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

[newlabelwriter]

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!

going to the shop for my mum's sanitary towels- Dr White's with the loops- and being given them in a brown paper bag in case someone saw them and got embarassed. (also thank god sanitary belts were on the way out just as I started my periods!)

Walked to school from age 6yrs without an adult
Walked home in the dark from Ballet Class ...a good half hour walk at 8yrs

Came home for lunch - when at school

Used the library for books and to research homework etc when older

Getting alcohol/fags from the shop with a note, sitting in the car outside a pub with a can of juice and some crisps then driven home by a man a few pints in. (This all happened with my forms dad not my parents but no one ever thought to check what was happening 😆)

Going out with my friends during the school holidays(primary aged)basically all day and coming home for meals.We'd go to the local park ,ride our bikes(no helmets),play with skipping ropes on the road where we lived and just dropped the rope if a car came.
We walked to the local swimming pool which was about a 30 minute walk on our own.No mobile phones in these days and we all survived.

Sleeping in the boot on long journeys

@Gechik

Hitch hiked a lot, went to night clubs and pubs when I was about 15.

We lived rurally and used to hitch a lot too

Aged 8, 9 plus - playing out from daybreak to dusk.
Four children squeezed into back of car on top of tent, clothes and sleeping bags for camping trip in France. We crouched and lay the whole way.
Aged 15 - going to the pub after school in our uniforms. No-one asked.

Remember so many of these! Travelling in the boot of an estate was so exciting.

I also used to get the bus into town for half fare (45p) then spend the evening in the pub. This would have been from 14. No one cared about under aged drinking.

Taping the top 40 on a Sunday evening and desperately trying not to catch any of Bruno brook's talking!

Meeting friends in town on a Saturday at 2pm outside HMV. If they weren't there, or you were late. Too bad! No mobile phones.

White dog poo and dangerous playgrounds. Often together.

Primary school trip to France - all given a glass of red wine to "sample the local drink". Didn't have to have a passport each then either, we all went on one "group passport" and had a bit of cardboard with our photo on.

Once went on a school netball away match, as the minibus went round a corner the back door opened and half the team fell out. No drama, tied a rope around the door and carried on.

Life was so different.

Played out in the street with an elder sibling from 2. An older girl (i.e. about 7) used to keep an eye on us!

From 8 we went out all day on our bikes with a picnic lunch, and didn't have to come home until tea time. We used to take a map, plan routes and cycle for miles. At 13 this extended to a 9 day cycling trip staying at youth hostels with friends. No mobile phones. At 14 we did a similar trip but first took a train to Devon, literally 100s of miles from home

10 of us piled into the back of a car on a trip to London. I was in the boot with at least 2 others.

Allowed to walk to the shops at lunch time from year 5, provided we were doing shopping for a teacher. I guess this gave the teachers some control over who went. If you were unlikely to get into trouble you were given 50p to buy something pointless. If you were a PITA they wouldn't need any shopping.

My parents actively encouraged us to disappear off and be at home as little as possible. they didn't ask where we were going they just wanted us gone. The trip we did regularly that shocks me most was a 10 mile bike ride up A roads to a river that had a small weir under a bridge. We'd take a lilo, blow it up when we arrived and spend the day siding down the water rapids over the weir on it. This was when we were primary school age. Pervy men fishing nearby would make comments about us in our swim costumes. I don't know how my parents considered this to be ok.

Aside from the roads being more dangerous life wasn't any safer then. The difference was no social media and much less in the news when bad things happened to kids, so parents didn't worry about it like we do now.

Travelling all the way to France in the back of the car with no seatbelts. We often turned ourselves upside down so our feet were on the back windscreen and our heads were in the footwell.

Basically played out just told to be back before nightfall.
Sleeping on the back shelf of the car when young.
Babysitting at night from age 12 - babies, toddlers, we all did it.
My husband was left alone from age five in charge of his two year old brother when his parents went out for the evening.

@foxgoosefinch

I grew up in the 80s but my mum had been a children’s social worker, and had seen all sorts of stuff you don’t even want to think about, so she would never have let us do most of the stuff on this thread!

I can honestly say I wasn’t allowed then to do most of the things people have posted here; and as a kid my upbringing wasn’t that different to my 8 yo DD’s now. I was maybe allowed to play out of sight a bit more, but not that much tbh.

I spent a long time in my childhood and adolescence being annoyed that my mum was so careful, and thinking that because everything had been fine, she was being neurotic.

I only very later realised that nothing bad ever happened to me precisely because she was very vigilant, not despite it.

