How did people leave home at 15…

I left home at 17. I’d been working alongside school for about four years and then full time at 16. A friend of mine at secondary school worked in a club at 16, and got a job as a backing singer for a band and moved to London. She had a brief career as a punk singer in her own right and then I lost touch with her.

Even not that long ago you could do this. I moved out before I went to university, because I wanted the independence. I took a year out and worked at a hotel that had staff digs - I lived in a dingy old farmhouse with a load of travelling Aussies and Kiwis. It had 70s wallpaper, single-glazed windows and an ancient Aga for cooking on. That was in 2001 / 2002.

Nowadays you'd need a degree and work experience. I know a former Saatchi&Saatchi creative director started working there as a tea boy in the 60s/70s and worked his way up.

Also very location dependant- my Hs friends and family were in the paper trade (newspapers) lived in Kent and commuted to docklands. If a dad or uncle worked there they got you in.very much the same in the city of London- and I’m not talking elites, I’m talking working class school leavers who would join as admin and work their way up. Technology has taken many of those jobs.

People didn’t move around the country for jobs- if you were lucky enough to live near a high employment area that was that.

I left home at 17 in 1991. My first job paid £300 a month until I was 18. Then it was £500 once I was 18. Bought a flat with my fiancé. Found another job that gave me a bit more. Life was much easier then. Moved abroad at 22 and have a much better salary than I would ever have had in the UK but I’m 51 now and deemed too old for my team.

One time, I went clubbing with my sister and had an interview next morning in a (rubbish) design studio in Covent Garden. Decided there was no point getting a few hours sleep so sat in Bar Italia and went straight to the interview. He offered me the job and I started there and then! I did the one day but the toilet was so gross I decided not to go back, got another job just after. I feel exhausted just thinking about that now, in my late 50s.
Incidentally, my sister was at ballet school and lived at YWCA opposite British Museum. Quite grim. I used to sleep on her floor.

Me too! I'm going to be considered a bad lady before I hit 50 😂

And I'm the generation that had to be super smartly dressed at work! But I cannot get my head around spending money on this stuff.

@Octavia64 my mum taught me to type when I was 15 I think. So useful! Proper touch typing. Good speed and accuracy got me all the temp jobs I needed.

I also can't really imagine a 17-year-old now going into an office to do cover for a secretary who's off sick and just answering the phone and it could be anybody! That seems to freak people out. I do know a couple of people who are getting their kids to work in family businesses at that age, which is great.

The government (both Labour and Tory) have encouraged more education for teens and young adults.

in general the belief is that as a country we need a better educated workforce than in the 1970s.

so for example my mum went to a vocational school at 11 and learnt typing and shorthand. She learnt reading writing and maths at primary but has literally never studied any science, never learnt a foreign language etc.

this isn’t allowed now. The government view is that as a country we need people who have learnt some basic science, history, about the world we live in and once that minimum is achieved then they can do vocational learning.

no writing people off at age 11 with the 11+.

3 things changed which had the same impact as the Industrial Revolution.

Firstly the war had devastated the work force. People got used to women working in the previous 6 years and to an extent this carried on. People were encouraged to immigrate here as we were so short of men. Mostly these were unskilled men and women working on the railways, NHS and in factories.

Secondly, The young people leaving school and University in the 60s were better educated than previous generations. They could easily fit into the new technology age, using phones, computers, accounting machines and the like. There was a huge demand for young people. Youth unemployment was mostly u heard off.

The last thing was the birth control pill. Employers were much more willing to recruit married women. The previous generation to mine, meant women automatically left work as soon as they were married.

People were very willing to living substandard accommodation. No inside bathrooms or running hot water. Lots of people sharing houses and rooms

Not so sure about this, my mum was a teen in the 60s and she went through loads of jobs because she couldn't stick at them and knew she could walk from one to the other. And like all the other working class girls her age, her only goal was to find a husband who could look after her, so she could stay at home and raise children. Appreciate that wasn't much of a choice because at the time she wouldn't have been allowed to stay in work after marriage, but she was most annoyed when the goalposts moved and she had to go back to work PT when we were a bit older!

