How did people leave home at 15…

Blimey, dh and I knew no such luxury! Mind you when I first met him he was paying 32/6d a week (£1.65 IIRC) for his student bedsit in Sheffield. (Late 60s)

And the world of work was tough, even if it was easier to find a job. This thread reminds me that I was talking to my mum on the phone recently, just telling her about my work etc and something I said about a colleague who was being dismissed made her recall when she was in her late teens and working as a bank cashier (a very good job, back then, for a young woman from a working class family) and the bank manager was King. He’d come in with a hangover, or feeling angry, and berate employees who just had to meekly take it unless they wanted to be looking for a new job the next day. He fired one of her young colleagues on the spot because he thought her dress was too tight and told her she looked like a prostitute and he wouldn’t have that in his bank. Totally normal. No ACAS, no tribunals, you just collected your coat and left quietly.

It's certainly true that jobs were easy to come by, if not necessarily great, and I suspect that some of the "office junior" type of employment would nowadays need a much greater number of qualifications. I did one clerical job for the holidays on the strength of about 20 minutes of being "shown the ropes". Mind-numbingly boring admin which would probably be done at the press of a button nowadays; I and a fellow student cleared a six-month backlog, before returning to our studies with a fresh appreciation of our life prospects.
I think of the holiday jobs I did to augment funds as a student, and I would guess that many of them are now done by machines, or have been outsourced to countries with lower labour costs.
Certainly true that it was possible to leave school in the school year that you reached your 16th birthday; one girl at my grammar school did just that, and it caused uproar, as parents were supposed to agree before you enrolled that you would stay until at least "O"- levels, but they couldn't legally insist. As a summer-born, I was only 15 when I sat the exams.
Some pupils at secondary modern would not even be entered for any formal qualifications at all, and they could still find jobs of some sort.
My mother was clerk to a Rent Tribunal, (those were the days!) and had many tales of what was considered fit for human habitation in London back in the day - but the rent was low.

Yes, even if you were lucky enough to have a TV it was coin operated!

I left school at 15, August birthday, i could have started work before 16 and people rented a room/lodged

Well yes obviously if you let an adult child stay at home, not work, not charge rent, pay for their phone, not make them cook or clean then obviously that's not helping them but it doesn't need to be one extreme or the other.

And grotty bedsits were common - and cheap. No central heating (a gas fire with a coin meter for feeding it if you were lucky) and a shared manky old fashioned bathroom (no shower) probably on a different floor, with other people’s pubes in the bath.

I did like the little Baby Belling cookers though.

I left home at 17, had a choice of 3 council flats. Choose one and lived in it until I was 20 when I bought first home with DH. I’m 50 now. It was a lot easier then!

My late mum left home at 15. Infact all her brothers and sisters left home at that age.
Only one who stayed was the eldest as he would inherit the farm.
Mum started in Dublin and after 12 months moved to London.
This was in the late 1940's.
Met my dad and they moved to Cheshire as he got a good job with the railway.

Ok I'm thinking more low income working class. Care workers shop assistants etc. Minimum wage jobs Skilled trades earn far more than many of the " middle class"

Didn't say the kids had to move out but they were certainly needed to make a decent contribution to live there and didn't get it back as a gift a few years later

I was talking about the kids that were living at home well into their 20s who are not charged anything, often have no experience with dealing with financial stuff and certainly no idea of financial struggles. Especially if they've had a very nice comfortable childhood to start. They wouldn't have a clue if suddenly plunged into homelessness and poverty. The people who've stood on their own feet since teens I suspect would cope much better

But you appreciate it's different now? You can't finish school at 16 with a couple of GCSEs, find a flat in London for 2p a week and an entry level office job in a investment bank via a card in the newsagents window which will allow you to work your way up to a 6 figure salary by 40 with no A Levels, never mind a degree.

This is so true. Neither my parents or in laws have private pension provison, but as boomers made so much money in inheritance and their properties to be very comfortable. (plus- often not spoken about- tax dodging, which was endemic back in the day when you were paid cash)

if globalisation/ deregulation of the financial markets/ the booms of the 80s/90s and 00s hadn’t happened, they would be basically destitute. Living on state pension with no other provision.

They didn’t do anything particularly, the world just delivered. But with that came an obligation for their children and grandchildren to keep the capitalist cycle going.

