Did anyone grow up in the 50's? (and 30's and 40's if you are on here!)

Pregnant women were advised to drink stout (Guinness or in my mum’s case Mackeson) for a healthy baby

I’m pretty sure maternity homes used to dole out a nightly bottle of stout to the inmates (who stayed in for 2 weeks?) to help with recovery & milk supply

Doesn’t seem to be a big problem with our long-term memories though SlocombePooter!

The “pop man” used to come round with fizzy drinks in big glass bottles on the back of a lorry. Dandelion & burdock was my favourite. When you returned the bottles to him the following week you got money back on the bottle. Alternatively you could go round to the off-licence (“offie”) at the back of the local pub and buy it from there.
Pregnant women were advised to drink stout (Guinness or in my mum’s case Mackeson) for a healthy baby.

Every so often I read posts about MNetters having trouble with their aged parents, then realise a lot of them are around my age! Oh dear, not much to look forward to ;-)

Fillings at the dentist were a given. The dentist used to pedal the drill. No anaesthesia in those days. I remember having a tooth out and having ether dripped onto a mask over my face. I can still remember the smell and the vivid dream I had. I woke up crying.
Amazingly I still have all my own teeth. In those days people often had all their teeth taken out for their 21st, and a set of false teeth supplied.

Look at all us 1950s folk standing up to be counted!
Will try not to repeat anything described so far, but GiantKitten you brought back a lovely memory with your ice cream story. I always used to have my birthday party on a Sunday afternoon and instead of a normal cake I had an ice cream cake. We didn’t have a fridge so at the relevant point of the birthday tea I used to have to run round to the newsagents & he would open up just to hand over the cake which he was storing in the shop freezer (fortunately they lived above the shop), then I would run home with it.
Nowhere to keep ice cream but if the van came round near tea time mum would take out her own bowl to put some in, which we then ate with very sugary tinned fruit (none of that “no added sugar” nonsense in those days - which probably accounts for why we had such bad dental experiences!) I always reacted badly to the general anaesthetic (yes, the dentist was just allowed to put us to sleep at the surgery) and used to wake up to the sound of someone screaming and then realising it was me.
I was a little goody goody at primary school so never got punished, but we used to have to watch the boys getting the slipper. Not nice.
Mum worked but we weren’t allowed to be in the house by ourselves so we used to hang around outside for about half an hour and then walk up to the bus stop to meet her.
We got our shoes from the Clarks shop and loved putting our feet in the X-Ray machine to be measured.

My childhood much as described here but I've just remembered how many dogs used to roam about. People would quite happily put them out in the morning and off they'd go; much as we kids would go off for the day to the park or wherever. We didn't let our dog out on the street but every so often, our father would take sister, me and dog to Hampstead Heath to give mum time to herself and when we arrived he'd let the dog loose. Dog would promptly vanish and go off doing dog stuff for a few hours. When we were ready to leave, he'd whistle a few times and dog would materialise for journey home. Unthinkable

I remember being made to wear a liberty bodice. Horrible pink thing with pink rubber buttons. No idea why.

God I'm sounding really ancient now

We called all our neighbours Auntie and Uncle. We only had BBC on our television. Auntie Pearl had ITV, and we used to go and watch Huckleberry Hound cartoons there. A half hour programme, with ten minutes each of Huckleberry Hound, Pixie and Dixie ( ‘I hate those meeces to pieces’)and Yogi Bear. Then went home to jam sandwiches for tea.

I was born in 1954, so was still a young child by the end of the 50s, but I have plenty of memories. We lived in a flat in inner London; there was a courtyard at the back where residents could park cars (and a few garages), but there were very few cars, so my brother and I used to go down and play there sometimes. I remember once there were some cardboard boxes there which we used to build a house, but the caretaker demolished it overnight!

We walked to primary school on our own, it was about 15 minutes away. When I was very little, we still had a coal fire in the sitting room (paraffin heaters elsewhere, which were moved around the flat as needed). We had a bath once a week, after which we'd be put in a clean vest, cotton in summer, Chilprufe in winter, which we wore for the week, day and night. My mum used to warm a teaspoon of camphorated oil over the fire to rub on our chests before the winter vest went on.

We were not particularly poor, we had good shoes that fitted and were never hungry. There were very many children at school who had a lot less. Expectations were much lower - one present from your parents at Christmas and birthdays.

The bloody dentists!!!! Gave me a lifelong terror, butchers all. It's amazed me that my children, and now my grandchildren, show no concern at all about going to the dentist. They were shocking.

Chickens! We kept chickens in the garden, I think eggs were perhaps still on ration. All our neighbours kept them as well and every now and again one was killed for the Sunday roast. My dad was too squeamish to do it himself so the chap next door used to wring it's neck. I don't understand how he couldn't do it, he had been in the army for 5 years in the war and had seen some dreadful things,perhaps that's why.

We also had an allotment,everything was grown, cabbages, runner beans, tomatoes, onions, etc.then later on in the year, parsnips, sprouts. I remember wheeling the veg back home in the wheelbarrow, my mum opening the door and the smell of the Sunday roast. Two way Family Favourites on the radio, a programme for the military abroad, messages sent from home here to them. Sitting on the back step,shelling peas into a colander, topping and tailing gooseberries and blackcurrants.