Tbf nothing bad ever happened to many of us despite the lax (by modern standards) parenting

My dad always had a cigar at Christmas despite not smoking the rest of the time. He used to let me and my brother and sister have a drag on it from about aged 10 as a treat!

Also everyone giving friends croggys on their bikes (friend sitting on handlebars while you peddled) along main roads!

Walking myself to school from age five.

Getting myself up, dressed, fed and out the door from age six.

Being a latchkey kid from age six. I used to come home at lunchtime and cook myself something because I hated school dinners. Also let myself in after school, but this stopped when I got a place at a local after school club when I was about eight.

Baked in my own from age five, cooked on my own from age six, could make a roast by age seven. I had a step stool to reach the counter while I still too small to reach it.

Buying cigarettes from the shop for my mum.

Going to the laundrette on my own from age 10.

Clubbing from age 14. Started going out with the people from my p/t job as a waitress in a hotel, often working til 10/11 at night. As I looked older I was sometimes asked to collect glasses too or help behind the bar from about 15, that meant Woking til 2am and not getting home til 3am.

@bendmeoverbackwards

I was born in 1972. My mum used to leave me in the library when she did her errands. I was about 8 or 9. Have no idea if this was normal then but she seemed to think I was safe there.

Yes I'd forgotten this. Born in 79

No seat belts in cars so I used to lie down across the whole of the back seat and fall asleep
Walking to school and back on my own from age 6
Going on long cycle rides all over the place with friends from 8 or 9, no one knew where we were and we had no money
Being left home alone from 4 ish
Going swimming at the local pool and on my own from 7 ish
Being allowed in pubs with friends at a really young age, from 13 onwards, without any questions being asked

1 year card passports. Borrowed an older friends birth certificate to get in a pub then went to the post office and got one as ID . Lent it to a friend the next week and she lost it

Going off on our bikes in Germany, 10 miles into the ranges. Allowed to do this at age 9. Dad was a soldier.
Being out all day from age 8, again, in Germany doing whatever I liked-didn't even need to come home for lunch.
Walking to school alone age 5

@liveforsummer

Tbf nothing bad ever happened to many of us despite the lax (by modern standards) parenting

Except you only have to see thread after thread on here from women who were molested or assaulted or abused from a young age up to adulthood, from one-offs to serious sustained CSA, and read how nobody took it seriously and/or their families minimised it or even in some cases pretended it wasn’t happening, to realise that many women are scarred for life by the actions of predatory men who were never stopped or confronted. The number of threads I read on here about how families and mothers refused to believe it was happening turns my stomach.

My mum was absolutely vigilant about predatory men. She had seen really awful cases of sexual abuse in her job. I can say I would have counted on her absolutely to believe me and take action if anything had happened to me. So many women post here about how they were not believed and how devastating and lifelong the harm has been.

All the “in my day we did X and nothing happened” isn’t borne out by the statistics on child fatalities in road accidents, stranger abductions, childhood injury in the home, etc. Sorry to interrupt the nostalgia party with some actual facts, but all of those have declined really dramatically since the 1970s. Children did get hurt - you were just lucky.

I used to ride my bike 9 miles every Sunday with my brother to see my Grandma and Grandad. Mother would give us a packed lunch and instruct us not to talk to strangers or get in anyone's car, to find a policeman if we needed any help (they weren't in cars all the time then) and if we couldn't find a policeman, find a woman and she would help us. No-one had a telephone then.

This was when I was ten and my brother was nine years old.

People were always kind to us on our long journey and we never had any problems. This was quite normal then (1970s)

Age 8, I went to/from school by myself in Central London once a week. 3 stops on the tube, with a change at Victoria. By 10 I did it everyday, although sometimes by bike!

Age 17, I had school music lessons, but couldn’t always fit them in to the music teacher’s timetable, so I’d go to his house after school.

My English teacher would pick up people who lived in his direction if we were still waiting at the bus stop when he left school.

On school holidays, DM would put us (I’m one of 4 dc) on buses and trains unaccompanied/in combination/alone to places like Brighton, Plymouth and Carlisle to be met by friends and family. It only once went wrong, and a 12 year old ended up in Glasgow rather than Kendal by accident (got confused in Lancaster station). Not sure how that got sorted, because it was long before mobile phones.

From 16, I’d white regularly cycle the 60 miles to by grandparents’ house.

I was very lucky and so were all of my friends to have the amazing freedom and nothing bad to have happened during their childhood.
Unfortunately the bad things still happened to us but later on.

@foxgoosefinch sadly this still happens, despite different parenting styles