AIBU to think 80s parenting was often hands-off and unsupervised?

Did you watch the one with the boy on the train tracks (Robbie?) who was trying to get his football boots off the track, got hit and was “in a wheelchair for the rest of his life “ Absolutely terrified me.

I agree with this.

Yes my eighties childhood was basically like this. We played out after school and at a weekend a group of around 8-10 kids ranging from 3-12ish We went in when the street lights came on. Tv was citv after school and Saturday morning cartoons. Other than that it was whatever my parents were watching so casualty, Roseanne, golden girls, only fools etc.
if it was raining or no one was playing out I’d play with my sindys or read. My sisters were 8 and 10 years older so had no interest in playing with me but they did get stuck babysitting a bit
My dad worked all day Monday- Friday, came home had tea and went to pub most nights. If he stayed in he watched tv and we weren’t allowed to talk when the tv was on. My mum was a sahp until I was around 10 then she got a part time job. She went to the pub 3 nights a week. Weekends I played out, my sisters hung out with their friends. Mum cleaned/ cooked and dad watched sport or did the garden. I genuinely don’t remember either of them playing with me until I was older when we would sometimes play cards at Christmas or on holiday.

They showed no interest in me unless I was being naughty then I got a smack across the legs.
I never got taken anywhere except to see grandparents or the shop or the library.
Holiday once a year was the seaside, it was the only time we ever ate out, went to a fun fair or a play area. Never had a take away except the odd chippie tea. Didn’t have a McDonald’s till I was 17.

I think there is some positives around playing out without supervision in terms of life skills development/ imagination etc. But there was a lot of things i didn’t learn to do due to lack of interest in me. Plus the fear of being smacked, never having my feelings/ needs met.

I think we have probably gone too far the other way but the world has changed a lot in the past 50 years.

Born in 1970. Had lots of freedom. Walked to school alone from age 6. But there were lollipop ladies. and a community. And many many fewer cars. No one drove to school.
And although we roamed a lot, those scary safety films shown in school on the wheel in TV, with kids drowing in silos, getting hit by trains, being electocuted, were terrifying enough to make us take care.

But my mum esp was also very present.

Yes now parents are expected to work full time, and provide constant company and entertainment to children as well as expensive paid for activities

The over scheduling and micro management is destroying creativity and the important life lesson of being bored in children. Stifling the life skills needed to progress to independent adulthood and make mistakes to learn from. It has gone too far the other way

I think my 80s childhood was somewhere in between. My parents did both take us for days out quite a bit and we weren't ever booted out, but we were a bit more free range on bikes and on foot if we were at home. And my Mum did some crafts and baking and things with us, my Dad played board games or chose films he thought we would like. But often we were expected to entertain ourselves too.

A fw days ago I had a conversation with someone who had been an 80s child and it sounded much like that of OPs first patagraph. I was a 1940s/50s child and parents were even more hands off in those days. This was despite the fact that far fewer women went out to work and were mostly SAH mums. In dry weather we would be booted out of the house and our parents were never concerned that we virtually disappeared and only returned for meals. Sometimes we were sent off with a bottle of lemonade (or just water) and a jam sandwich. We played on bombed sites, in derelict buildings and in fields. We learned how to amuse ourselves and we grew up strong and resillient with a "just get on with it" attitude.

I feel sad when I hear about kids in their teens who have never been on public transport or made a purchase in a shop for themselves. They are ferried everywhere by their parents. No wonder so many young people cannot manage the world of work and are stressed out by the simplest things like composing and email or phoning a client.

I think parents parented little children pretty well in the 80s; at least that was my experience.

Bit they were much more hands-off as we grew up. I don’t think my parents knew about my GCSE choices at all and certainly didn’t discuss my A level choices with me.

Was also left alone with my brother a fair bit as a teen.

Like all things, had its pros and cons. I do think parents are horribly over invested in teens, especially older teens (and even young adults) now. There is way too much micromanagement.

I grew up in a village and during the summer holidays, my best friend and I would go off on our bikes exploring, climbing trees, paddling in streams, etc. As long as we were home by 6, no one worried.

My parents were involved, they had some problems but I wasn’t aware of them until I was in my teens. I wish my children had experienced my laid-back childhood, they had far more structured and supervised activities-which isn’t terrible, but less free than my experience was. I do try to be laid back now they’re older, I know people who are still hovering/tracking/controlling their young adult children and it makes me uncomfortable.

I agree. Children need to be children and develop their life skills. Most of my childhood was in the late 60s, early 70s and I did exactly like you. My sister and I would take a packed lunch, go off on our bikes and come back in time for dinner. My sons grow up in the 90s and would go off and build dens, or make Tarzan swings etc. We’d also do things as a family too.