My first job in the 90s was a receptionist in a plc. “Office angels” the employment agency said “we sent you because you’re pretty” 😭

Parental connections, very much played down like unpaid internships were 10/15 yrs ago. Kids from wealthy families could afford to work for free in certain sectors which were closed to others from marginalised backgrounds. So those industries became full of identikit rich kids and not very diverse; very much a closed shop.

Now internships have to be paid but before they were only accessible to rich kids whose parents could afford to fund them.

A lot of my friends in the 80s would go to London for the summer even if they were at uni . Pub jobs came with accomodation . Or go off to France picking grapes and very trendy to end up in a kibbutz in Israel .

All this accomplished with no phones or sat nav or online info . I think more was expected of young people and we rose to the expectations.

It was like this well into the '90s, my husband's 1st job he got my walking into the office. I had multiple jobs like this, you were paid out of the till at the end of the day. My first job that needed bank details was in '93 until then all cash in hand.

I think we've lost something

I probably heard the expression "extended adolescence" about 25 years ago. It was worrying then. But I never dreamed we'd end up in a situation like the one we're in now - with 18-year-olds not being considered adults. (I know it's not all of them).

but as well as the economics of the situation, we are in very strange territory.

of course teenagers were targets and we all had to be careful - but we were having this conversation in the pub the other night - about a 16-year-old is like now compared to what we were like.

It's like another planet. I think everyone in that chat was late 40s, except one guy in his mid 50s with a teenage daughter. He was very quiet. I think he prefers the way things are now.

I wasn't living in a flat share at 16. 18 yes, the property was in a right state. The landlord was.... interesting. His heart was in the right place. He actually raised concerns about one person's heavy drinking. I suppose we just thought she was free to do it. She did wind up in hospital. But maybe she wasn't going to learn any other way?

I caused absolute chaos by saying we needed a TV licence 😂

the difference is not just teenagers though is it?

take landlords. Landlord of the 70s if your tenant did a midnight flit, trashed the house, stole the entire contents of the house, used it as a crack den etc… you’d just have to shrug your shoulders and clear up. Often, you’d have some heavies who would violence to threaten or collect.

now, look at the landlords on MN for example, often hysterical because tenants don’t live the way the want them to. They can’t cope with non payments, damage, asb, anything.

that’s nothing to do with teenagers resilience

Far more people identifying as middle class and infantilising their kids

DM left school after GCE/CSE’s at 15 as a summer born baby. She then had to wait until her 16th birthday to start work. The age of consent at the time was 21 so getting married required a parents signature as did emigrating, you couldn’t join a pension scheme etc. I’m not quite sure what that would mean from a living perspective trying to rent somewhere or if just being able to pay a deposit and a weeks rent up front was enough.

This may be rose tinted glasses but I think young people of my generation (I'm early 60s now) had a hell of a lot more fun than this gen

I think you could leave school at 14 in the 70s couldn't you? I'd have bloody loved that.

There was less paranoia about danger back then. Young people were rebelling against their wartime value parents and there was more of an attitude of 'let's go and do something exciting, let's make something fun happen'. That's how my mates from that era describe it. I think it would be been cool to be a yp back then in some ways.

Maybe both. I certainly think that kids have lost the resilience, the maturity and the independence they had in those days. We baby kids far more now than we did in the past. I think there probably aren't the opportunities for a 15 year old now but even if there was, I doubt many would be capable.

Oh definitely re the landlord thing, I found a park home with a massive hole in the floor covered by carpet, it was £8 a week. I just gave the guy the money and he threw the key over at me. No checks either way.

It was brilliant

Don’t forget though- they’ll live longer at the other end. Maybe 10,15 years more life expectancy?! So they’re just changing the pattern / timing of things. Who wants to work another 10 years at the end of your life as well as the start?!

Young people grew up faster in those days. Those 15 year olds in the early 70s, born around 1955/58, probably had parents born late 20s/30s who had lived through the war and rationing and possibly lost a father themselves. Very tough era.