To think the younger MN generation would be shocked at things we did decades ago...

Life was quite miserable back then. Freezing cold every winter, weren’t allowed to do Technical drawing, woodwork or metal work at school. Not encouraged to go to university. Misogyny at home, school and in the workplace. No existent maternity rights.
I like to leave the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s where they belong.

I was born in 71. We had a tin bath that was filled on a Sunday night and yeah we shared it. No home phone either and outside loo.

Didn't think anything of it

I was born in 66 and I recognise a lot of what OP said, however we had the best parents and my dad absolutely adored my mother and would do anything to make life easier and better for her. He was definitely a man before his time he would hoover polish put the washing in look after us while Mum went out all of those things that most men didn’t do. He also spent a lot of time playing with us. He taught us how to play all the different games.

That sounds poor to me. We certainly weren’t well off. We shared a bath when small, but certainly not hand me down bath water from parents or clothes, apart a few items between siblings.

I was born in 59. Family was reasonably affluent. Still we definitely had some hand me downs. I learned how to darn tights. I shared bath water so somehow being youngest I always had third turn.

At Christmas and birthdays we were told it was a good idea to save money given by relatives so if our Tressy ( cheap version of Sindy) needed a new look we had to make the outfit.

For sure there was a Jimmy Saville hiding in every park and Childline did not tell us what to do! I think current times have much to be thankful for.

@Allonthesametrain "need a wee, you went anywhere". Love this. Reminds me of a David Bowie concert I went to at Milton Keynes Bowl. There's a long queue of women and girls forming a line down a muddy field next to a line of stinky portacabins that are the toilets. They're waiting forever. Behind this is a dense wood. You can probably guess where I went to the toilet.

I was born in '55. Wednesday was half-day closing, so you couldn't get anything after 1.00om, or 5.30 or 6 on weekdays. And the only shop open on Sundays was the newsagent, which back then only sold papers, cigarettes and sweets.

Pubs closed in the afternoons, too, if you wanted to drink all day, you had to do it at home.

We had a Trimphone! It was the very height of modernity.

Our neighbours had a parrot, and he used to mimic the ring of the Trimphone so well that my mum would often stop what she was doing and go to answer the phone only to find it was the parrot...

I’m Gen X and recognise it. I grew up in a poor household though. Ex mining village in Scotland. 4 people in a 2 bed council house

I was born in 1990 and we shared baths (until we got older), often njst on a Sunday, and had hand me down clothes! We didn't have a lot of money though.

Is that right? My dad always fitted child seats and seatbelts to our cars, and even my grandparents cars had child seats / seatbelts belts in. And that was in the 70s. By the 80s we were old enough to wear adults seat belts, or at least that what we had to use. Sure, they weren’t rear facing isofix mounted child seats, but I distinctly remember the 4 point britax seatbelts that were in all of our cars. It was the same for most of my friends as well as I recall. But at the same time it was not unusual for someone or more than one to travel in the boot of an estate car if there were more children than seats!! I suspect, like many things, it was a function of class and economics as much as generation.

Well yes, of course. I am talking about the 70’s. And as the years edged onward more people did have central heating etc. …

A lot of this is very age dependent though. I’m not young & we had central heating, remotes etc.

I don't think the pub loo roll situation is era specific. I always try to have a packet of tissues in my bag, and it's not because I have a particularly snotty nose!

So you find yourself in a stall and realise belatedly after a wee there is no loo roll. And you no one in the stall next door wants to 'spare a square'

Options-
Cardboard of the used loo roll
Shake it
Hand wipe then hand wash
Other?

There would be much that younger people would find difficult to comprehend comparative to today.
No central heating. No internet. Three then four channels on the TV. No TV remote. Almost everything was different. From food eaten, shopping, education, working life. Travel. And the population was so much less. Far more space, fewer buildings.
It is a shame as I don’t think people who did not experience the past find it easy to understand what it was like.
The one thing that I do find disconcerting with the younger generation is the immediacy of things. It has evolved that if something happened yesterday there is no interest. A lack of curiosity about yesterday. That wasn’t the case with past generations. But it seems to be so now. Which is alarming.

Dad sending us to the shop for his fags, no questions asked. Said fags were smoked indoors or in the car with us 4 kids in the back with no seatbelts. Even if we were going on our yearly holiday to Ireland to see grandparents so driving from London to Swansea for the ferry.

I think one thing that would surprise many younger people was how shops almost all closed by 6pm, except on maybe one evening a week. If you ran out of milk, you could not go out to get any at 9pm.

You take for granted these little things. You sometimes come across them when talking to people who grew up abroad or in very different circumstances. But as a general rule having a shared cultural background matters. Conversations in the workplace about silly things like the Soap Storyline or a movie franchise can be real socio-economic bridges. They enable a huge amount of small talk.

I would argue it gave my cousins more time to study and be academic, but those cultural references were massive and continue to be significant in terms of relating to others and shared common cultural history and social connections.

It impacted on them hugely. We noticed it more than my Aunt and Uncle who were rather oblivious to the impact tbh.

I have a distinct memory of loads of kids having greasy hair.
I can remember when Brookside first came out and I was banned from watching it.
So watched it in my mate’s.
There were two lads called Ducksie and Gizmo who looked like they’d been dropped in chip fat.
Not like my beloved Damon Grant with his lovely shiny flicked fringe.

My dc are late teens early 20s. Three in the bath together bought them loads of fun and me some down time. No harm done. And lots of hand me downs too.

All I did was sleep when we first got central heating. The joy of it being on before bed and before I got up. I can remember girls used to sleep in their school uniform to avoid having to put it on in the cold.

I am a similar age.
One fire to heat the whole house.
Bath once a week on a Sunday for school.
Washed hair in fairy liquid when there was no shampoo.
Used loo roll when the sanitary pads ran out.
And both my parents worked.
My mum retrained and got a better job so in my late teens we got central heating, a second hand car, foreign holidays.
In primary school I had more than most of my friends and we didn’t have much. I can remember in my teens in the 80’s houses without phones and even fridges. Mums would still use the old larder under the stairs to keep things cool.
I went to a ‘posh’ school via the 11 plus and for the first time met middle class girls who went pony riding and had tennis lessons. One even had her own bathroom and I was entranced by it.
It had a plush carpet - carpets in bathrooms!
I used to get picked money off my nan on a Sunday and my mum would bottle it from me to pay for my school lunches.
Being a teenager I appeared as an angel - worked hard. Used to stay with my new friend a lot and my parents were delighted as she was quite posh. We used to climb out the back of her house to go to gigs, the pub, even a nightclub. At 14. Then we’d climb back in at 2 in the morning and never got caught.
I had an absolute ball.

How does studying Shakespeare of all things demonstrate how lack of a TV causes you issues? 🤔

Yep, I know, seems odd. In particular I remember our teacher using examples of things we'd all seen in The Young Ones to illustrate and explain certain points we were studying. Other programmes too - she was a very good teacher, actually. She knew how to help us connect to archaic material by using modern references in that way. She also used Spitting Image as a reference at one point when we had to do Chaucer.

But your children HAVE had consoles in late primary...

Imagine being a teen with NO technology.

shrugs