To ask for your 80s/90s childhood memories

I was primary school age throughout the 1980's.

I remember playing outside in the summer holidays - skipping ropes, throwing a ball against the wall and catching it, sandpit, swing, paddling pool (only on hot days), space hopper and dolls and prams.

Rainy days were spent colouring, playing with Barbies and My Little Ponies.

Clothes - my mum made a lot of my summer dresses and my Gran knitted cardigans.
I remember the leg warmer craze when I was about six. I wore them over tights.

I went to Brownies and swimming club.

Birthday parties were all at home with traditional games like pass the parcel, musical statues and musical bumps.
Birthday tea including cheese and pineapple on sticks, mini cocktail sausages and pickled onions.
Always jelly and ice cream.

Meals were all home cooked traditional - cottage pie, roast dinners, egg and chips.

I wore my hair in two bunches with bobbles.

Favourite books - loved The Faraway Tree, My Naughty Little Sister and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

Favourite television - Grange Hill, Jonny Briggs and Dramarama.

Every Friday we rented a video from the shop and watched that - Dot and the Kangaroo sticks in my mind as it made me cry.

Music - I loved Bucks Fizz and Shakin Stevens.

@Natsku There was a time when I was six years old, and we had loads of people staying over in our house for one night, from a local political party. My brother and I had to share a room on that occasion.

mum and dad were involved in the music trade and we had all sorts of random c list equivalent musicians turn up at our house to stay for days/weeks at a time

We were always having people come to stay too, though not random musicians, but distant relatives, vaguely church related people like missionaries, French students, and the occasional waif and stray (at one point my parents took in a teenage mum and her baby, which was very kind of them. And when I was a baby a distant relative from my mum's country stayed with us for a year and helped look after me). We didn't have any spare bedrooms so people coming to stay meant some of us (me and my 4 brothers) being turfed out of our bedrooms. One christmas me and my brother had to sleep in the conservatory!
I remember those visits fondly, especially the French students who fascinated me with their accents.

My parents smoked, we ate a lot of frozen/ ready meals, I loved playing out with local kids. Saturdays were great! I loved ‘going into town’ clothes shops, make up, CDs and the Body Shop for Dewberry and Fuzzy Peach. Sundays were dull, especially in the winter so I read a lot!
It was wholesome but as a teenager it was boring so street drinking, smoking and putting myself in more vulnerable situations became the norm. Bloody good memories though 😅

My sister and I were born early 80s. Lots of freedom to play outside and use our imaginations.

Things I specifically remember from that time:

The smell of that purple ink from the Banda machine.

The Puffin book catalogue at school- we would take it home and order books we liked. I loved the day a few weeks later when our books would arrive!

Smoking was allowed almost everywhere .

Wimpy meals! Loved going there.

Renting movies was always a big deal — the movie rental place was such an exciting place to go to see all the new releases. And going to the cinema in general was a big day out, and was always so busy when I was young. Nothing like the empty places today.

I actually said to DH the other day after a trip to the cinema - in our day they were packed & getting the right seat number was such a big deal. I remember queuing down the street for Jurassic Park. Dc have never been to a packed cinema!

I was born in the late 80s, and I can remember riding in the flatbed back of a pickup truck on occasion… only for local / slow journeys. Unimaginable now! I don’t ever remember being in a car seat or booster.

Renting movies was always a big deal — the movie rental place was such an exciting place to go to see all the new releases. And going to the cinema in general was a big day out, and was always so busy when I was young. Nothing like the empty places today.

Malls were a place to hang out… I might get dropped off at one with friends to just wander around and look at shops, get a drink or snack, etc. Thrilling stuff. 😂

I was born in 79, my sister in 83. We spent our summers playing out in local fields, ditches, forests and rivers. , it was idyllic. One I was 7-8 I was allowed free rein. We ( me and various age friends age 5-16) would go down to the river to play, build tree houses, ride our BMX bikes over the soil humps in the Forrest. We had water fights, played rounders, football and cricket. We were banned from manhunt after somebody gagged and tied a 4yo kid to a tree and it took 13 hours after lights out to find him ( urban myth?).

we ate cheap pizza from Aldi and sausage and beans from the can. Jam butties and crisps add chocolate club biscuits and full sugar lemonade for picnics. We would go swimming as a gang 1-3 times a week in summer and it was 40p to get in and then we had 60p for sweets and a bag of chips to share.

mum and dad were involved in the music trade and we had all sorts of random c list equivalent musicians turn up at our house to stay for days/weeks at a time. Is a miracle we weren’t sexually abused tbh.

when I came home from school I would watch BBC and loved the broom cupboard, Gordon the gopher etc. if I was lucky mum would give us 10-2op for a mix from the van on the next road when she asked us to take a note and go get her fags. Then I’d eat my sweets while I was watching Blue Peter, my absolute fave and I still remember the sheer pride when I got a blue Peter badge and took it to school, then was asked to show it at assembly.

And yes, my LA gear trainers did made me run mega faster than normal. And wearing my tammy girl and lucci outfits it was a sheer miracle that I wasn’t plucked from mediocrity and asked to be a top supermodel tbh but that would have ruined me as the fame would have gone to my head. So probs for the best.

I did think that was random!

Just noticed autocorrect changed parents never smoked to parents never smiled - now that would be a weird and sad memory!

Anyone with 60s/70s childhood memories is is in their 50s or 60s now, so maybe these people had young kids when it first started and kept using it?

