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

I have fond memories of summers in childhood in the 90’s with a gang of us kids out in the fields playing. When harvest happened the farmer giving in and giving us a free hay bale to do “hay jumps” that involved jumping off a height into hay. In and out of each others gardens, making up various games to play in the street or using roller skates and bikes “round the block” to race each other. Can’t do that now as the streets are rammed full of parked cars and the fields are all new build housing estates! I do think it’s sad that kids of today don’t get to do that self regulated, no adults involved type of play. I totally get why though.

Apology accepted!

I tend to agree with @BoredZelda though and I think its unfair to accuse her of being "embittered": people seem not to be able to tell the difference between "being bitter" and "having a different opinion".

I think there were definitely good points to that sort of free range childhood (the lack of social media jumps to mind) but I also think its become very fashionable at the moment to talk about it as some halcyon generation and say that parenting today is awful. You see endless threads on here about helicopter parenting etc and harking back to the 80s. I think there's a lot of rose-tinted spectacle wearing going on and the picture is much more complex than most people will admit.

It was better in the 80s but definitely far safer now (despite what social media and the news would have you believe!)

@Thepeopleversuswork

Just to correct my last post - sorry, Thepeople - think I meant to reply to BoredZelda there. Please accept an apology - I quoted wrongly.

I'm only talking about MY childhood experience! It was what it was - no rose-coloured specs involved.

You seem very embittered about your own experience but when we're children our own experience is pretty much all we're aware of, so of course people on here will have had different experiences. No-one's pretending it was the Garden of Eden - but my experience was of freedom and (almost) adventure with my friends in the countryside.

We weren't well-off and I didn't go abroad till I was 20. My parents never went away even for one night because they were dairy farmers so we just had days out, but that didn't bother me in the slightest. Everyone was less affluent in those days so the snobbery about holidays you get now didn't impact me.

I don't like the implication that people are painting a perfect picture! I simply commented on a) the sort of things we did unsupervised then, with little or no parental concern and b) one of the ways in which it's more difficult to commit crimes against children now.

I think to describe it as "insanely dangerous" is probably wrong.

Back in the day there was a lot more freedom. Kids had the opportunity for independent learning, with the obvious consequence that this could lead to them undertaking dangerous activities without supervision.

Nowadays this is frowned and clamped down on, under the argument they need to be protected from themselves and people around them.

I suppose there are two real questions i) do more kids actually die/suffer injuries nowadays or not as a result of the restrictions imposed on them and ii) are the restrictions justified in terms of the deaths/injuries they prevent ?

i) is probably pretty easy to answer by searching for stats. ii) probably a lot more difficult.

I do remember how normal it was for kids to be wearing casts, and having them signed. Not sure there are quite so many broken bones now. I think in many ways it is much safer now, but the payoff is loss of resilience, independent thought, problem solving skills, and a strong increase in anxiety and immaturity. But I think if you're considering a choice of your kid potentially having anxiety and poor common sense, or potentially being abducted or killed, you'd probably think the former is the lesser evil. I do see lots more kids playing out now than a few years ago so I think things are maybe moving back to centre.

This!

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and we certainly had a lot more freedom then! It was normal to walk to school alone or with friends from age 7, we played out in the woods and around a little lake near my house (and went on the lake when it was frozen despite warnings from parents not to!)

When my children were growing up in the late 90s/early 2000s I worried more about traffic than stranger danger - the number of child abductions has remained the same for decades but I think our perception of danger has increased. I'm glad my children largely grew up before the advent of social media - that's a tough one for parents to navigate these days.

I think the world is more geared for children these days. There's definitely a lot more in the way of clubs and things aimed at kids now than in the 80s/90s.
I did things between the ages of 9 and 12 that'd I could never imagine my kids doing.

I agree that the past wasn't ideal, but personally, I think we've gone too far in the other direction. Not every European country is as overprotective of kids as we are now.

I let my seven-year-old play on a communal green area outside the house with minimal supervision. This area is overlooked by multiple houses, so she and the other local kids are unlikely to be abducted.

I also think it's absurd that I'm still expected to walk my child to her classroom door every morning, even though it's on the other side of the building to the school gate we use. She knows the school building well by now, so why isn't she trusted to walk along a corridor to her classroom? When I was six, I was occasionally dropped off at the school gate, so not even into the building.

I do agree with picking children up from the classroom door, though. In the old days, when we used to run around the playground until we were collected, we'd hear of the occasional incident of a dodgy bloke trying to collect a child by pretending to be a friend of the parents.

I know. I find it really annoying when people assume that everyone was tramping through fields or on their bikes in their backyards in their childhood. A huge proportion of children have lived in cities for generations. Which has good and bad points, but the way people talk about it its as if the entire population moved to London overnight.

Swings and roundabouts...

You'll let people queuing up on here to tell you it was better because it was more free play, less screen time, "more time to be bored" (?) and play out and entertain yourself. That's partially true.

But I think childhoods in the 70s and 80s (my era) were characterised by a fairly shocking amount of neglect. What's now painted as "benign neglect" wasn't all that benign. Safeguarding was non-existent and a huge amount of borderline sexual abuse was passed off. Bullying was dismissed as "a joke". It was much harder if you were gay or neurodiverse or just didn't fit in. Alcohol played a huge role in people's lives and was normalised in social circles which has led to a lot of substance abuse problems in my generation.

