What Was Wrong with the 70s????

[Menofsteel]

I wasn’t born until 1980 but my husband is a 60s child. He’s showed me public information films from the 70s and just introduced me to the original Survivors. I saw the remake with Julie Graham? Why is everything from the 70s so much creepier?!? I’m starting to believe we are a bit softer nowadays .

My mum was a terrible cook but spaghetti bolognaise was a regular meal because we had lived abroad (not Italy but around Italians). She also made shish kebabs on knitting needles a few times. Her attempts at curry were pretty disgusting.

I'm talking more about the 60s there, though. I was 15 in 1970 and did a lot of the cooking by then as I did Food & Nutrition O level and Home Economics A level.

@Ginfordinner how funny: my mum was german too, and while my grandma was an excellent cook (esp re cakes and potato salad) my mother was most assuredly not! It wasn’t English crap we ate, it was just simply revolting and weird.

I think the quality of food very much depended on the quality of home cooking. Good quality ready meals didn’t exist until the 80s and ingredients for instant food like pasta and deli food were much less widely available.

Also many adults still had a wartime waste not want not mentality. I can remember being forced to eat really gristlely meat at school.

70s for me was great.
But I lived abroad for half of it so that probably helped.
4 years of Mediterranean sun.

I was brought up on 3 meals a day with no snacking although we did have an Alpine pop van come round once a week. We'd have a bag of sweets on a Saturday as a treat and have to be quiet whilst the football scores were announced on the telly while grandad marked off his pools coupon. Smoking indoors and in the workplace was the norm and I spent every spring helping my nan wash the nicotine off the living room walls.
School dinners cost 60p a week brought into school in a little brown envelope and the cane was very much in use.
Gran ran Kays catalogue for the whole street and collected people's premiums. I was forever having to nip to another house to collect the catalogue because another neighbour wanted to have look.
Coming from the Coventry most people's dads worked in the car, tank and aeroplane industry. Some were miners on very good money but their fortunes changed rapidly in the 80s.

I was born in the early 70s and think about it with fondness. I loved the sense of community which you don't see much of today. Everyone looked out for each other. Shopping was done locally. I played out until dark and remember the sense of freedom and excitement. Life was simple and people were happy.

I was born late 60s and also feel fondness for this decade.

Pp have been incredibly accurate in their descriptions!

One thing I would say, as the parent of dc with educational difficulties and neuro typical, was that, at school they seemed to recognise dyslexia (just about) but most others not conforming were labelled as naughty, thick or odd. Glad we've got rid of that.

Yes very much to the adult world being the focus. Although my parents were middle class, liberal types who socialised, had disposable income, and encouraged us to talk etc, they were still quite old fashioned. I used to regularly have nightmares as a child. If I got up it was "go back to sleep!" None of this letting children sleep in parents' beds, you needed to learn to cope!

Although I like being much more laid back than my parents with my kids and their friends, sometimes I think "hang on! When do I get to make the choices? Be in charge?" Maybe I should have insisted on being called Mrs Tobee instead of my first name by dc's friends!

dc not* neuro typical that should say!

She also made shish kebabs on knitting needles a few times This made me laugh...that's such a 70s Mum thing to do!

GinForDinner I didn't have a Chinese takeaway or a latte till' I moved to London for uni! I was brought up on stew, chops, bacon and potatoes!

@Bumpsadaisie

You played out most of the time.

You were always slightly hungry because you ran about all over the place and never had snacks.

You were always a little bit cold. But you didn't mind as you were so busy running about.

Everyone's mum was at home doing stuff in the house.

You had to fit in with the grown ups. Nowadays I think oh it's boring for my kids to drag around b and q on a Saturday. That's not a 70s mindset

I was never cold or hungry and my mum was out at work and dad did the lions share of the domestic stuff. I had the childhood of dreams. Lots of toys, lots of friends, out all day on your bikes, falling out of trees, free range, not expected to do homework at age 5, in and out of friends houses, street parties. It was fabulous.

