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If you grew up in 70s/80s what things did you do which would be unimaginable these days.

631 replies

newlabelwriter · 03/01/2022 16:47

Just thinking about this. When I was about 9 my friend and I used to go around knocking on our neighbours doors to see if we could pick dandelions (or something similar) for her pet rabbits. Seems such a random thing to do and obviously v v young to knocking on doors to go into their gardens!

OP posts:
newlabelwriter · 03/01/2022 22:05

@Wheredidthequietgo

To be honest a lot of this just sounds like shit parenting. Yes times were different but neglect was still neglect. My dad tells some awful stories of his childhood, his father in the pub all day and his mother smoking in the kitchen not feeding them so they shoplifted. My mam had a very different experience, very normal by today's standards, loving, caring. They only grew up streets apart so not a location thing.
My parents were not the best at all (whole different thread) but I for these things it seemed to be thee norm, definitely on my street anyway.
OP posts:
Siuan · 03/01/2022 22:07

@Dmsandfloatydress

Clubbing until 1am at 15. 16th birthday party held in a nightclub!! No one checking ID and an open bar.
Yes, same here. Regularly out clubbing / drinking at 15.
Marmelace · 03/01/2022 22:07

I was born 1970, from around the age of 4, my mum would send me out to play, I remember walking around forever, going down the beach by myself, which was rather a long way from where we lived.

foxgoosefinch · 03/01/2022 22:09

[quote worriedatthemoment]@foxgoosefinch i also think people aren't referring to the seatbelts as more fun/ simpler
But playing out and things like that
We were more resilient as kids then and the it really was it takes a village to raise a child , people looked out for each other
Waling to the shops at a young age and generally being safer as there was a lot less cars for one [/quote]
No, there are loads of posts on this thread about cars and seatbelts, riding in the boot of estate cars, etc.

I posted some stats upthread if you read my posts - but tbh I thought everyone knows this: the figures are incontrovertible and common knowledge. Over 90% decrease in death or serious injury to children on the roads between 1979 and 2013, for example in the link I gave above.

On seatbelt legislation in the UK, you can google it with a few clicks. Front seatbelts have been compulsory equipment in cars since 1968 and rear belts since 1986, but in reality most cars had them far earlier.

If you do a bit of googling you'll find accidents in the home show similar declines, after legislation and public information around bottle closures, labelling of toxic products, kettle flexes, blister packs of painkillers, and so on, was introduced.

People like to look back and say how much fun it was, but in reality it was much less safe.

Some people looked our for each other; but some people turned a blind eye to child neglect, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and many other things.

Tillymintpolo · 03/01/2022 22:13

I think it’s too simple to label it as shit parenting. My parents were brought up in the aftermath of WW2, their playgrounds were bomb sites and there was still rationing when they were young. I had one grandad who died young after a fall in the mines and another who came back badly damaged from the war and turned to drink. Being able to let your children play out and give them freedom probably seemed idyllic in comparison

CruellaDeVilla · 03/01/2022 22:17

Born in the 60s

We used to play on building sites
Buy fags for our parents
Do PE in our underwear
At my primary school boys did woodwork and girls did SEWING fgs

RoyalFamilyFan · 03/01/2022 22:22

@foxgoosefinch I remember being in cars in the eighties without any rear seatbelts. Everyone I knew drove old cars. Cars were very expensive.
I even remember being in the nineties in cars without rear seatbelts.
Seatbelts made an enormous difference to death and injury, but people could only use them if they existed.

RoyalFamilyFan · 03/01/2022 22:23

"Some people looked our for each other; but some people turned a blind eye to child neglect, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and many other things."
Exactly the same as now then.

