What did society look like when you first legally became an adult(18)?

[NewLion]

It was 2011 David Cameron was PM Bolton were playing at Wembley and Waterloo Road had announced it was moving to Scotland

1979, the Thatcher era was beginning. It's hard to describe how badly behaved many men were towards women in those days, openly leering, sexist, condescending and grabby. In other ways, society was generally more polite and more deferential than today.

It was 2007. Pound a pint was our Wednesdays. Smoking in pubs newly outlawed. The best indie music of all time (biased!). Everyone thought Gordon Brown was a plonker (spoiler: we were wrong). Everyone assumed boom would continue forever. Never would have thought the NME would fold. Lots of neon and Kanye West slatted glasses.

Charles and Diana were not yet engaged.
Blondie, Hot Chocolate, Madness and The Jam were in the charts, but then so was St Winifred's School Choir.
Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.
Moscow Olympic Games - we did quite well.
Iranian Embassy siege in London.
CND rallies at Greenham Common.
John Lennon shot.

Quite eventful, really.

1978

no ATMs, when the banks were closed, I’d buy something I couldn’t afford to keep from M&S and return it for cash. The feeling that they might not refund me ….

It was 1995. Blur and Oasis were battling it out and for the first time in my life it felt cool to be from Manchester. I was heading off to Uni and my family were just coming out of getting shafted by Thatcher.

Even though my parents weren't, most of my friends were middle-class thanks to the assisted places scheme. They were also mostly white. I think I had 2 friends who weren't. I had no friends who were gay thanks to Section 28 doing it's worst

I think I felt pretty optimistic. I had got a grant and there was no student loan. I worked at M&S part time and did more hours in the holidays. I didn't sign on when I was at Uni but I think I did after my finals as there was a gap between them Master's. The only debt I graduated with was my overdraft.

Laddette culture was a bit of thing, but not really in the groups I hung out with although there were some I'll considered encounters which would be regarded as more problematic nowadays. Feminism was barely mentioned but we all felt we could do anything.
I marched and protested, against tuition fees, the second runway at Manchester Airport, roads being built, trees being felled. I went to raves and free parties and made friends wherever I went. I wasn't confident, or I didn't think I was, but I was content. I assumed that my life would be better than that of my parents because I'd 'made it' by going to HE.

None of this is recorded as I didn't have a mobile. It's only now I realise how lucky I was.

Early noughties. No SM, only brick phones. Bliss.

Pre-crash, lots of jobs, could afford to live a little; happy days.

Here's some dial up nostalgia: beedi-beeedi-boop-beep-ccrrrrrrssssshhhhkkkk-dang-dang-dang

(iykyk)

1. I came of age on the day the law changed, lowering the age of majority to 18 from 21.
2. The Conservatives, under Heath, won the general election.
3. The Beatles split up.
4. Apollo 13 space mission.

Early 1980s - Maggie T, the miners strike. I was a student in London. AIDs and terrifying TV ads with tomb stones. Fewer people went to uni then, we literally fought for a place, then I found myself penniless & living alone in a bedsit, no support, no company.
Casual everyday sexism. Grooming gangs targeting us even then. It has been going on in London for 40 years - still no-one is doing anything about it..
Good music though - Kirsty Maccoll, Marilion, Eurythmics, Phil Collins, the Jam.

Thatcher was still PM, Reagan was still POTUS, Madonna was Number one and Israelis & Arabs are killing each other in the name of religion. Some things never change.

Ireland, 1982. No divorce, no abortion, no contraception (unless you were married!). Homosexuality illegal. Obviously no mobile phones etc. Poor country. But I really enjoyed my life, parties, pubs, music, protest marches, etc. Just being young I guess.

1978 for me. We had come through strikes, power cuts and hardship in my teen years but community still felt close and supportive of each other. I think things seemed generally more optimistic than now.
I was about to go off to university which was very exciting.

1996 - my world was smaller and I’d suffered the recent loss of a parent but I felt a lot more hopeful that I do now. We found out about Princess Di after turning on the radio & finding all programming suspended - no mobile phones so no instant news… I can’t remember much else topical news wise, I was obv a typically self obsessed teen😬🙈

You and I must be virtually the same age.

I vividly remember turning 18 and a couple of weeks later voting in the Local Government election as one of the first 18 year olds allowed to do so. I walked my Nana round to the polling station - she was over 80 and frail- and she kept asking me " are you sure you are allowed to vote?". And the polling clerk - the local Librarian who had known me since I was a child - looked equally dubious!

1997. New Labour, Britpop, Spice Girls, Alcopops, Vodka and redbull, Titanic, Princess Diana, Nokia phones, texting, dial up internet.

1978 for me. A very orderly, white, comfortable world was mine, in our quiet, church-going suburb. The chaos of a bigger world was encroaching, though, as I prepared to leave my northern city for university: Rock Against Racism, Socialist Worker sold in the city centre, walking home alone from parties in the early hours with the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper at my back, the dinner table conversations at the houses of university and medical families quite different to my small business origins, thrown-together punk-inspired outfits made from binliners, sexual encounters constrained by the terror of pregnancy, the promise held out in Guardian Women and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch that our lives could be so different to those our mothers.

Big hair and big shoulder pads.

But (ordinary) people didn't have phones or the internet.

Great music.

We’re the same age….

I would add:

hardly anyone went to uni (3%?) but it was free
racism and riots
unemployment but a bit easier to work your way up the ladder without qualifications once you did get a job. I’m still in touch with a lot of people from that time and the guys often went on to start very successful businesses after apprenticeships
less pressure on girls regarding appearance and weight - clothing was less sexualised, my group of friends all wore jeans and sweatshirts.
much more independent from parents than my kids were at eighteen
Politically interesting but depressing times
much more division between people of different backgrounds/classes. I was privately (and unhappily) educated through the assisted places scheme but the fee paying girls ignored us!
it was quite depressing, the country felt very grey and troubled and didn’t really come back to life until around 1982

It was a year earlier for me. I agree about the awful sexism and sadly add open and often violent racism and homophobia. The disabled were rarely seen and definitely not heard.

The threat of nuclear war, plus IRA activity hung over everyone.

It was the year 2000. Millennium celebrations, fears over the millennium bug, the internet started becoming a thing (spent lots of my life on MSN messenger talking to my friends), I started university shortly after my 18th birthday and drank lots of alcopops, wore hipster flares and showed my thong.

1999. Everyone was worried about the Millennium bug. Peace in Northern Ireland was still quite new, and everyone was optimistic. Tony Blair was still popular, and the backstreet boys were everywhere.

Another thought, the Yorkshire Ripper and the IRA.

Why M&S? I did that as well but can't remember why specifically there. It was the only shop we used.

It was 1982, we'd been drinking at our local for two years. Jeans were rigid denim we didnt know much outside our social circle

Little did I know I was about to be one of the last cohorts to start my degree without tuition fees.

It was the last gasp of the Major Tory government. Britain was nonetheless starting to enjoy a period of being cool and Britpop was everywhere, as was good dance music. Mega clubs were in the ascendant and music magazines and papers like NME, Melody Maker, Music and Mixmag were big sellers (with free CDs or tapes quite often).

People were starting to get email addresses and use Internet forums (I was one of them, in fact had been for 3 years because my dad was quite 'early adopter' about this stuff), but it wasn't a mainstream activity. Online dating was seen as dodgy and for losers. Mobile phones were available but not widely used yet.

it was 1991. The Gulf War had just ended, John Major was prime minister and we were in recession. The One and Only by Chesney Hawkes was number 1. I’d arrange to meet my mates at 8, but no
phones so if I or they were late, tough!