80s Parenting

[Limpshade]

Today, my DH told me that when he was five years old and on holiday in Europe, his parents went out alone for dinner, telling him and his sister (same age) to lock the door behind them and keep it locked until they came back. DH remembered a rock pool he'd seen that day so instead, he went out to explore it (in the night) and was so long doing so that when he came back, his sister had fallen asleep and he was locked out. He was forced to sleep on the floor of the corridor outside until his parents returned from dinner.

I was . I mean, my mum and dad were definitely "light touch" parents in the 80s but I don't think they'd have ever done this certainly not at a hotel since it was camping every year for us. Was this a "thing" that many parents did? DH seems to think it was perfectly normal (although agrees we wouldn't leave our own kids in this way)!

I couldn’t swim as a child, but when mum took me and a friend swimming she wouldn’t come in the pool with us. I was just told to stay in the shallow end and she sat in the observation area smoking.

My children born then weren't left on holiday but they were out on their bikes and skateboarding a lot OH was always fixing bikes and boards. These days bikes are bought and hardly used.

I was told stories of their exploits many years later 🙈😂

Born in the late 70s. My parents never, ever did anything like this. I can also recall the names of children on the news in the late 80s who had been abducted. There were some extremely famous cases

I think of it every time the Madeline McCann case is mentioned and people say ‘different times’……nope.

When I was a kid there seemed to be a lot of reports of kids getting badly burned when messing about with the cigarette lighters in cars. Many of the cars were abandoned.
I also remember there was a warning about playing with abandoned fridges/freezers because at least one child suffocated when playing hide n seek.
Lots of things happened because kids were allowed to roam.

Sadly, I’m this instance you’re parents weren’t responsible. And no, I’d wasn’t normal.

My mum's told me she never left us alone in hotels/caravans/B&Bs, but that at the time people thought she was unusually anxious and cautious.

We used to play out unsupervised loads. I walked my siblings (7 & 6) to and from school from age of 9. But there were no roads to cross. When we came home, we'd spend about 30mins unsupervised before neighbour got home with her kids, then go over there for childminding. Spent the odd day looking after myself while parents at school from about 10.

So I think my parents were fairly balanced. I wish I could let my kids play out unsupervised like I did. But there are just so many cars around. Even just walking down a path in my area you have to watch out for massive SUVs reversing off their drives, oblivious to the children that could be hidden below their line of sight. When I was young I remember is being quite unusual for a family to have more than one car - it meant you were very rich - and the car would've been a lot smaller.

I don't drive, so I'm actually quite annoyed, because it's not like I even get the benefit of driving around. Me and my kids just suffer everyone else driving around!

Actually my DH does drive and we have a car, so I was being a bit unrealistically "woe is me" in what I said!

"LynetteScavo
Such a service as mentioned by @maddiemookins16mum was offered by Mark Warner holidays in the early 90s. Like hell did I use it!
Aged 6 I was left alone in a tent while my parents went to a friends caravan. I went to find them with my little torch. I had very responsible parents, so it must have been normal.

Sadly, I’m this instance you’re parents weren’t responsible. And no, I’d wasn’t normal."

Yes it really was normal. I grew up with camping holidays, and so many parents used to put their children to bed and then meet up with other adults in the evening for drinks. Of course, some of the kids used to then sneak out once their parents had gone off. I never could because the furthest my parents ever went was to next door's caravan (we went on hols with friends).

But we used to camp 2 or 3 times a year. Every year, I'd turn up, make friends with the other children there and then spend the holiday playing out with my new found friends. Loved the freedom I had as a child. My parents were always the strictest and my friends (at home and the ones I made over the years) always did so much more than me. But in the early 80s, this was totally normal for the campsites we stayed at.

I remember travelling in the footwell of my friend's parents' car cos there wasn't room for us all. My husband says he had to go in the boot sometimes!

As has been a big feature in the case of a certain missing child.

My memories of camping are like this too. Such freedom!

One of the only times I recall my dad even commenting on the places we went was when those two girls Nicola Fellowes and Karen Hadaway were abducted and killed in Brighton, which wasn’t hugely far from where we lived. They were the same age as me, and my dad actually sat my neighbour and me down and talked through what we mustn’t ever do and why.

I think it's interesting how perceptions have changed. I have just been reading a book about children in the Victorian coal mines and how incredibly dangerous the mines were, but people just took these dangers for granted and assumed nothing could be done about them.

I suppose there are still dangers we feel that way about today. We teach children to be careful when crossing roads because we understand that being run over is a danger that is apparent but we would never consider not crossing roads, because that would be so restrictive it isn't practical. We vaccinate against diseases that we can, but many people accept the risks of chicken pox and there's nothing we can do about other diseases that we don't have vaccines for. We don't tend to worry about these things because there is nothing we can do about it, although it is terribly sad when we hear of a child who has died from cancer or similar.

One of the parts of the book talks about parents sending their children into mines quite young because otherwise they cannot afford to feed them, one of the mothers is quoted as saying "I don't want to send [my 9yo daughter] into the pit, I would rather she was in service [servant work] but I couldn't get her into service, I would much rather send her down the pit than see her starve." It was not until the 1880s that child labour was completely banned and children had to go to school instead. But considering children sometimes as young as 4 or 5 even were considered mature and sensible enough to go to work for a living, the idea of keeping them home and supervising them at all times would have been seen as very strange, and I think that perception of children persisted probably for another century, and here we are almost another half a century on from there. It is a very modern idea that parents are responsible to protect children from harm by anticipating dangers that children would not. I think that's better, in the main, but it does mean that children lose a lot of freedom and responsibility that was good for them if it didn't kill them. We aren't prepared to take that risk. On balance I think that's right, but it would be interesting if we could find safer ways for children to reclaim some of that freedom they used to have.

