What made your parents paranoid when you were growing up?

Push pops.
My mum heard some story about a kid getting their tongue stuck in one and I wasn’t allowed one after that.
I was devastated as all my friends were allowed ti eat then and they were delicious!

Those swings chair rides at fairs (chairs may break).
Lolly pops (might choke)
Seaside rock (break your teeth)
Motorbikes (dangerous)
Tattoos (common)
Belly button piercings (get infected)

My parents didnt see any danger at all in anything

We could have swam in quicksand/climbed electric pylons/played on train tracks/started a fire/jumped off a cliff and they wouldn't have batted an eyelid

My brother has very bad asthma it never entered their heads to stop him doing anything that could have triggered an attack

However,they where both terrified of the sea (not swimming baths,going swimming was fine)

We could not go for a paddle in case a wave swept us out,those rubber dingy boats that where sold everywhere (this was the 80's) would have us sail away to India (and then we'd drown) or we'd get stung by a jellyfish and die

We spent every single holiday sat on the beach for 12 hours a day (for the 7 days we where there) just looking at the sea without being allowed near it

Once in the week on holiday we would go out to sea on an organised boat trip and they'd both sit,clutching the side of their seats,white as sheets and not letting us move a muscle-just a line of us sitting there unable to move

Years later,they both had a fit when I took toddler dd for a paddle in the sea-I didnt hear the end of it for years

I was 17 when I first had a paddle myself and found it wasn't much to have missed out on

Microwaves.
And popular culture through tv.

The possibility of high fuel bills.Heating was always on low so the house never warmed up properly. The cardinal sin was leaving the immersion heater on longer than absolutely necessary.
My dad left a substantial inheritance so it was more of a moral princple than lack of money.

How old is your Dad?
Im 52 and very cautious on escalators because of 1970,s public information film.

Rabies ,when i went abroad as a child my mum wouldnt let me near any cat or dog , as i grew up and went on foreign holidays without my parents it amazed me other people would happily stroke cats and dogs .
I was watching an episode of call the midwife recently featurung rabies and i think there was a publc information film about it in the early 70,s ,i was born in 1973 so that msy explain her irrational fear..

Oddly, me being friends with anyone who didn't got to the same nursery. Not just when I was nursery age, right through to my teens. If I name dropped someone who had gone to that nursery, even if they had then gone to different primary and i hadn't spoken to in 10 years, they were considered the 'right' type of friend, so no matter how outrageous out party plans were, it would be approved of. However if I wanted to do something with anyone who didn't go to that nursery (even if they moved to town after the age of 4), they were probably a wrong-un who would get me into trouble.

Any mild, common, self limiting childhood illness.

I was at the doctor's all the time. I could tell sometimes they were annoyed, even as a child.

Now I never visit the doctors. I would have to be on deaths door to go there.

Not paranoid because it's sensible, but both parents very hot on farm safety. They could have invented the SAFE acronym before it was a thing, and they didn't hold back. Agitating slurry in the slatted shed ? One breath and you will be unconscious and DIE in seconds. Slurry lagoon? If you climb in there you will DROWN. Imagine drowning. In slurry. You will sink down like quicksand and be gone. Get within about 40 feet of the PTO shaft of a tractor? Your arm could be RIPPED OFF. Etc etc. I have replicated the gory, dire and horrific warnings for my own children because they work.

Watching 18-rated horror movies when I was 12 (had already seen some of the worst which she didn't know about). Earlier, we weren't allowed to watch Grange Hill in case we ended up with that accent or got ideas (we did live in Essex, so right part of the country). Tried to turn the volume down for the opening credits but mum would come in and switch it off.

Not accepting sweets from strangers (risk of being abducted). Cleaning teeth thoroughly and not eating lollies or sticks of rock. Absolutely not allowed to scream unless in danger.

Bouncy castles.
Having pristine matching socks

They didn't seem to mind that we placed that paper with gunpowder that you put in kids' guns on the electric fire to make it go bang.

Mine were convinced that if they allowed us anything we asked for we’d end up ‘spoiled’.

If we ate outside of mealtimes we’d get fat. Being fat was unforgivable. They still judge people for being fat now - in their 80s. It’s some kind of moral sin.

Getting too close to the TV would ruin our eyes.

Being allowed to record stuff off the TV using the video recorder would be some kind of catastrophe, I can’t even remember what that logic was, but anyway that wasn’t allowed.

Being driven anywhere would just make us lazy and spoiled (again) so we waited on the main road for the hourly bus that often didn’t arrive.

Allowing us to go to the school we wanted to go to was simply unthinkable, and we should just go to the nearest one because it was most convenient for everyone, despite it being absolutely appalling. (This rule did not apply to my brother, funnily enough.)

I internalised and believed most of this, and most of my 20s were a massive struggle trying to live up to my own expectations of myself, without actually having been equipped to do so.

That I would pet a stray dog, it would bite me and I’d get rabies. Rabies was around in the country I grew up in. So a slim chance I guess.

Oh yes I’d forgotten about that but I was never allowed an ankle bracelet I think for that reason. As an adult now I have a wide selection and love them!

Maybe my Mum knew somone who that happened to. Would explain her paranoia 🫢

Weidly similar to others escalators, bins in bathroom, leg shaving and periods - wasn't allowed tampons and disposiing of pads was made really hard.

Spending money - even when they could afford it - every decison needed mulling over for months biu I think that was reaction to money being tight most of their lives but insiting we need clothes then moaning about cost of said clothes we didn't ask for to us wasn't great to experience all the time.

I had quite a lot of freedom as a young person but my mum seemed quite worried about me getting an eating disorder. I didn’t eat much of my dinner one night and she was apparently fretting about it in front of my brother who told her I probably wasn’t hungry.

She once shared a conversation she’d had with female colleagues who all said that their biggest concerns for their daughters was that they’d end up in an abusive relationship.

Raw egg! We were little when the salmonella in eggs thing happened in the 80s and my mum was terrified of us eating even slightly undercooked egg

Not paranoid, but my mum was very squeamish & hated the thought of me getting my ears pierced. At about age 11 I bribed her into letting me & went with my dad.

She was also very hot on table manners. Hold cutlery properly, eat with your mouth closed, no talking whilst eating etc. She was horrified when I brought a friend home for tea & she didn't do some or all of the above. She said afterwards "that's because she goes home for lunch!"

What will people think mostly
hot drinks near the edge of a table (nursed in a children’s burns unit)
watching eastenders wasn’t allowed
knocking off glass/crockery in a department store. I was 30 and she still panicked I would run riot smashing things

on the other hand I had no curfew, I could bring anyone home without judgement (friend that needed help, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever)

Joss sticks. In the same category as mainlining heroin according to my Dad 🤣

My mum: the thought of me having sex before marriage, or “making myself cheap” (her words) in any shape or form. The latter covered benign activities such as using a henna shampoo, wearing an ankle bracelet and having red shoes, all of which were associated with “women of the night”. She often told me that men don’t want “second hand goods” without passing judgement on whether they themselves could warrant this label if they’d been around the block a few times. Made teenage years/early twenties a little hard to navigate!

Radiation - we had a geiger counter to measure everything. Also fluoride - not allowed in our house.
Government plots, you see.