You’ve hit the nail on the nail on the head.

I think that is why we all became helicopter parents. Our own parents - 1960s to 1980s were just neglectful and although that gave us some wonderful freedom and taught us resilience, it also made many of us feel rather invisible and bred a lot of low self-esteem. It also, as OP said, led to us surviving by sheer luck on more than one occasion.

Looking back, I think I over-compensated, and wish I'd let DC solve their own problems more often. That said, DS2 has autism and ADHD and maybe he never would have. He may well have floundered and become really socially isolated or depressed without all that extra attention and vigilance.

’Eat it or leave it’ is a perfectly fine way to manage children and food to be fair. In our case, there wasn’t money for endless options. Mum wouldn’t make anything we actively disliked (and I do remember her going into primary school to tell them to stop trying to make me eat carrots because it was never going to happen) but we had to try everything and there were never any options.

TV was the same as OP but all the titles mentioned were for children - why would a parent pre-vet something when aunty beeb had done it for them?

We roamed around together but I had strict boundaries and I wasn’t allowed in everyone’s house. My mum told me years ago that I was never allowed to be alone with a neighbour because she had ‘a feeling’ about him: he was prosecuted for historic sexual offences years later. All the mammies were at the windows on regular intervals and knew what everyone was up to.

True, adults didn’t play with us and that’s definitely something I changed with my son. We lived in a city when he was small so he didn’t get to roam about because of traffic, but I let him go to the park ‘on his own’ when he was 7 or so (which means I walked him over the very busy road between home and the park, then went back to collect him). Traffic is a much bigger issue than it was then, hardly anyone had a car when we were growing up and there certainly wasn’t anything like the same volume of traffic on minor roads.

I had a great childhood in many ways.

There's a middle ground that I would hope was more common.

I was a 70s child, my son was a 90s child.

We both had loads of freedom, playing out, disappear off all day on our bikes with a pack of sandwiches, expected to be responsible and not constantly supervised/entertained or in clubs/adult run activities.

But there was also lots of time and attention, playing family board games, conversations, reading of stories, generally playing and spending time together, flying kites, playing frisbee, and definitely supervised at the beach! I quite enjoyed my second run at childhood climbing trees with him, and doing fun stuff that's too embarrassing to do alone as an adult😁

Born in 1982 and none of what you describe applies to my childhood.

I did like the list of TV shows though, I remember most of them.

I was born in 1984 and My Mother was very hands on, supportive, loving and caring. We regularly did things together and I was never neglected in any respect. I did have some freedom in the ‘90’s but I couldn’t be gone for more than 2 hours or so without checking in and I wasn’t allowed to go too far from home until I was old enough to go into the city for a few hours with friends. I wasn’t smacked either and I can’t complain at all about her parenting.

Yes - absolutely no control over food except eat it or not!
My parents were also extremely young. Late teens/early 20's when I was born. So pretty clueless 😄

Yeah that was the culture back then. We had freedom today's young people don't. Although I do think these days. Some parents infantilise their adult kids.

Rates of mental illness in young people are soaring, so absolutely not convinced that modern parenting is an overall improvement.

Very similar except the parental drinking. Although at one of my friends houses looking back both her parents were always tipsy or drunk.
No supervision at all when we were out of the house. That was the norm. But we were raised in a close community and when we got into situations I remember neighbours taking us home (falling off bikes etc).

My parents were like this in the 80’s. I don’t remember my parents playing with me at all. My mum used to manage pubs and was there all day, my dad refused to be employed by anyone so had a series of jobs like gardening etc. When I was really little I had the choice of going with mum and hanging round the pub all day, or going with dad and sitting in his van all day. From the age of around 4 I was walking and catching public transport to school with my sister who was 8 (alone). She started looking after me all day when my parents were working when she was 10 and I was 6. We used to play out up to a couple of miles from the house from a young age, including cliff climbing and going up the headlands to jump on the backs of wild horses. It was a pretty average childhood for a lot of my friends, though I have since realised how stingy my parents were with us. We got the cheapest of everything, never allowed an ice cream from the ice cream van or a book from the book fair, never bought anything outside of Xmas or birthdays. I grew up believing we were in poverty, it’s only looking back I realised we lived in a mortgage free house and both parents worked full time which most didn’t back then, yet all my friends had money spent on them (I was the only one in school with no uniform as we ‘couldn’t afford it’). My parents were very heavy drinkers and smokers though so maybe that’s where all the money went. We were largely ignored

I think parents of the last 10-20 years have completely changed how parenting is done. I think generally they think they are doing it 'better' but I think it's still to be confirmed when these generations grow into adults, we really don't know how these kids will turn out.

I feel there will be a lot of positives from todays parenting but also a lot of negatives.