That was the jist of the thread @Taptaptapster

I prefer this to insta because I don't feel
people are trying to sell me stuff!

I was born mid 80s. We lived on a busy road so we weren't really allowed to play out (could rollerskate on the driveway of the mechanics garage next door and round the grounds of the church on the other side, which my dad was the vicar of so we could also take the keys and play in the hall inside, playing table tennis, pool, flying paper aeroplanes) though when we got a bit older (i was 10 maybe, my brother 2 years older) we could rollerskate to a nearby carpark to play street hockey and from 11ish we could walk to town alone (we could wander around town by ourselves younger than that but walked there and back with our parents - going to town was a thing pretty much every Saturday)

However, when we went on holiday we were allowed to roam freely even much younger. Have very fond memories of exploring Dutch towns with my brother on our bikes or roaming forests and climbing massive rocks and fishing in lakes in Finland, all completely unsupervised.

We wore seatbelts when there was a seat belt for everyone but we also squashed more people in the car than seats. When I was very little we had a Lada for 7 people - 4 kids on the backseat and one in the boot

Parents never smiled and we ate healthy home cooked meals.

I was born in 1980. We played out all the time. My mum never knew exactly where I was but she knew the general area (very quiet village though). My parents both smoked and it was very much just a part of life. Not sure how many teachers smoked but there was a rumour the caretaker set a bin on fire by chucking his cigarette in.
The year after I was born my dad got his first car with rear seatbelts which was a new experience for my siblings.
I wouldn't want to grow up now. There was less peer pressure and no-one had mobiles.
I know we all rely on technology now but reckon it's ruined kid's childhood.

To be fair, the game boy came out in 1989 and I was desperate to get one. My parents refused. Eventually, I played Tetris on a large home computer and was pretty good at it age about 11 from memory.
I was also really desperate for some Levi 501 jeans in my early teens which I eventually got for Christmas and wore solidly for years. I also had a skater phase and a skateboard and some VANS as a tween.
I remember loving scouting and I think we had more freedom in those days, even with the scouts. Or maybe it was just young leaders primarily. Cannot remember adults featuring as much as these days.

I love how everyone here (me too, I'm a child of the 80s/90s) is listing off outdoor, social, nature-based activities, with cute little toys, events, etc...

But if you asked people in 2035 how they spent their 2025 time, it would be "sat on a couch, scrolled..."

I was born in the late 70s. The Charles & Di wedding is one of my first memories. I remember big hair and my mums bedroom stinking of hairspray and mousse.
Jumpsuits were a thing in the 80s, alongside people trying to be the opposite sex.
Neon socks.
Leg warmers.
The dial phone on a shelf in the hallway.
Noel bloody Edmonds and Mr sodding blobby.
My gran loved Jim'll Fix it and Wrestling. Giant Haystacks! Also snooker and darts on tbe telly. (?)
Blackboards! Then...Whiteboards!
The telly on a trolley being brought out at school
Maggie bloody Thatcher.
Holidays in the UK because we couldn't afford one abroad. Then.. waterlogged tents and playing cards in cold caravans.
I had a pager!
You came in from playing when then street lights went out.
If your mum didn't know where you were she had a phone book full of numbers to call and eventually you were found. Damn the community!
Cash was the primary way to buy things.
Mum made a lot of my clothes in the 80s. She still knits for her grown up grandkids now. You only bought clothes if you had money put away.
Boys who wore an earring in the wrong ear were gay.
Push pops. Apple Cubes. Nerds!
Fashions come back. In 1994 I was in DM boots, lots of tartan, baggy shirts, very baggy jeans, wore skirts with boots, stuff off Camden market, basically. Guess what my 18 year old is wearing??

Oh, and my youngest is 12. I’ve been using Mumsnet on and off for 15 years. It’s lovely that newer mums are still discovering the old nest of vipers 😉

I was born in the 70s. I was never smacked. Never saw a teacher smoke, we had a very healthy diet (with no E numbers!) and we grew a lot of our own food. My mum worked. We did spend most of the day playing outdoors though and would often range for miles. Everyone’s upbringing varies and can’t be homogenised into eras.

In summer, lots of us wore trainers without socks, as children and teenagers.

I think I had a wonderful childhood & despite it being a bit rough in my area (saw drugs, prostitution, etc) I actually feel I was pretty sheltered compared to my dc.

Doing PE in vests & knickers at primary school!

Mid 80s - inner London

Played out with neighbours kids but stuck to front gardens/our road.
Woolworths on the high street - loved it.
I remember seatbelts and youngest sibling had a booster. Also remember quashing with other dc for rides/lying down in the boot.
Parents were social smokers but I never saw it. Isn't it weird that it was so normal to see people smoking in the street & now I hardly ever see it?
Having to wait to use the phone if someone was on the internet.
Loved after school cartoons - gummi bears, dungeons & dragons etc.
Parents are immigrants - smacking was normal. Didn't harm me in the slightest.
Flying to Europe for cheap late 90s.

A massive change today for me is just how much time mothers are in particular meant to spend with & entertaining their dc. My mum didn't work for years but she wasn't crafting & baking with us daily!

I've been reading the current thread about things that were different about childhood in the past, but most of the posters are talking about the 60s and 70s (I guess the Mumsnet demographic skews older than I imagine it!).

It definitely does, there was a thread saying similar the other day. do you think other people our age use different platforms?

Me too!! (born 1973)