What made your parents paranoid when you were growing up?

I honestly have no idea why this bothered my mum so much - but using tampons and shaving my legs. She got SO ANGRY when I asked to start using tampons as I a) started my period at 11; b) had them very heavily right until I started on the pill; c) danced 5 days a week which pads were very uncomfortable for. I don't know if it was money related, but she also used to get annoyed I used so many pads, leading to me trying to eek out the usage by not changing them as often as I should. Not to mention, not having bins in the toilet for some reason! I don't know why she seemed to have such strong and weird thoughts about periods.

The leg-shaving thing was also odd - I was 12, started secondary school, I was teased for having hairy legs. Asked mum if I could shave and was given a flat No - note she shaved her legs! I was never a rule-breaker, so when a friend and I did some Immac during a sleepover it felt very daring - I loved the smooth legs it gave me but not the telling off!

She was also very upset when I lost my purse and she found it, looked through it found a condom. I was almost 17, had had a boyfriend for at least 6 months at that point, and - she let me stay over at his house every week!. She ripped an absolute streak off me about that, apparently it was not responsible to be having sex at my age. She also did not like me telling her I was of age to do it, and I was also on the pill which I'd got on my own. I was less of a rule follower at that age lol!

Ahhh yes. My mother also had extreme paranoia about leaving the house with wet/damp hair after swimming or showering. You’d have thought it would cause instant death as if being struck by lightning the way she carried on about it!

Also wearing red. Wearing a red top or dress would be giving “people the wrong impression” apparently and that decent women don’t wear red as it’s for “those types of women” She used to clasp her hands together and lament “but what will people THINK of you?!”

What other people would think of us/ our behaviour.

That my sister and I would constantly put on weight during our teen years if we so much as looked at a slice of cake, had a few chips or ate an ice- cream cone.

How I looked and what would people think when I went through my goth/ grunge stage ( early 1990s) The caused endless arguments between Mum and I.

Eating with fingers in a fast food outlet, such as McDonalds/ KFC. If we ate out as a family it had to be a sit down restaurant with knives and forks.

Teenage pregnancy

using the landline phone before 18:00

Abduction, but only in a certain road.

susan maxwell was sadly taken there by Robert Black.

we were banned from that road, for life.

we could go anywhere else in either town and village, but not that road.

made no sense why if we were to be abducted it would be in the exact same place and nowhere else.

Germs. Don’t touch this, don’t touch that,

Education.

My mum went to my school to speak to my head of year after we chose our GCSE options because she didn't think I should do 9 GCSEs and thought my time would be better spent learning typing and childcare.

My mum was convinced that, if I got an education, no one would want to marry me.

Fortunately, the head of year disagreed.

Then she tried to sabotage me going to university. Twice.

Anyway, it's lucky that I got an education and a career because I've spent most of my adult life as a single parent 👍🏻

The iron. In fairness they did know a toddler who got burnt by an iron falling on them, but I was still not allowed near one even as a teenager.

As someone who actually did that as a kid, I can confirm, it’s a nightmare! Super expensive to have dental implants and bone grafts etc.

I always remember my mum telling her friend that I ‘told her everything and confided in
her’ no mother dearest you get told what I want you to know! I was very good at hiding and twisting the truth.

The irony is I can’t have children and my mother was desperate for more grandchildren…you reap what you sow.i remember her once saying ‘I was pure on my wedding night and hope you’ll do the same!’ I said nothing as that ship had well and truly sailed and the previous evening I’d been engaging in some shenanigans’.

Same here. My f's threat was that if any of us got pregnant, he'd kill us and go to prison proud.

Not unreasonably we were all nc with him by the age of 20. What on earth was he thinking? 😳

Escalators- my dad was convinced we'd have a loose shoelace and get sucked down into the mechanism. Then by chance he was on an escalator with DS when DS's shoe did get a bit caught on the escalator and my dad was THERE, like an absolute ninja, hoiking DS to safety- his whole life waiting for that moment 😂

Errrr nothing particularly. I was a child of the 70’s and both my parents worked so there was a great deal of benign neglect.

That I would knock my front teeth out when I fell over. My Mum used to pick me up with her hand cupped to my mouth to catch them in case I’d knocked them out. Still seems weird to me all these years later 😟

My mum is terrified of 'what people will think'. Her big thing is eating or drinking in public. She can't understand anyone walking along with a coffee at all, genuinely baffled. She did allow a dispensation when I was pregnant and then a small water bottle was just about appropriate. She made me laugh recently when we were sitting on a normal bench at the park and she insisted on moving across to an actual picnic bench before we started eating! Also a more valid paranoia about slushies after my dad took a big slurp in the cinema watching Jurassic Park and ended up freezing his throat and fighting for breath!

Appearing lower middle class.

My mum was hugely insecure about her social status: she came from an aspirational lower middle class family made good and we moved in more upper middle circles (academics).

You could see her visibly twitch when we used the words "toilet", "serviette" or "pardon" and she would have lost her shit if we'd done it in public.

She was also neurotic about us watching too much TV and would walk into the room and aggressively turn it off if we were watching it.

That one of us - 5 sisters- would get pregnant "out of wedlock". They were both ridiculous. Took it to extreme lengths, were very unpleasant about it. Couldn't credit any of us with any intelligence.

It wasn't helped by the fact dm was so old fashioned and bigoted that she couldn't say the word "period" without checking over both shoulders first and then using a sort of stage hiss.

My dad- what other people think/appearing scummy.

My mum- similar but instead of quietly fretting about it, was and still is, more the type to accuse you of looking at her “funny” or “like she’s shit on the ground” and picking a fight with anyone and everyone.

As a result of both but especially my mother, I was an incredibly anxious child and constantly on edge. Wonder why.

And mine judged confident, happy women, so she assumed everyone else did, and brought up her daughters to avoid the twin dangers of confidence and visible happiness.

This. Their main emotion when I won a big scholarship to university which was reported in the local paper was embarrassment, in case other people thought I was getting above myself.

Not a lot. Born late 50s.

What would people think! My mum could never get it through her head that most people didn’t care what we did.
She judged everyone so assumed they all did the same.

We weren't allowed to talk to other people, except at school and then only about what was happening at school, and if we were seen doing so we would get thoroughly interrogated about what had been said. Which could last for hours.

Men! My father inculcated in me that men were only ever after one thing and would hurt me in order to get it.

I was in my teens before I discovered that when he was much younger his 3 year old cousin had been abducted and r*ped. A couple of years later he caught another man trying to abduct his niece and beat the shit out of him thereby saving his niece - then I understood why he had such paranoia and that all men were evil (except him).

My mum - me getting pregnant. She used to count the tampons in the box and I used to get into trouble if I was late, which I often was as I had irregular cycles.

Both of them - Drinking alcopops. They always used to say if I wanted to drink alcohol I should drink beer. I hated the taste of beer and me and my friends always saw beer as a boys drink.