What do you remember of your childhood that would be unacceptable now?

[Happyspendingthedayinthegarden]

I'm thinking smoking

We had sweet cigarettes.

Doctors smoking in their surgeries whilst examining you.

I remember when I first started working for the (then) DHSS we used to be allowed to smoke. Managers had glass ashtrays (with 'property of DHSS' & the HMSO (Her Majesty's Stationery Office) mark on - now they would be worth something on eBay now, I wish I'd kept a few) Clerical Officers & Assistants had foil ashtrays & there were large column ashtrays fixed to the floor in the public areas for them use. In the afternoon there would be a fog of smoke hanging a few feet from the floor on the floors where the benefit processors worked & the public area. 😨

Awww I miss these times kids are to soft now

The girls hated pe in pants and vests. The boys were allowed to wear shorts but girls weren’t. The boys taunted us every pe session.

Adults smoking everywhere, including the gps office.

Smacking at home and school. You might or might not have done something wrong.

Walking home alone after ballet class aged 10. About 2 miles and dark in winter. I pretended not to mind as it was that or no ballet.

Drying wet hair by lying on the hearth rug with your head as close to the gas fire as you could bear.

Oh yes, for some reason I particularly remember being able to buy toilet rolls loose from a big wicker basket on the floor.

We learned how to swim in a few lessons and then off we went to the swimming pool unattended.

I was listening to a coworker say her DD has been in swimming lessons for years (!) and that sounds like absolute madness.

This, with a pe teacher who stood in the shower doorway so we had to edge, wet and naked, past her to get to our towels.

Coming home late evening from a day out at the seaside, and my parents getting me to lie down on the back seat of the car so I could have a nap.

Again I want an OMG shock emoji - WTF choking hazard or what!!😨

Pet shops selling animals to kids, with a cardboard box to carry them home in.
What wretched short lives many of those animals must have had.

No seatbelts, which was handy because many people could be crammed into one car.
I knew several people who were severely injured when catapulted through the windscreen.

Children on farms driving tractors, with no safety cab. A local brother and sister were both killed doing this.

Being left from about 6pm to 12am at home with my younger sister (our ages were probably about 11 and 8) while our parents sodded off to the local Working Men's Club.
We were given a £5 note to go to the local Tescos for our refreshments for the night.
I would not dream of doing this!

Getting crop sprayed while cycling to school. The taste really stayed with you.

No sunscreen available. Then, after a day of playing outside, (I'm a red-head with fair skin), Chamomile lotion being put on to soothe the burns. Only dried skin out & made it worse. OUCH OUCH

I have a memory of being at school (early 80s primary) and it’s snowing so one of the dinner ladies went around asking who wanted to go home and she dropped us off on the way (walking) - no phone call honey- the assumption that a parent would be home!

Asking primary school children if they wanted to go home? WTF? Again - a sign of the times, as you say assuming someone would be there to greet them.

This is exactly how I've always felt!

I remember the early 1970's when we used to get regular power cuts. Loved it. Got sent home from school (not sure how my parents - probably my mother as my father had a job which meant he worked away for much of the time) managed as they were both working full-time. But picnic tea with candles & playing scrabble & other games. Mum would tell stories about the war when they were bombed out & how they used to manage.

Another one: from around the age of 9-10 just doing my own thing all the time, completely unsupervised. I used to take myself to London for the day and look around the museums in Kensington, I don't remember if my parents even knew I had gone. Another time, I got bitten by a dog and I took myself to the local hospital for a tetanus jab, I was 11.

I thought nothing of riding my bike around the streets, sometimes with friends and sometimes alone. I guess it has made me independent but I was often lonely as a child.

I just revisited a children's party game book from the 1970s which my Mum used to use in my childhood, in the back was a list of suitable gifts to bring to other children's parties for various age groups, including "Toy Guns".

Nobody is talking about child labour down at the mill.

I have another smoking one!
Doing work experience (1988) in a local newspaper office - a windowless office with everyone smoking.
The first couple of days I would wash my hair at night and the water would run black!
It was horrible!
I rang the school careers person who arranged it to ask what I could do and she said I couldn’t say anything/ complain in case this affected them taking more students in the future!

They might not even have assumed a parent was home. They probably thought the kid (say, junior school age) could sort themselves out, pop to a neighbour's house or something. If the snow was going to make it difficult to travel later in the day, you can imagine how (in a different time) this would have been an obvious practical idea. I'm thinking of Enid Blyton era books where the kids are out on their own adventures all day with barely a word to Mother!

The subject is: What do you remember of your childhood that would be unacceptable now?

Do you remember working in the mills as a child?

Being driven without seatbelts (because cars didn't all have them in the back)

Kids who, in retrospect, must have had learning difficulties being treated as 'naughty' by teachers and kids

Kids thinking it was funny to imitate the accents of kids from other countries

Definitely PE in underwear - seems so weird now!

Trailing around walking down a local stream with my just brother and sister when we were 11, 9 and 6.

My mum used to go away on work trips for like 3-5 days and would just leave me to fend for myself. I was probably 11 when she started. This was pre-mobile phones and pre-internet (early 90s), so I’d wait around for her to ring at like 7pm to check that I was still alive. I had no way to reach her in an emergency, other than maybe ring the receptionist at her office who could have eventually tracked her down at some site like a 3 hour flight away and passed a message to her to ring home.

It was very Home Alone 😂 minus the scary burglars. I’d get up and brush my teeth and make breakfast and walk/feed the dog and walk to school and then take myself to sports practice or drama practice and then walk home, feed/walk the dog, cook dinner, do homework, clean the house, put my washing on. I cannot imagine leaving my 12 year old home alone even for an evening. She would burn the house down. 😂

I was replying to the poster who said about getting hands cut off in a factory.

Keep up.

That's another - Enid Blyton. Golliwogs were the baddies (how racist is that?) also the gender stereotypes. But I loved her books even though my (teacher & future child development expert mother) didn't approve.

I also loved Little Black Sambo - remember when the tigers spun around so fast that they turned themselves into butter & the enormous plate of pancakes that his mother made for him? I always wanted a big plate of pancakes like that!