now.

Also jobs are stupid to find jumping through hoops for what? a coffee shop job. Shit pay. Same with professional jobs. Too much paperwork before even offered an interview

Houses crazy expensive bills expensive

Everyone on the go the whole time. No time to be bored or just hang

Knife Crime out of control
Petty crime doesn't even get tackled.

Porn poisoning the minds

Of our young men
(I'm no prude but to get hardcore porn in the 70 you would have to know where
To go. It's wasn't
Main stream)

Causal sexism was rife in the 70s/80s. I think that's better but deep rooted misogyny seems to be getting worse now. I'm sure that's
Porn.

I could go on.

I don't know if it's better on the whole. Somethings are and some arnt.

This is a lovely post.

The 80s and early 90s were a great time to be alive.

I do remember it like you when i was a young kid, OP. Youth clubs etc cheap tuck shop

But then teenage years hit and the rave scene opened up like a mushroom and that was that

I think when i think about being a 70s kid, its the rave scene i think about most

But the times we lived through, the school discos, the massive hairsprayed hair, the raves, the tuckshops, the being out of the house from morning to night - itll never come round again

The things our parents used to do, would be illegal now or at very least get reported to SS

Nowadays the world is terrifying