Unusual Parenting 1960s and 1970s . Can you help?

[2beesornot2beesthatisthehoney]

I have MH problems at the moment, triggered by recent events and possibly deep seated trauma. It got me thinking about my childhood and two things stick out and I wonder if they were normal at the time?
We were an affluent family living in an affluent area. We had good toys , good food , holidays abroad , lacking in little

My parents went out regularly, having put us to bed with no babysitter. Probably from when I was about 3 , certainly remember it when I was about 5 or 6; my 8 year old brother being in charge. They came back occasionally to check we were ok. Probably asleep.

My mum kept a stick in the kitchen and used it to hit me and my brothers if we misbehaved. It might have been a dog play thing too. Not sure . I remember where it was kept, in full sight and being scared of it.

Once , she banged my brothers heads together . I told my dad that evening , he did tell her never to do that again. But he did use his belt , not on me but once each, on my 2 brothers that I am aware of.

Is this how other children were treated then? I don’t see my brothers a lot , have no contact with one of them , the other brother dismissed another school incident ( of a child being dragged down the corridor by their hair) as “it just being the 70s” . I worry about their MH too.

@hiredandsqueak Social Services at the time would have taken action at a 3-year-old left alone. That was illegal.

@julieca well social services didn't. They may well have been left before that but exh remembers from age 3. Would have been mid sixties. He also was only walked to school once and then had to learn to count pylons to find his way through farmer's fields to find his way home.

I don't recognise any of what you say. We were bought up in a loving family, never hit, never left.

@hiredandsqueak I meant if they knew.

Tbh, it sounds quite violent even for the 60's and 70's. I can recall the odd slap but nothing worse, certainly not with implements. I don't think any of my friends were hit with things either.
I can remember being at home alone sometimes from about 7 or 8, but not at night, and there were neighbours we could go to if we needed anything. At night, there'd always be a babysitter until we were about 10.
But I do recall being sat outside pubs with my brother or other children for what seemed like hours, fairly regularly, sometimes just on the street or sometimes in the car. We used to use public transport independently from about 6, and took ourselves to and from school from about 5 - we were a lot more self-sufficient than my own children are.
But it does sound as if you were not treated well.

I was never hit and never left alone. But I was catching the school bus from a very young age and walking to and from school letting myself in from a young age. This is the bit that sticks with me because my DM used me as an excuse not to work when really she was out doing god knows what.

I was born mid 70s. Never left alone at night, always had babysitters. If I was sick I was left at home from about 10 as my parents had to work but dad would come back at lunch and then home from work as early as he could (teacher so could be home before 4 if he had to be).

We did get mildly smacked but very very rarely. Pretty much only when young (under 7 maybe) and when doing dangerous stuff so I suspect a degree of displaced fear if that makes sense. My dad was quite grumpy/snappy/short tempered I guess but we never felt threatened or scared by him ever.

DH is 6 years older and the smacking was much much more prevalent. By all accounts his dad was pretty free with the corporal punishment but not with sil and less with dh (quieter/better behaved) than with bils. MIL also but the boys grew out of it by 13 when they were bigger than her. SIL and I have discussed and it sounds much more than I perceived as normal - my friends seemed to have broadly the same experience as me in as far as we shared. Dh not bothered by it and has good relationship with his parents.

My dad had his mouth washed out with soap and water when he was 15 but that was in 1960 and he swore at his mother so it was the accepted punishment at the time in his area apparently.

Not normal, though my mother in law (now 90) did say she used to leave her son (my husband) at 4 in charge of his two year old brother! But I never knew anyone else who did that, and considering the amount of babysitting me and my sisters did as teens (in the 70s) I'm pretty sure no one in our neighbourhood left their kids unattended.
I can't speak for hitting - who knows what happens behind closed doors - but my parents didn't, and I never heard anyone else who was, though statistically it must of happened. I still don't think it was the 'norm' however, I would have been pretty shocked if one of my friends said they ever got more than a verbal threat to 'box your ears'.

I was brought up in the 60s and we were never left along. Neither of my parents drank or went to pubs so that helped. My dps did things separately so one was always there. If both had to go eg to a wedding we got a babysitter from the extended family. It happened so seldom that l still have clear memories of the babysitters as it was such a novelty and we were so excited. My parents were strict but not with corporal punishment but expected to be pretty much obeyed so for some reason they held that respect and we were pretty much well behaved but no fear was involved. My dm was beaten as a child and often spoke of how cross her own dad was so perhaps that's why slapping wasn't part of her way of doing things.
Children were slapped very occasionally in our school but l do know there was far more of that in other schools judging by people's stories over the years. I feel in the 60s things began to change a bit.
I think being left alone would have very serious effects on your sense of security as imagine if you saw a child being left now you would be horrified.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s. It was not the norm to be left alone where I lived. I did begin babysitting my younger siblings at about 13 or 14 after taking a babysitting course.

Some teachers used a yardstick to hit kids on the backside and we were scared of the strap from the principal but I never witnessed it. Other punishments were the teacher making some of the badly behaved boys in our class of 45 hold their arms out to the side until they cried. Horrible.

My Mom had a wooden spoon but I do not remember it ever being used.

I was born in the 1960s. Had my head banged against my brother's when we were 3 and 5 respectively, and once had my head banged against a wall when there was no brother to bang heads against.

I don't remember being left overnight, but from the age of 8 I routinely came home to an empty house after school. Not that my mother went out to work in those days. She just had other things she wanted to do with pre-school DB & DS.