New shoes for Easter, Clarke's sandals usually. I always wanted red, I had to have brown and then in the summer white ones. My dad used to whiten them up with a liquid and then put them on the top of the coal bunker to dry. It was an idyllic childhood really.

We used to starch our petticoats with sugar water to make them stiff. The more sticky out the better. And we had mascara that you spat on and mixed with a brush.

Being forced to drink School Milk. I struggled with this; never finished and never got any playtime.
I still cant drink milk on its own now (Note, unless there has since been a revolution in their manufacture, paper straws are totally useless).
Very few people had fridges. We got ours when I was about 14, though I admit, we were one of the last to do so.
I was one of 44 children in my primary class (cant remember which year, but I remember noting this) Discipline was fine, because most teaching took place from the front.
We used to play in the road, and went away to Butlins on holiday.

I grew up in the 50’s. We lived with my granny until she died and then moved to a smaller Victorian terraced house with an outside toilet and no bathroom. Until a bathroom was built on, we had our weekly baths in a tin bath in the kitchen filled by the kettle.
We had no fridge until I was about 8, so in the summer my mother scalded the milk and kept it in a jug standing in a shallow dish of water on the stone floor in the pantry, with a cloth over the top of the jug and the ends dipping in the water to keep it cool.
Our first television set was in a mahogany cabinet with doors and had to have a magnifying contraption fixed across the tiny screen for us to view it. It took ages to ‘warm up’!
I can remember my mother taking me to the clinic to be weighed and to be issued with a glass bottle of national health orange juice.
At my primary school in morning assembly, all the children had to hold up their clean handkerchief to show they had one. My mother sewed a pocket on to my regulation thick brown knickers to hold the handkerchief!
We grew all our own vegetables in an allotment and our main meal was at lunchtime. I even walked home from primary school for lunch. We never ate out, except for a rare treat of fish and chips.
Summer holidays were spent in rented holiday flats or seaside chalets which we travelled to by bus or train.

A crowd of us used to go up on the hill all day, just messing around, lighting sticks, hiding, setting trails etc. A man up there exposed himself to us and we were intrigued and started following him till he ran away!

(I'm not belittling what he did, it's just the way it was)

I went to an all girls school from the age of 11. We used to laugh at the men who lurked around the fence with their willies out. It never occurred to us that this was all sorts of wrong.

My friend and I used to call on random neighbours who had babies and ask to take them out. Frequently we were entrusted infants in prams for the day.

Dr whites sanitary towels 😱
Lillets and tampons came much later
Walking to the beach with half a gramophone on my shoulder...( massive transistor radio... my tranny) listening to the top twenty

I loved mums home made steamed spotted dick and custard
Sadly she never made it often enough

I grew up in the 50's. My first memories are travelling on the ship to Uganda when I was 3. My father had joined the Colonial Service and we went out to join him.

I had a wonderful early childhood there, beautiful climate and free and easy. When I was nine I was sent back to a very strict boarding school and didn't see my parents for 2 years. I flew out on my own at 11. It was a 24 hour trip with 3 stops. Then another 2 years without seeing them. I lived with my granparents in the school holidays

There was a lot more freedom for kids in those days, very little adult supervision and we got up to a lot of things that would now be considered very dangerous. Children were definitely seen and not heard and any adult's word was law.

we lived in the city in a terraced house no bathroom loo in the back garden (but it did flush!) dm cooked on a coal fired cooker, we had a tin bath but there was also a bath house down the road & my big sister took us once a week there-it was lovely & warm & an "auntie" (neighbour) worked there so made sure we got the best cubicles (each bath was in a separate cubicle) they supplied strong smelling white soap & towels. We went to Sunday School (to give parents a rest ) where I don't remember much talk of religion but lots of round games to singing ("I took a letter to my love & on the way I dropped it now one of you has picked it up & put it in your pocket") blackberrying with another auntie & other children, going to a nearby neighbour who didn't have children & making jam tarts there to eat. Dad use to go to work by bicycle & the 2 weeks summer holiday we went to the seaside by train & stayed in a caravan (loo & bathroom on bloke) eat hardboiled eggs & tomatoes on the beach. Christmases were family events with cousins & aunties crammed into the house everywhere. dm cooking days before to prepare. the full skirts with net petticoats, having tight ponytails with elastic bands. Mum was strict & very conscious of us being "ladies"

I too wasn’t warned about periods
Nana told me it was as bad blood

Dad education ended at 13 when he went to the open air school with scarlet fever
He never got back to ordinary school
He was determined I was going to pass the 11 plus and I had to do tests every night leading up to it
Thankfully I passed and had an excellent free grammar school education

I remember hearing about sex from my best friend aged about 10. She told me that when a man and woman went to sleep the man’s willy would get bigger and come out and go into the woman’s thingy and make a baby.. Nobody knew a thing about it! She got this information from her sister’s biology book.