This thread has got me thinking more. Back in the 70s, cash really was king. I didn't bother with a bank account until my late 20s. Any meagre savings were put in a building society account. Life was about the here and the now.

Nowadays, it's as if we are conditioning youngsters to accept that their life is a treadmill, and they will forever be trapped in the system. Go to uni and get yourself saddled with debt from the get-go. Save to buy a house, even though a mortgage may turn out to be a millstone around the neck. In the meantime, stay at home because it's unthinkable that a precious 20-something should experience any bit of hardship. Shell out for pension plans, insurance, car loans, etc.

And then life will be over before they have even sniffed the air beyond the prison door.

Of course they’d cope if they needed to- that’s the human condition isn’t it?

I live next door to a small children’s home- the chances of them being spat out of their own at 18 is high (yes legally there is financial support in place but if they are unable to comply with the conditions they’ll just fall out of the system)

I moved out at 19 to go to uni, never moved home and never had any issues getting a job or cooking myself dinner because I didn't move into a bedsit at 15.

Are you mixing up working class and low income? I'm working class as are a lot of our friends are plumbers, mechanics, electricians etc and they definitely have enough money for their children to not have to leave in their teens.

Not making kids move out doesn't mean you're paying for them if they have a job. Even if it is a office job which you seem to have much disdain for.

Much of what's been written about moving out young rings a bell except that I went to university at 17, and didn't go to London until I was 20. But the rest resonates, and the same was true of my mid-20s in NYC.

DH left home at 17 and ended up working as a management trainee van driver, paying £7 per week out of £15 for a bedsit. Then went to the ME to save some money, which became the investment in the business he still has. He's always been determined that he was never going back to living hand-to-mouth.

My son is the same. 🤣

My MIL left her Welsh village and moved to Manchester age 17. Ballsy young kids!

Well what if the parents house was suddenly no longer available to them and they had no money? Or lost job or ended up in abusive marriage with kids and no support They'd have far less skills to cope than someone who had been independent since mid teens.

And it's generally fairly well off families who can afford to keep adult offspring at home for free. Most working class families can't afford to keep another adult

I haven't made any of mine move out. But I wasn't paying for them as adults either. Dd1 moved out to get space as she was sharing room with her sister. Dd2 in with boyfriend and DS ( who has zero interest in owning a house ) to travel/ girlfriend etc.

Oh yeah, my first boss and landlord never checked my age.

It was cash in hand for work, rent paid cash too. No contracts for anything. No one cared.

I had a bank account but I didn’t actually use it for a couple of years, there was just no need.

Just because someone lives at home doesn't mean they're not working their way up or have an office job or live in a nice area.

Would you really make your child move out of you knew that meant it was much more likely they'd never be a home owner and would be spending maybe twice as much to rent a property than they would be if they had a mortgage?

What do you mean by 'if everything turned to shit'?

This is true. I do know youngsters who lived in squats but there were lots of creepy landlords, sexism and groping (i.e. sexual assaults) were rife. I remember a couple of girls who were murdered in west London and no one was ever caught. Many men seemed to think that the pill meant that all young women were 'game'. Very dangerous times

I think there was an official school leaving date set for mid June when I left in early 90s so summer babies would be 15.
A girl in my class had dropped out Easter time and was working ft in a factory. That was seen as a good thing for a none academic girl like her I can remember form teacher saying so, no chasing if kids did opt to leave school a bit early.
It was literally a handful of us that went to sixth form, everyone else was working or YTS. Office juniors were very common roles. They would run errands, make tea, cover reception at lunch. If suitable they’d go to night school to learn typing/secretarial skills. I can remember one new office junior asking me who office perve to avoid was and it turned out to be her mum’s boyfriend. This was early 2000s!

Similar here, I left home at just 18 and within less than two weeks my room had been redecorated and another of my six sibling had moved in. There was no going back unless it was the sofa and, given that there were still several small children in the house, I wanted my independence. I had a bedsit that cost me £6 a week and I loved it. Even though it was small, it was mine and I could shut myself in there and be cosy and private.

I think the point is that it restricts their life experiences.

Honestly if everything turned to shit of a sudden who would cope better. The youngest era who had been independent, lived in dodgy conditions and worked their way up or the coasted youngster that lives at home with a nice clean office job in a nice area???