There were certainly benefits to having more unsupervised play and to kids not being on phones all the time, but it irritates me when people talk about it like some Elysian paradise of childhood. There are a lot of reasons to be grateful that we're not living in that era.

You are confusing respect and fear.

I feared adults. I didn’t respect them. In contrast, my daughter has way more respect for the adults who are in her life, but doesn’t fear them.

It also occurs to me all these stories of messing about in rivers and fields is very much still the case in many rural areas. Childhood in larger towns and cities was different for kids in the 80s and far from the rural idyll the rosy spectacle crowd want to paint.

I was there, it was not better. The things we got up to were dangerous, and not good for us. The lack of parental involvement/care/interest has affected me way more than any perceived benefit from doing riskier things than kids do today.

In any event, it’s a moot point as we are living in 2025 and there is no world where we would ever go back to that.

I do remember playing outside in the local neighbourhood with other kids and little or no adult supervision. Also, we were in and out of each others' houses and gardens - there weren't many official "play dates". I remember climbing trees and messing about in a stream.

When I was young (80s), seatbelts were only compulsory in the front seats of a car, so sometimes there would be a load of us squashed into the back without restraint.

As far as I know, we were all fine, but I get the impression that a number of children died in unnecessary farm accidents and road accidents in the 70s/80s.

Thing is those of us who lived to tell the tale remember how exciting it could be, but some didn’t live to tell the tale, or at least got badly hurt. I remember a boy in my class who fell off a railway bridge onto live tracks. I remember a girl who got hit by a car and lost her leg, getting flashed at was considered par for the course, I knew two girls who were seriously sexually assaulted by strangers. Playing chicken on the rail tracks at a level crossing was an every day game, see also mucking around on the hard shoulder of the motorway.

I look back and shudder. It wasn’t all great.

Better, and a different kind of danger.I do believe childhood is safer in terms of stranger danger/injury. However, the danger now is to physical health especially in the long run and mental health.

So probably better back in the day for those that survived but obviously worse outcomes for a few.

Child of the 90s

used to play among stacked hay bales in local farm. No one knew. Could easily have toppled on us and they were stacked 5 or 6 high and we climbed them all.

used to go to clubs aged 16 sometimes in lingerie and black out drunk.

used to get drunk and black out in rural fields at parties aged 15. Would walk home 25 mins across fields gate the party at 3am

used to wander around the village aged 7-8 for at least 2-3 hours without any adults. Sometimes playing by the marina. No fear of talking to strangers.

halloween trick of treating without grown ups aged 11-12. Walking around in the dark by ourselves

all shit I would never let my children do now!!!

At 79, I'm an aged crone, but I used to do things that now might be considered "insanely dangerous".
We lived in the depths of the countryside and had a mixed stock farm. I used to ride my small, rather temperamental pony for miles to stay with school friends. This was well before the age of mobile phones. We had land lines, and I'm sure that if I hadn't turned up when expected my friends' mothers would have been in touch if I hadn't arrived when expected. I had a small leather school satchel on my back with my name, address, home telephone number and medical details in it. Fortunately, I never needed it.
On one occasion, I was up a tree in our little spinney and a flasher waved his appendage at me. It was a horse chestnut tree, and I threw the spiny fruit at him. He soon scarpered!

Child of the 70s. I don't think at the time we thought it was dangerous, we were just having an awful lot of fun! But it build resilience, social skills and fitness. I'm very glad I was a child then and not now. I think social media is far more damaging mentally and kids seem so unhappy these days.

I was in primary school in the 70’s. As a parent now I’m utterly horrified at the things that were entirely normal during my childhood. For example:

At age 8, walking alone to my friends house on the other side of town to knock on her door.

same age, making sandwiches and walking 2 miles to the local beach, mooching about on said beach and walking home.

Massive slides in the play park set into concrete - I saw a boy fall off the top and go splat at the bottom. See also complicated tall climbing frames on concrete.

Enjoying being pushed high on the swings by adult men who hung around talking to us. When they started asking if we wanted an ice cream, running away because the last thing your mum always said to you as you left the house was “don’t talk to strangers”.

Being sent to buy cigarettes at the corner shop with a note to say who they were for.

Generally wandering about the town centre on a Saturday because you knew you’d bump into someone you knew

Being dropped off at the swimming pool and collected later even when you were still in arm bands.

Happy innocent times!

Better in many ways, definitely more dangerous in others. I was a child of the 70s and early 80s and could be out all day,in the holidays. My Mum wasn't neglectful in the slightest but trusted me to play out with my friends. And for sure some of the stuff we did was downright dangerous (used to go in the storm drain tunnels for miles until the sweetshop man told us we could drown!) Played in farmers' fields, rode miles on bikes (no helmets) cooked random foods on home made stoves!
But we also learned our limits and learned personal responsibility. I was assaulted once as a child, and flashed out twice, but don't recall being more than momentarily shaken. I do think that we more robust.
But there was also more of a community mentality... the local policeman WOULD bollock you and march you home if he caught you doing something stupid, a neighbour would keep an eye on you.

My children had slightly less freedom but still lots (partly as we lived in Forces quarters) and were teens before social media really took off. They still swam in the river and made dens.

I worry for my little grandchildren. I want them to experience true playing out... I'm no more scared of the bad men out there than I was for my children, but of social media, cyber bullying and also of them being so dependent now that as adults they will struggle. I think the odd broken limb from playing beats never having freedom!