Was childhood it better back in the day or was it insanely dangerous?

I grew up in northern Scotland in the 90s and 00s and we used to roam all around our local area, mostly via bike, sometimes horse 😂 (we had ponies). But used to ride unsupervised, often no helmet and bare feet/not dressed for riding. We often cycled with no helmet. We swam in the river, explored for miles in nearby forests and moorland, it was amazing. If we lived there, id want the same for my kids but it's different in England I feel. Especially southern England or busier areas.

ETA I think it's difficult to compare or judge. I think kids need freedom and the chance to guage risks by themselves. I'm not sure the average child / teen gets enough of that. But I think we live in a more risk aware culture now and as a result, many parents think the risks aren't worth it (and maybe they're not, I can't say either way)

I think it was a lot more dangerous. Maybe it was better for those of us who weren’t killed, injured, assaulted, abused or abducted, but I think it’s easy to look back with rose-tinted spectacles.

I think it was probably both - better because it was (sometimes) dangerous. My husband and his mate used to make their own gunpowder in their bedrooms..... until eventually they were banned by parents after setting fire to the carpet one too many times. I suppose they were about 10 or 11. But it's still a very fond memory for him decades later, and really educational for two lads who loved science 😂

Time different. I grew up in west Cornwall in the 1960s. From age 6 or 7, we roamed free. We learnt how to judge risk and safety. I spent 2 hours sat on top of a hedge at 8 with my friend and her youngish puppy waiting until the sows in the field got bored enough to go away and leave us alone. Nobody was hurt, but we were very late home that day.

DH was born the year after WW2 ended and always says he had an idyllic childhood. Due to the 'baby boom' there were lots of other kids in practically every other house in the street and they all played out together or in each other's gardens. They went to the local woods and climbed trees etc, rode bikes, built dens and so on. As an adult he has always been able to turn his hand to most practical tasks which I think probably has its roots in all the den building, go-kart building etc from his childhood. They also did some pretty dangerous/stupid things that I always tell him if he had done them a generation later would have got him an ASBO! I think one of my favourite memories is of sitting chatting with the very elderly mother of one of his old childhood friends and her telling me how well behaved her boys were, not like the 'youth of today' , whilst on the other side of the room I could hear DH, his friend and friend's brothers laughing about their childhood exploits (of which she was obviously completely oblivious!)

Totally agree. 80s child here, I feared the reaction of adults and did not expect them to listen to or respect me. I was flashed and followed in separate incidents as a teen. I did not consider telling an adult as I didn’t expect to be believed. A teacher at my primary school abused girls for years and even after he was sentenced, many adults did not believe the girls. This was normal. Safeguarding of today is so much better ( it didn’t really exist in my childhood) .

I lived in a zone 4 London suburb in the late 80s/early 90s and also had a “free range” childhood. No fields or hay bales but a dodgy park and a little stream! All the kids used to head to the park - aged around 6-14. The older ones were expected to look out for the younger ones. There were a few broken bones from falling out of trees/ crashing bikes while doing “stunts”, “gymnastics” routines that went wrong. But nobody seemed to mind and we were always excited to sign the cast.

we’d all “knock for” each other too. No parents involved or phone calls to check it was ok. Just walk down your road and the next couple and knock any houses with kids roughly your age and ask if they wanted to play out. We all knew we had to be back “for tea” and that was it.

we also used to jump over the hedge/fence from the park into people’s back gardens if we kicked a ball over. You soon learnt which houses you had to avoid doing that with!

major downside of that era for me was not being believed / being told off for “being rude” if you tried to tell someone about creepy adults. Meant the creeps got away with it for ages. Now kids are listened to.

I remember someone pretty much incinerating their hand playing with fireworks.

Someone else I knew at work wore an eyepatch because of experimentation when they were a kid.

So childhood accidents that were lifechanging did happen then. I suppose the question is whether as many happen now, and hundreds of anecdotals don't really count. What counts is the stats.

I do remember getting the standard education "Apache" but I can't remember how old I was. Maybe 12-14.

This was a movie about a group of kids that succumbed to horrible accidents playing in dangerous places and I guess was supposed to scare the life out of you if you were considering playing around where you shouldn't.

I loved playing on the valley with my friends, picking ladybirds and releasing them back.

We live at the back of our school and in them days the school yards had no secure school fencing like they do now. Me and my friends would go in the school yard in the holidays and play rounders and football.

I loved the freedom of riding my raleigh bike all over, being sent to sainburys on my bike to get some potatoes or milk or whatever was needed.

I'd hate to be a child now. There's nowhere for them to play, everything has been built on or the school yards and playing fields are all fenced off with 10ft high fencing.

The roads are much more dangerous with the amount of cars.

Where I live in Scotland children still go out to play so my kids have much the same childhood that I did. there’s quite a difference between Scottish and English culture in this.

generally it’s just as safe as always but some adults and some cultures have become insanely risk averse.

My kids are more at risk now that they are teens with phones and social media from online bullying than they ever were just going out to play and explore

I think 'we stopped if a policeman told us to' is a pretty low bar for behaviour!

