How did people leave home at 15…

I left school at 16, sister left at 15. Worked full time, just got on with it and had a bloody great social life, in pubs from 15 etc.

I'm horrified at some of the babying of teenagers that goes on, for example all this nonsense about the parents having to hold the kids hands through exams, not going for holidays during exam season etc.
It's only 15 years since my DS was doing GCSEs and 13 since A levels. both times DH and I were on another continent on long holidays, it never occurred to us to hang around just because he was studying.

I’m glad that teenagers generally don’t need to live in squats or slums anymore, but I feel like we must’ve lost the learning of life skills along the way. Most teenagers I know simply wouldn’t be able to look after themselves if they left home and got a full time job at 15. I wonder if that’s better because they have a longer childhood or worse because lots of people now don’t learn those skills until they get their first job after university

My DM left home at 16 - she got a nannying job and moved into her employer's house. It also was far more common for people to rent rooms as digs - no real checks on this - or to sublet rooms. I don't think landlords had to keep records or do checks on tenants.

School leaving age rose to 16 in 1972. I remember my DF telling me that a lot of kids in his older sister's year were annoyed about having to stay on until 16. Before then, loads of kids left at 15: if you were going into a trade, or into your family business, there wasn't much point in staying on longer and families couldn't always afford it.

Completely agree with this. For every mariella there was a young boy groomed into sex work straight off the train at King’s Cross who was dead within 10 years

The official school leaving age hasn't always been as high as it is now. DGF, born 1900, left school at 13; DM born just before the outbreak of WW2 left at 15 to work in a mill, I could have left at 16 on the 1980s but stayed to do a levels.

I had a classmate who had only just had her 17th birthday when she went to uni (we were at a private school where extremely bright girls could sit the entrance exam a year early and she had a late summer birthday).

A lot of young girls got into the clubbing scene and met older men who got them into the music business.

I remember Jonathan Ross who must’ve been late 20s/30 at the time going out with his now wife who was then 16 and worked at “Just Seventeen” (as you do). They’d call him names for that these days.

There was absolutely no safeguarding and pretty teenage girls were fair game.

Different times.

It's not so much 'opportunities'. I mean, is a squat and some cash in hand jobs an opportunity?

I'd hitched from home to the ferry, too!

Some of it was definitely that there was in safety net. In my house, I had a lot of younger siblings, and we shared a tiny house with three elderly relatives. It was time for me to fly the nest because there was no space or resources in the nest.

Some of it, as @VickyEadieofThigh says is that home was far from luxurious, so it wasn't that we were leaving comfortable parental homes for squalor. I'm not sure my Kilburn squat was all that much colder than home, which was heated until long after I'd left by an open fire and a Superser bottle gas heater.

I think in Mariella’s case it’s worth highlighting that she’s disclosed significant trauma within her childhood, including parental alcoholism, a violent stepfather, and a lot of disruption during her parents’ divorce. Whilst it was absolutely more common decades ago for 16 year olds to be in work, it was decidedly less common for teenagers to leave their parents’ home without having a university place or a real job lined up and just land up in London winging it.

Many young teenagers who did this and were able to get by because it was easier to find digs and cash in hand crap jobs were running from traumatic backgrounds and abuse at home, and unfortunately ended up in a different cycle of abuse wherever they arrived. The attitude of the time which enabled them to do this was ultimately one of the reasons why child sexual abuse was largely brushed under the carpet and musicians having teenage groupies and girlfriends often went unchallenged in the same period: if a 14/15 year old is mature enough and knows their own mind enough to be living away from home and working then surely they also know their own minds when it comes to sex.

That’s because everyone is a rich person now in comparison to back then.

My grandad walked into a garage on a Friday at 16, asked for a job and they said he could start on the Monday. He got cheap digs living in the spare room at a widow's house. It really was that easy!

My parents schools found them jobs. They just finished school on Friday went to the place they would be working on the Monday 😆 that would’ve been mid 70s

@Holdinguphalfthesky "Do you think we’ve more lost something or more gained something?"