Tillymintpolo · 03/01/2022 22:24

We didn’t have rear seatbelts in our Vauxhall viva ! I remember a neighbour getting a Ford Granada that had them and we thought that was so posh

foxgoosefinch · 03/01/2022 22:25

@Tillymintpolo

I think it’s too simple to label it as shit parenting. My parents were brought up in the aftermath of WW2, their playgrounds were bomb sites and there was still rationing when they were young. I had one grandad who died young after a fall in the mines and another who came back badly damaged from the war and turned to drink. Being able to let your children play out and give them freedom probably seemed idyllic in comparison
I think there was a lack of knowledge about what could go wrong, too; and a lot of blind eye turning. My mum talks about being flashed, groped or randomly assaulted a lot as a teenager in the sixties - she was once nearly raped in broad daylight in a deserted tunnel in the Tube and only escaped because someone else came along. Her mum just pretended it hadn't happened.

There was not the huge outcry when women and children were injured, raped or disappeared that there is now. Just look at the stuff coming out about historic child abuse and men who get caught now with DNA testing for raping or killing missing children from cold cases years ago. Domestic violence and child neglect was absolutely rife. An auntie of mine recalls being slapped about in the street by her husband walking home from the pub in the 1970s a police car drew up and asked what was going on her husband said "But this is my wife, officer", and they literally nodded, wound the window up and drove off! And the kind of child neglect cases that make the news now were far more routine than today. My mum as a social worker remembers regularly having to assess babies and toddlers who were so emotionally neglected and disturbed they were like the kids who were later found in Romanian orphanages.

Sorry to be a real funsucker here; it's just that nostalgia is great if you don't misrepresent history. I'm all for a fun thread about the 80s, but it really wasn't some utopian "it takes a village" paradise.

foxgoosefinch · 03/01/2022 22:27

[quote RoyalFamilyFan]@foxgoosefinch I remember being in cars in the eighties without any rear seatbelts. Everyone I knew drove old cars. Cars were very expensive.
I even remember being in the nineties in cars without rear seatbelts.
Seatbelts made an enormous difference to death and injury, but people could only use them if they existed.[/quote]
Fitting seatbelts in cars was compulsory from 1986. Wearing seatbelts in the rear was legally compulsory from 1991 unless the car was too old to have them; so whoever drove you in a car without them was being neglectful; they should have got them fitted!

Everyone knew it was fucking stupid not to wear a seatbelt; the campaigns were all over TV.

foxgoosefinch · 03/01/2022 22:29

@RoyalFamilyFan

"Some people looked our for each other; but some people turned a blind eye to child neglect, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and many other things." Exactly the same as now then.
We've had a lot of legislation since then that protects women and children: eg. marital rape has only been a crime since the early 90s. So not the same as it was then at all.
foxgoosefinch · 03/01/2022 22:33

@Tillymintpolo

We didn’t have rear seatbelts in our Vauxhall viva ! I remember a neighbour getting a Ford Granada that had them and we thought that was so posh
My parents literally had a succession of Vauxhall Cavaliers from about 1977 to 1994, and every single one of them had front and rear seatbelts.

Anyway, some seatbelt legislation history from ROSPA in case anyone cares!
www.rospa.com/rospaweb/docs/advice-services/road-safety/vehicles/seatbelt-history.pdf

Sparklingbrook · 03/01/2022 22:36

Anyway, some seatbelt legislation history from ROSPA in case anyone cares!

You seem to be on some sort of seat belt history and information crusade...

IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads · 03/01/2022 22:40

My siblings and I were born early 1960s-mid 1970s. My parents just used to put the seats down in the back of the car, film it with divers, kids and pillows are drive across the UK and Europe. No seatbelts in the back.

I remember by younger sister as a baby, just in her carrycot across the back seat. It wasn’t tethered in any way.

liveforsummer · 03/01/2022 22:46

If I remember rightly rear seatbelts were only mandatory if they were there and only new cars had to be fitted. Not an issue for us driven around in an old Renault with 4 different coloured panels. Especially lap belts I'm sure even fairly recently if there wasn't a middle lap you could travel without.

foxgoosefinch · 03/01/2022 22:47

@Sparklingbrook

Anyway, some seatbelt legislation history from ROSPA in case anyone cares!