From the age of 14 I was expected to babysit my younger DS & DB so that DM & DH could go out to their respective evening classes weekly.

From age of 15-17 I was drugged to the eyeballs on anti-depressants under the supervision of a consultant at St Thomas' Hospital in London.

Difficulties with self-acceptance ever since.

Other things came play of course, but all link back to that poor sense of self. Cause & effect.

This discussion has obviously really affected me. Early this morning I had a psychogenic non epileptic seizure , something I haven’t had for several years . Waiting to speak to a gp. They are caused by severe stress and relate to past trauma not epilepsy. I think for me it might have been continual fear and the absence of affection , not one incident. When I had them before they weren’t treated , just diagnosed. Which is rubbish really.

Grew up in the 70s. We were given 'hidings' with a belt or threatened with a wooden spoon, if we misbehaved.

I have 2 children of my own now and wouldn't dream of punishing them that way. Children need discipline and boundaries but I'm grateful the way we do it these days is different.

Those kind of parenting styles of the 60s and 70s, can have long lasting effects on a person. People who are sensitive, deep thinkers may never get over the trauma of abandonment, neglect and physical abuse and may develop an anxiety disorder later on in life, as a result of this.

Parents of children raised in the 60s and 70s would have been raised the same way by their parents, and so the cycle continues until it is broken.

I found a free website today, www.yourparentportal.co.uk, that provides information on anxiety recovery, if you need it.

Well spoke to a GP could be a combination of stress/anxiety and the prescribed AD medicine interaction with existing meds.

Sorry to hear that ,op.

Presumably this thread has brought up old memories? Do you think it might have helped you in some way too? Has it been quite therapeutic in the sense you have to face up to memories before you can process them?

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. Being walloped with the belt was normal for me. But then I was also locked in the understands cupboard, tied to my bed and sexually abused so which one was more prevalent than the other I don't know. I do remember telling my teacher that I was tied to the bed at night and nothing ever came of it. It definitely was a thing back then to hit children quite regularly and many parents would joke about the wooden spoon or the belt. What a horrible scary time for alot of children then but also so so sad that now it's done more undercover as people know it is a form of abuse so hide it and the children are not being spotted as easily x

Thanks @In4mation . I am not sure about therapeutic but certainly made me think.
My other post here might explain a couple of other things going on .
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4365315-Inappropriate-comments-from-Mum-re-my-MH-and-other-stuff

DH phoned them yesterday What I am realising is due to something that came up in that tricky conversation he had, they equate love with material things rather than affection and temper anything nice with not being that nice! As I said in the OP I grew up in an affluent household, but it really doesn’t matter if there is all the money in the world if there isn’t affection. My parents loved me and showed it by giving things but were cruel in other ways . I think they are products of how they were treated maybe ( although both weren’t affluent but different things going on . As @Rooiroos3 pointed out above , the cycle can continue if those patterns are repeated.

To be clear he didn’t phone them about this topic or previous behaviour. They had rung and he wanted to head them off while I was feeling delicate. Then had a bit of a strange conversation which I think he did well to manage!

I think it's precisely because of Maddie McCann, that attitudes changed drastically to leaving children in hotel rooms and similar.

But I think that even parents who were prepared to leave children in hotel rooms (where they tended to assume, however over-optimistically, that adults would be around to assist in a crisis) would normally not have left small children at home in an 8-year-old's charge at night. Maybe in an emergency, but not routinely.

I would say that smacking was fairly routine in the 70s. Beating with a stick or belt was not so common, but was not unknown or universally condemned. Much more often threatened than actually used, I think, both at home and at school. But certainly used at time, even sometime for girls.

Born in the 70s. Hit by both my parents (face and spanked). To the point where my father attacked me when I was 13 or so out of the blue (I was reading a book and he said I was looking at him the wrong way...) and hit me across the face sending me flying off my chair in the process. Constantly criticised and verbally abused by my father, including bizarre behaviour such being shouted at for having my period. Controlling and manipulative mother who never protected me from my father's anger and violence. My health in general was badly neglected and I was not kept clean.

This was not a poor household either where parents are overworked, it was a comfortable middle class life so there is no excuse for the neglect.

I consider both of them to be abusive and toxic and as an adult I moved away and cut contact with my relatives.

I think a lot of people here are trying to pass the behaviour of parents as ''normal'' for the era but frankly hitting your children is not and never was acceptable. I also resent the idea that some of these parents were only copying what was done to them. You have a choice on how you behave. I would never do what was done to me to any other human being, especially not a child.

I was a child of the 70's and although it wasn't right it was pretty acceptable at the time to smack kids with hands/belts/slippers etc. I got many a slap round the earhole if I was being cheeky and knew a few friends who had the belt if they misbehaved. One friend even had her mouth washed out with lathered up soap after she said a swear word. Another friend was caught smoking, he would have been about 11 at the time, his dad made him chain smoke a whole pack of cigarettes as a punishment😳 Pretty shocking really. Nowadays it would be classed as child abuse.

Hi I've just been googling this subject as my Mum used to regularly bang our heads together when were 3 and onwards in the 60's and I was wondering how common it was. so thank you for sharing. We also regularly got clips round the ear from my Dad. I'm currently in therapy and my therapist thinks my issues could well be linked to my abusive childhood, even though it wasn't called abuse at this time as far as I'm aware. Its difficult tying to find out what was normal at that time. I'm so sorry to hear you had similar punishments and issues