We didn't have a car so we never had takeaways. My mum cooked Chinese food from scratch. She used to have a coffee percolator, and we had proper fresh coffee on Sundays. I don't think lattes existed in the 1970s.

always slightly hungry because you ran about all over the place and never had snacks
Well you say that.....
I mean it's true that I run about all over the place but I also remember eating absolutely loads of sweets and yet I wasn't fat😳
No way could I get away with stuffing my face with sweets like that nowadays

Ah, we’re ‘the haunted generation’! Properly creepy things on TV (often subversively pagan as well). It never did me any harm - mwah ha ha ha! 🦇🙀

I have to laugh when Mrs Winkle is held up (or holds herself up) as a model feminist because she once wrote a letter about advertisements showing women doing the dishes. Back in the 70s, women were poised, uncomfortably, between worlds. I was sexually assaulted by my Uni lecturer during a Viva exam, and groped by a tutor who I had hoped would give me advice about my PhD. Taking action was unthinkable, as the repercussions of complaints would have been dire. I went back to work in the 70s, leaving ExH at home with the baby- that was VERY unusual back then. I applied for the Teachers' Married Allowance, designed to help (male, of course) teachers who were raising children, but was ineligible because it applied only to men. Then I tried to buy carpet on HP, but was told that I couldn't without my husband's signature on the document - though he had no income and I was the breadwinner. No childcare facilities available, no support at all for working mothers. It was a grim time, and almost unthinkable in terms of today's (still imperfect) sexual equality. My sons think it was a cool time to be alive, all great music and marching against Vietnam and the bomb. It wasn't.

Polly I remember that on our council estate, due to people being incredibly poor (the local steelworks closed) that we were suddenly flooded with men during the day....walking to the shops etc. Whereas before, you simply didn't see men about during the day time.

I also remember that we were ok as my Dad worked in a factory in a different town rather than the steelworks....so quite often, there'd be a knock on the door at night and a child would be standing there saying "My Mum said have you got 50p for the metre please?"

My Mum always gave it. These families had no electricity...their tellies ran out too due to having to feed them with money.

And kids with ripped shoes in school and hungry kids with stomach aches being given biscuits by the teacher first thing....and the slow descent of a decent community into alcoholism, drugs and crime.

I'd caught the tail end of a different era in my very early years. One where everyone went to chapel and had a new dress at Easter...and we were all happy and healthy.

Then most kids had two parents out of work...and it all went downhill. It's barely recognisable now.

My mum cooked Chinese food from scratch

We had Vesta chow mein and used to fight over the last crispy noodle

I remember Vesta

Vesta meals were fab. I can still get the Chow Mein in my local Tesco. My mother and father used to have it while I was out at Guides. .

I'm a child of the 60s and a 70s teenager. I still remember going to school in the Miners' Strike and not being able to wear tights or trousers instead of our skirts and socks. We had to sit in our coats as it was.

We didn't have central heating until 1978 and it was mid - 80s before we had a phone. We used my auntie's meanwhile.

It was a great decade. Great music, daft clothes and a sense of fun. For the adults, I there was looming mass unemployment, raging inflation and the Cold War.

I’d be interested to hear about the 70s from people born in the 40s. Lots of these accounts about it being a lovely care free time are down to you experiencing the 70s as a child right? Like how in years to come today’s kids will say the pandemic was lovely because they didn’t have to go to school! They won’t remember the anxiety and stress of job losses and worrying about what if there’s never a vaccine etc etc. Three day working weeks sounds like it would have been a very stressful time for parents.
I guess my point is does every generation think their own childhood era is the best one because it’s the only one they experienced as a child?

I remember that sport always took over everything on TV. On a Saturday both BBC and ITV had sports on all day but, if you were lucky, there was a decent black and white film on BBC 2. Lots of TV shows were moved if the football was on. I remember watching the football results wishing them to be over so I could watch Dick Turpin or whatever was on TV at the time.

