Things that you can’t quite believe were the norm

[ItsNotAShopItsAStore]

What’s one of those things you think in 10/20/30 years people will go “WTF why was that acceptable?”

For me - the Jeremy Kyle show. I’m so pleased it’s off air - awful poverty porn hosted by a nasty little bully and enabled by god-complex shit stirring producers. Also who wants to watch so much shouting and arguing at 9.25am!

😂 😂

My Granny and her siblings had to walk well over 2 miles to school and the same distance back at the end of the day, in all weathers. This was in the 1900s and 1910s. No public transport available back then to help with any stage of the walk. There would have been next to no traffic on the road but it must have been a long, long haul for the little ones who started doing this at age 5, overseen by the older ones, I suppose. My Great-Granny wouldn't have walked down with them.

Nowadays children living where they did are collected by taxi if their parents can't drive them to the school.

I recall one of our neighbours' daughters moving in with her boyfriend without even being engaged and her dad telling my dad. There were hushed tones and my dad said, eventually, 'Well it seems to be the way of the world these days.' I was about 8 so it must have been about 1987.

I walked that far in the 1980s.

I totally agree, PE was just a chance for the popular sporty girls to show off while bullying and belittling people who weren’t good at team sport. I never got to touch a ball (pardon the pun) in any PE lesson because no-one passed to me. I just stood on the side freezing. I wish Yoga, Zumba or badminton could have been played rather than netball, hockey and lacrosse. I didn’t touch sport again until I was 28 as I had such a hatred for it since school.

At 5? I think I could have done it at that age, but it would have been tiring. Day in, day out it would have got tedious, especially in winter when they'd have been leaving before it was fully light and getting very dark by the time they were home in the afternoon (Scotland).

Forcing women into Mother and Baby Homes, nuns using them for slave labor, and forcing them to give up, stealing, their babies.

And nobody blinking an eye

They still existed in Ireland in the eighties. A shameful part of our history.

Putting on dance shows for our parents by copying Hot Gossip. We decided my aunts fancy underwear was closest to the costumes they wore, 8/9 year olds crawling along the floor, doing splits and high kicks while wearing satin underwear must have been very uncomfortable for them to watch. Hot Gossip was on a family show

I left school in 1990 we showered in shared cubicles water was always cold and our PE teacher would not allow you to get out of games if you were on your period (but you could miss out on showers). My friend told the teacher she was now Muslim to get out of showering and she was made to have a long shower for lying

Sitting in the back of the car (hatchback) with the dog it was the best place to be. We were also allowed by my friends stepdad to put our heads through the sun roof. Her mum was extremely annoyed. He had a gold Capri and we all thought this was the coolest car ever

It's not just pull ups. Modern disposable nappies have a role to play, yes, but perhaps more significant is that mother's aren't at home as much as they used to be. And let's face it, 90%+ of people doing potty training are the mother's.
Part of the problem is the amount of women entering full time employment rise and rises as we get to now.
In 1950s most mothers would be at home with kids all day, perhaps some working part time, and fewer still working full time. So, it was easier to facilitate potty training at home? Mother's don't perhaps have the time to train earlier, as often a 20 month old is in full time childcare, and perhaps being brought home by mum at 5:30, and then it's dinner, bath, bed,.asleep at 7. Wake up at 7 and back to nursery for 8:30am the next day.

So naturally, women will be "forced" to wait until perhaps nearer 3, because by waiting for another year, they child can be trained in a week or less perhaps, as they're easily ready. But, at under 2, they're more likely to take a bit longer to grasp the concept, bae the ability to get undressed in time etc so disposables give most working mothers a convenient "delaying" method, which fits in to the modern world. Just like they don't have time to hand wash terry nappies etc the washing machine saved time, which is turn enables women to work etc etc. it all feeds each other and isn't as simple as "modern nappies make mums lazy".

There's a lot of blame placed on women for "delaying" potty training, a lot of shame, a lot of implied laziness. I really do wish women would stop beating other women for not doing things exactly the same way.

ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/BN234.pdf

Not so much a norm, as a thing my family did that probably wouldn't fly today but...

When I was little, for a "treat" if I'd been good, my dad used to let me sit on the car bonnet while he slowly drove it into the garage to park it.

I have no idea why I liked this so much.

My Nana said both. And she had a squishy stool that she called a pouf/poof

There's nowt as queer as folk.

Time travel back to 1970 😂

Yes 5 is young. I did it from 7 onwards

@Mothership4two

That’s what they’re called!

Isn’t it short for pouffet or something?

100% this. I remember the ritual humiliation which was rounders....I was useless at it so was always one of the last to be picked for the team. Woe betide me if I was one of the 'fielders' and failed to catch the ball if it came my way - that led to hostile glares & hissed insults from fellow team members as I had let the whole team down.

Otherwise: nylon sheets & nightdresses in the 60s-70s - 'Bri-Nylon' was everywhere....I think it was a trademark. The only electricity between the sheets must have been the static (I am only surmising - was a child at the time).

The 80s - shoulder pads. The reason women looked like Superman at the time was that everything had shoulder pads in them, even t-shirts and sweaters. So unavoidably, as you layered up clothes you layered the shoulder pads to ridiculous proportions.

Up to the 70's in Ireland a woman had to retire/give up her job in the Civil Service if she married - no choice in the matter.

Equality was a foreign word.

No divorce allowed and if your husband was a drunk or beat you, the Parish Priest would tell you to go home and be a better wife.

You have to go cold turkey. No nappy on.

Many of these have been said already but compulsory open showers in secondary school really have scarred me for life! Smoking everywhere- I remember a history teacher smoking in class too.
I remember going to parties at 11 or 12 and being given a bottle of Woodpecker cider to take. It was the late 70s and everyone did it!

Not completely unknown- for sure, especially boys x

Surely the issue with the 11 and 12 year olds isn't that they're left alone and have a lack of provision - it's that we expect there to be provision by this age, rather than being comfortable letting them roam around as many of us did at that age. I loved it when my parents went to work, and I'd watch summer TV, walk to friends', take the bus to town, wander in the fields, cook myself lunch, read, draw, etc.

Increasingly research shows that scheduled, supervised clubs are (generally speaking) leagues behind free-play in terms of benefits. Of course there are still risks from things like traffic, but generally speaking children are so much safer outdoors than we were in the 70s/80s. News reporting means that everyone is terrified of letting a 12 year old spend the day without adult supervision or clear 'plans', however. (Or is that what you meant, sorry!)

I think Scribbling Pixie was saying that by the 1970s, people had seen a great increase in quality of life from the 30s, 40s, 50s, not that they were brilliant decades in their own right. And in the 2020s, people are seeing a decline in living standards, in housing, education, healthcare, equality, law, popular culture, journalism, outdoor spaces and all the rest.

At age 12 i travelled from S.W Scotland on the overnight train to London, It would be full of blokes, not once did any of them act inappropriately. I then crossed London on the tube and travelled on to Kent. 12 years olds should be able to spend a few hours at home alone, after all in 4 short years time they could be married.

Leaving babies outside shops in prams.