I can't really see what we've gained to be honest. My story is similar to others on here. Left school at 16 in 1973 and by 17 I was living in a bedsit and had a full time job. I had the time of my life and all the other young people I knew and lived with were too. Parents pretty much expected you to move out, but that was fine because we wanted to. I don't know anyone that had any help whatsoever from their parents, but nobody expected it or even thought about it.

Young people had very low expectations of comfort back then. I'm always astounded at what people think is a baseline these days - Starbucks coffees, paying someone to paint their nails and do their eyebrows, designer clothes, botox , fancy phones etc. As a teen in the 80s these were things that only rich people could afford. Normal people could live in a squat, wear jumble sale clothes, work cash-in-hand jobs, and get by OK.

You could grift more in those days. Borrow IDs etc, it had less consequence and risk.

Things werent enforced. Technology makes it far easier to enforce and to track people.

not the same but I was employed behind a bar when I was 16. I just told them I was 18. They didn’t ask for ID or anything.

All of that. I also think that most jobs recruited quickly and being paid weekly in cash and having a cash based society made it easier to be move around and try things out. In many ways it was better but in some ways worse.

There werent so many rules or checks back then. You could make up any old shit 😅 tell porkies about jobs you had, give your mates address to give you a reference.
I started work in the school holidays from age 13, washing up in a hotel, most kids did back then. You were meant to have a work permit but nobody really bothered. Little in the way of health and safety. My friend working at the same hotel spilt a pot of boiling water over her foot. Caused a nasty burn. The hotel proprietor who was a nurse (allegedly) dressed her wound and she carried on working.
Some aspects of those times were great, others not so ☺️😉

Pretty unofficial type arrangements I would think - renting a room in someone else's house for cash and so on. Plus much lower expectations of lifestyle - sharing a room with a stranger etc. Obviously it made teens very vulnerable to dodgy and exploitative people. Look at the history of certain serial killers like Dennis Nilsen or Fred West - I think part of how they got away with it was that they preyed on young people who just weren't on any official radar - not officially resident anywhere.

Read Ootlin by Jenni Fagan - raised in care, terrible abuse and so on. Have slightly forgotten the details now but she did similar in about 1993 I think, age 15 or so - became a firmly off-the-books lodger to someone else in a way that probably constituted illegal subletting or similar.

Indeed! I lived in a shitty house with no bathroom, central heating or hot water until I was 16.

A friend of mine remarked recently (we were discussing her granddaughter's refusal to accept university accommodation that did not offer her an ensuite) that "We all accepted that we'd live in what my grandaughter would call squalor as young adults and for quite some years afterwards!"

I have a much older half sister who let home at 16 to work in London in the very early 80s. Jobs and accommodation were so much easier to come by. Often there weren't lengthy application processes or references for either. Jobs you'd walk into an agency or somewhere with a card in the window carrying your typed CV and your two precious letters of reference, and start the following day. And similarly rooms you'd just pay in cash at the end of the week when you got your pay packet. And as noted by a previous poster gentrification was still a long way off for a lot of now desirable places - my half sister most often lived in Clapham/Balham/Wandsworth which were considered very humdrum at the time.

My parents did similar. They both say there was such a labour shortage it was easy to get work and my dad described some sort of council office where you could go and pick job cards but it also lists of lodgings and you just lodged. He literally got a train and sorted put accommodation on arrival and a job the next day.

My mum started work at 16. It was completely normal then - most people started work at 16 unless they were doing further study and much much fewer people did.

yes, moving into “digs” so a shared house or being a lodger was normal.

now - there is an expectation to be in education until 18. Many many more people go to university.

there’s BTECs and so on and it’s expected that teens go to college.

students with an EHCP are entitled to be in education until 25.

Most people left school and got jobs at 16 after doing O Levels or CSEs. Or they got married quickly and started a family. Only a handful went on to A levels and university.

My late mum left school and went to Pitmans at 15 so was commuting into London , she also went to the TT races with some random on a bike at 15 - I’m not sure my grandparents were the most responsible parents . The only reason she didn’t leave home was because they owned a pub and needed her to work a few shifts . Life was very different then .

I went to London at 16 to work. I went as an au pair to a wealthy family. They were mad to employ me. I don't even like little children. But I wanted to be in London.