Oh Bertie, really? I normally like your posts, but you know what the mortality rate for children was in Victorian times.

Even more recently, children being run over was far more common in the 80s. As were those awful accidents like drowning, being electrocuted, house fires … we don’t have as many PIVs aimed at children now.

Sorry I don't understand? I didn't say we should go back to Victorian times nor that it is OK to let children take those risks. I said it's better now

If there was a group of us going out for the day instead of taking lots of cars the children were stuck in the boot (Estate) as many as could fit in. I remember it was so exciting and we used to put on shows for the people driving behind us.

I also remember my parents going to parties at people’s houses and we’d have a few cushions in the boot and be left outside the party in the car to go to sleep, we would be checked on a couple of times throughout the night.

We would often be left in hotel rooms alone with
room service and the TV to entertain us while our parents went to a dinner dance (in the same hotel but still)

none of this I would even consider doing now as a parent but it was fun as a kid!

I also never remember wearing sun cream as a kid unless we were abroad and even then I remember being sun burnt a lot.

My mum was quite strict when I was a child in the 80s. Because she'd been seriously assaulted by her mothers friend as a 5 year old in the 1950s.. it made her very aware of the dangers of strange men and male acquaintances towards girls.
I was allowed to walk to school once I hit Middle School at 9 but only with a classmate, and was literally 11 before I could go out on my own during the day!!
But I did have unmedicated epilepsy which made her even more cautious.
My sister and I didn't get left alone as we would fall out too much so we had to go and keep our elderly and disabled neighbours company while she was at work part time. It was ok because they were a lovely couple.

Sadly despite mums caution I still got assaulted and harassed by men - once in plain sight - but not until after I turned 12.

@SommerTen My mum (as well as having been a children’s social worker as I mentioned upthread) had also been sexually assaulted several times as a girl - aged 10, 12 and 14 and so on. So she was very very cautious about the possibility of strange men. I was not allowed to “play out” (as other kids were from a very young age), and she was very clear about warning us what to do if a strange man approached us, asked us to look at some puppies, offered sweets etc.

(She also very much did not leave us alone with any male relatives, eg uncles etc., no matter how much she trusted them - I think she had seen too much in her social worker days to take any chances with anyone.)

We were allowed to play on the field nearby from about 8-ish but only for a couple of hours at a time (and I was a v v sensible child - my siblings weren’t allowed to unless I was there). I was not allowed to walk to school alone until I was ten and in the last year of primary school (and the school was five minutes’ walk away with no road crossings). I went to school alone on a bus from year 7 but was not allowed to go into the town centre alone with friends until 13 or so.

That seems pretty much the same as today’s kids are allowed (DD’s school does not allow children to arrive/leave unaccompanied before year 6).

I was left alone at home supervising younger siblings for short periods of time from about 12, and by 15 was taking them on long journeys across London etc. and babysitting for my parents’ friends. However I was considered a very sensible child/teenager, and my siblings (who weren’t!) were not left in charge of anyone until much later - very late teens or so!

We also always had car seats, sun cream, mum was a crunchy knit your own muesli type about healthy low salt food, etc. etc. Not really much different to today.

I do think there were large variances during the 80s, though - both depending on where you lived (eg in a city or a more rural community) and across different social classes and communities. My parents were very middle class despite both having grown up in poorer working-class communities. They were a lot more cautious and suspicious about child safety partly because they had both been left pretty much free range in their own childhoods and had seen some stuff…but also they no longer lived where they had grown up, so they didn’t have a local community around that they knew, to rely on to all look out collectively for small children. (eg. where we grew up was a very nice suburb, but with mainly older people, not many young children, and not many people around during the day, which I think makes a big difference to how much you’d let your children out without direct supervision.)

"I do think there were large variances during the 80s, though - both depending on where you lived (eg in a city or a more rural community) and across different social classes and communities."

Do agree with that. Taught Sociology a few years back and one aspect they look at is childhood. In all the textbooks it says that m/c children had much more restricted freedom compared to w/c.

My parents were working class (dad in a large factory etc) we lived on a road where all the children played out. The factory had a hooter that sounded to call the men to work, to announce their lunch break and to call them back to work again, and then to signal the end of the working day. As children, we were all allowed out to play until the hooter sounded for lunch, then we had to come home and again for tea. All the kids played out, and all the parents looked out for and would discipline each other's children if we were up to no good. So whilst your parents might not know what you were doing, there were eyes everywhere and things quickly got back to mum.

I played out from an early age, about 3. At first in my own front garden, then I was allowed to go to my friends (3 houses up) and eventually on the road. The road was a dead end so all the children played out and everyone knew to drive slowly. Mum had coffee mornings with the other mums twice a week and the preschoolers would play, and that's when if you'd been naughty, your mum would find out. If serious, then before. In the summer, the parents used to drink in the street. We'd be put to bed and the parents would get together for drinks. Not all the time, but from time to time and especially on big occasions. Our road was a tight knit community and everyone knew everyone in our road. As it was a new housing estate, it was full of young families.

It really was quite a different time.