You seem to be on some sort of seat belt history and information crusade...

Only because it's just one area where you can see factually the huge difference in safety between then and now. Several posters have said it was safer for kids then because there were fewer cars. Simply factually not true - it's just a kind of blind nostalgia for the past that overrides the truth. Same with lots of other stuff - it was a lot less physically safe to be a child then than now; but there's a general tendency to put on rose coloured goggles and say "nothing ever happened to us so things were much better." I love a bit of nostalgia myself, but I also like facts and reality!
2389Champ · 03/01/2022 22:48

At my secondary school (a convent!)in the 70s we had a pay phone in a wooden booth in the corridor outside the library. Somehow the local pervert got hold of the number and used to ring several times a day. If we heard the phone when we were bored and supposed to be studying in the library, we used to pile into the booth and take turns passing around the receiver to speak to him. We never thought about the consequences or how serious it was - we just thought it was hysterical when he wanted to ask us about our underwear etc and we actually used to wind him up by taunting him even more!

After all these years now as a parent, I cringe in horror at the memory and I can’t believe an adult was never aware of what was going on.

donutqueen11 · 03/01/2022 22:48

Whe I was about 15 I really loved babies so I often used to knock on doors of parents on our estate and ask if I could take their baby/toddler for a walk. Absolutely no way that would happen now. One mum used to love it and she used to give me£3 for lunch and a bottle and a jar of baby food and tell me to not come home till tea time

I found this particular baby now 32 on Facebook a few months back and her mum. She was completely and totally shocked at her mum for allowing this but times were very very different in 1988!!

RoyalFamilyFan · 03/01/2022 22:49

@foxgoosefinch you totally missed the point of my comment. Yes rear car seatbelts were compulsory to fit in 1986 and compulsory to use since 1991. Anyone driving an older secondhand car did not necessarily have rear seatbelts fitted. I literally said you cant use what does not exist.
Your assertion seems to be that everyone had them. That simply was not true. I remember being in cars in the early 90s that did not have them. Plenty of people drive old bangers.

thenightsky · 03/01/2022 22:51

Taxi home from school for our village. 2 kids on the front seat and 4 or 5 over the back seat.

foxgoosefinch · 03/01/2022 22:51

@liveforsummer

If I remember rightly rear seatbelts were only mandatory if they were there and only new cars had to be fitted. Not an issue for us driven around in an old Renault with 4 different coloured panels. Especially lap belts I'm sure even fairly recently if there wasn't a middle lap you could travel without.
You could but you'd damn well know it was unsafe and dangerous - there were public information campaigns and TV ads about it all over the place. Most people didn't actually travel without, as the statistics show!

It's akin to saying "My parents didn't bother about drink driving then because taxis were expensive, so we'd just all get in after they'd had a few drinks and drive home, grand old days they really were, nothing ever happened to us!"

RoyalFamilyFan · 03/01/2022 22:52

@foxgoosefinch domestic violence was more accepted in the 70s and not seen as a real crime. Although thanks to feminists that was changing in the 80s.
Childline started in 1986 so it is untrue to say that child abuse was ignored.
I think the current sedentary and relatively risk-free childhoods are throwing up their own issues with an increase in mental health problems.

foxgoosefinch · 03/01/2022 22:53

[quote RoyalFamilyFan]@foxgoosefinch you totally missed the point of my comment. Yes rear car seatbelts were compulsory to fit in 1986 and compulsory to use since 1991. Anyone driving an older secondhand car did not necessarily have rear seatbelts fitted. I literally said you cant use what does not exist.
Your assertion seems to be that everyone had them. That simply was not true. I remember being in cars in the early 90s that did not have them. Plenty of people drive old bangers.[/quote]
I think the point is that anyone who was a responsible parent had them, and had them well before the legislation too. Because it was bloody clear it was unsafe and you were putting your kids' lives at risk.

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