Meals on a weekend were always meat and two veg. Main meal was at school when I was in primay. I still remember being made to eat liver at primary school for lunch. I always hated the days that was on the menu. The portions were small but the liver was so bitter but you ate it. You'd be roundly told off if you left any food and told how rude and ungrateful you were. Fussy eaters were simply not tolerated. I remember we didn't have much money as a young child so tea was always bread and jam. I was so jealous of kids who came to school and told of having chips for tea. I once complained I wanted some other than bread and jam but was told off by my Mum.

It was always cold but it seemed like the seasons were proper seasons, snow in the winter weeks of sunshine in the summer.

@Blownaway1

I’d be interested to hear about the 70s from people born in the 40s. Lots of these accounts about it being a lovely care free time are down to you experiencing the 70s as a child right? Like how in years to come today’s kids will say the pandemic was lovely because they didn’t have to go to school! They won’t remember the anxiety and stress of job losses and worrying about what if there’s never a vaccine etc etc. Three day working weeks sounds like it would have been a very stressful time for parents. I guess my point is does every generation think their own childhood era is the best one because it’s the only one they experienced as a child?

I was born in 1955 so 15 at the beginning of the decade, left home at 18 in 1973 and 25 and pregnant (single) by the end and definitely experienced those things. That is why it was not a decade of unalloyed joy for me, I posted earlier about childhood being a safe, happy time for most people whatever the decade but adults see things differently at the time.

My parents were born in the 20s and I think they couldn't understand young people and why we wore such strange (hippy) clothes not respectable, smart things and why we didn't do as our parents told us. I was the first generation to stay at school and take exams so that also pushed me further away from their comfort zone. I questioned things that they took for granted.

I still think the music is the best ever, though. Not the teeny bopper charts stuff but Bowie (when he was still considered very strange), Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills and Nash, The Grateful Dead, I could go on for ever.

I was born in 1970 and grew up on the outskirts of a small town. Food was bought from the high street shops and you could get everything from haberdashery to deli food as well as a greengrocers, a hardware shop, 2 butchers and a general store.
We never had ready meals or anything like that. They didn’t look very appetising next to the food my Mum made!
2 schools attached to 2 churches of different denominations. You tended to have friends just from ‘your’ school, but there was little animosity between the groups, it was just that they had separate Brownie and Guide packs and you were destined for different high schools at 11.
We did have a lot of freedom to roam the surrounding open land, farmland mainly, but we were never kicked out of the house from dawn til dusk. There would always be someone watching wherever you went and they would tell your parents if you were out of order, so you always bore that in mind

Television was only on in our house for specific things, with sport on a Sat. I preferred Granada over BBC because it had adverts and they were more interesting!
I wanted to apply to Jim’ll Fix It, but my parents gave a firm “No” to that. I thought they were mean at the time, but now I can see why.

Big joint town ‘Fair Day’ once a year, where the roads were closed and you walked with your Church. I loved that!

Loved visiting grandparents at weekend. One set had acres of land and animals, the other laid on a typical Sunday Tea and made a massive fuss of us, which we revelled in.

So I had a pretty idyllic childhood but looking back I can see that other children didn’t. Too many opportunities to fall through the cracks if your parents were neglectful or you had trouble with school work.

Wall paper on your school books.
The 'spin dryer' in the kitchen.
Sitting on the stairs to have a phone call.
No seat belts
Dad driving pissed
Fog of cigarette smoke in everyone's houses
Having to watch for the streetlights to start to come on as a sign to come home (or your mum would start yelling for you - oh the embarrassment of that ! ''Your mum's looking for you'' aaarrrrgggghhh.)
Dodgy men in the parks who no one ever reported.
Dangerous play ground equipment on concrete - witches hat anyone?
Stray dogs (got chased by a pack once)
3 channels of TV and no video/CDs
No pause button - everyone went to the loo and rushed about getting tea during the ads.
Waiting for films to come on at xmas.
Central heating always set on low - if you're cold put a jumper on!
Ice on the inside of bedroom windows in the morning.
Having to call all adults Auntie this or Uncle that even if they were no relation. Having to kiss them all
The London Underground - filthy red velvet and leather seats with fag butts all over the WOODEN floor!