It was different. My grandma told me how she used to walk across fields at the age of 3 on her own (more than a 15 min walk) to take lunch to her dad working for a farmer.
I’m a similar age to you and I also walked across a village to relatives on my own to visit.
Both unimaginable by today’s standards.
(I also have no idea how I didn’t get lost on that 5-10 minute walk like I do now even when I use google maps. 😁)

I grew up in the 60s. At age 8 I used to get the train every morning (with some other girls of my age) from Whitley Bay to Gosforth, and then walk over a mile to school. Same in reverse on the way home. All the children in our road played out together, and I used to take our dog for long walks (we got him when I was 8, so I was 8,9,10 doing this) for miles along the sandy beach and up into the dunes. My friend and I met a strange man once, but she told him we lived very nearby, and he went away. The main danger was probably the rock pools we played in and around, and the unpredictable waves from the North Sea - I remember getting drenched by a wave breaking over my head when I was trying to run between sets of steps on Whitley Bay beach! My mate and I used to cook her parents' home-grown veg in an ancient saucepan over a bonfire at the bottom of the garden. We'd sit up in her tree (not a small one!) to watch it cook. Good times, and we all survived!

There was a 90% reduction in child pedestrian deaths between 1979 and 2013 636-48. Some things really have got better

I was born in 1971 and tbh my childhood wasn't very different from my children's (they are 17 and 20 now). I played out with friends around my village, so did they. I didn't do dangerous stuff, neither did they. By far the biggest difference between my childhood and theirs is the internet and mobile phones.

I think when we were younger more kids had more street and traffic smarts, but there was also more dangerous driving. People would still drink and drive and I think it was much more common to see dangerous speeds on suburban roads than now.

It was healthier, both physically and psychologically, that kids were allowed more independence.

Stranger danger was always a tiny problem, but also much harder to get away with child abduction now with greater awareness and CCTV. On the other hand, that has been replaced by Internet grooming. Most risk comes from people known to the child and again, that's now reduced because we are much more likely to believe kids. Not like when I was a kid and it would have been 'Don't tell horrible lies about the vicar' or whatever. We may hear about it more because it's no longer taboo, but I suspect more education on it has made it harder.

I grew up in the 90s too and had similar experiences to you, I cringe so much looking back (especially the drunken antics).

As a teenager in the 00s I would stay with random friends for days at a time and my parents barely questioned where I was.

I parent very differently!

Most of the serious harm that was happening to kids then and is happening to kids now is unfortunately within the home or within organized activities and institutions. I think risk assessment and health and safety is a force for good, but compensation culture has been overall harmful.

I was a child in the 60's. We used to climb trees, take picnics across the fields, build dens in the woods etc. I lived in the countryside, so no bomb sites (there were quite a few still in the city) or building sites to mess around on. I knew a couple of boys who broke their arms falling off bikes but other than that, nothing horrific. Although I did once see a flasher but I was 14 at that point. I'd be interested to know the comparable statistics for childhood accidents, abductions etc for then versus now.

With all due respect that is very patronising and you don’t get to tell someone else what they mean. I’m very sorry your childhood wasn’t great but the fact remains that for some of us there WERE good aspects of our childhood. It’s not looking through rose tinted glasses at all as pretty much everyone has acknowledged the dangerous and bad aspects. I am personally fully aware of the difference between fear and respect and I still think there was more respect back then for adults. Everyone is entitled to view their childhood as they see fit.

I remember exploring the cinema at the end of the road that was a bomb site.
At 12 I used to travel into the West End on my own to meet my sister for lunch.
My own DC used to walk to and from school on their own from when they were 9 and 6. The school wasn’t worried about anyone meeting them. They always travelled to secondary school on their own from when- bus, tube and a walk. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve done the school run for the GC. And the hours I’ve spent sitting in the car waiting for them!

Rescued by the lifeboat service twice??! That's quite an achievement 😄

It is an order of magnitude safer now, but it was never tremendously dangerous.

At its peak (1979) about 1/1,000 children were killed or seriously injured and now it has gone down to 1/10,000.

But the cost is (probably) more psychological harm and less fun.

Unfortunately, the adults were the problem. Safeguarding had not been invented, teachers were legally able to hit/ruler/cane children throughout my primary school years, and frequently did, and the CSA I experienced would be extremely unlikely to happen now, because the organisation which facilitated it would have safeguarding rules, and would never have sent children unaccompanied into the situation in which it happened. And when I told an adult, that adult did not even contemplate that a crime had been committed, or call the police, or indeed do anything, because letting a sex crime committed on a ten year old girl go unpunished was better than 'making a fuss' or challenging authority.

Obviously there were great things about a 70s and 80s childhood, too.

I agree that in some ways they were better and in some ways they were worse. I think too much involvement is expected of (UK) parents nowdays, and we expect too little of children. Whilst some health & safety stuff now feels over the top, it was far too lax if you were allowed to play on building sites as a child. I still remember a boy in 4th class who didn't seem cared for at home. No one seemed to care where he was or what he did. He and his younger brother played on a building site one day, his younger brother tried to climb a partially built wall which collapsed on top of him and killed him. You and your friends were lucky.