Did children in the 50s and 60s have more freedom?

[Hildegard25]

Hello everyone, this is my first post so I hope I've got things right.

I just wanted to compare my childhood to what you all might be experiencing today with your children, or indeed with your own childhood if you grew up in a different era to mine.

Or maybe your view of the 50's and 60's if you grew up then, concurs with mine, or not.

Us children in the 50's and '60s roamed freely — riding bikes across town, playing in parks, and staying out well past dark without parents tracking our every move.

There were no cell phones to check in with, and intense parenting had not been invented yet. We were expected to figure things out on our own.

That sense of community trust and outdoor freedom shaped our entire generation, or at least it did mine.

Many of us who grew up in the 50's and 60's describe those unstructured hours outside as the best part of our childhood.

Is that something today's kids rarely experience in quite the same way, or am I being nostalgic over my seemingly idyll childhood?.

50s and 60s typically no. My DM still had to adhere to a curfew of 10pm the night before her wedding. You did what you parents wanted you to do exactly until you married - many would have married out of necessity. No options for higher or further education if you were working class. Being gay was not accepted.
80s and 90s were brilliant. No photo records of our discretions, drugs weren't a particularly issue yet, so the junkies were few and far between and our drinks weren't expected to be spiked. Higher and further education was still a bit sketchy for normal working class kids, but more accessible. Being gay was still an issue.

This, while obviously not every child did as is demonstrated by some of the answers already but surely everyone knows that in general we lived a much less restricted life than most children do nowadays

I grew up in the 70s and tried to allow my own children the same freedoms as far as possible. It was noticeable and commented upon during their childhoods how they were more independent and self sufficient than their peers. Obviously that could have been coincidence but I don't think it was.

I despair for some children and young people today, they have so little resilience and snowflake tendancies

Even in the 90s I had a lot more freedom than middle class children do today. I'd say working class children round my way now (fairly low income area) have a bit less freedom but they still play out, which seems to be a good thing. It's also generally safer now from what I can see. From around the age of 10 or so we could roam within certain boundaries and had to go back home when the streetlights came on.

We learned a lot but were also exposed to some horrible things. There was a local flasher, we came across several heroin needles, a lot of fights and bullying, men who sat in cars waiting to pick up groom the older girls etc., one of the toddlers we 'babysat' fell in the road and nearly got run over, there was a drug addict house with adult physical fights in the front garden, I think I even witnessed an abduction once. On balance we usually felt safe as we'd go around in small groups (never alone) and if we flagged a problem an adult or vigilante group of adults would sort it out quickly. But it was a rough area and street smarts were essential.

Also don’t forget that in the fifties and sixties the school leaving age was 14, then 15, and the majority of kids were expected to leave school and get a job. Unless the child had private education or passed their 11+ and their parents agreed and supported them to Grammar School, then working a 44-48 hour week was the usual. And many of the young people who were in work would be expected to pay a large percentage of their wage to their parents for board and lodging.

Saturday morning matinee at the cinema. Watching cowboy films or Lassie films. Went on the bus.

Mmm
I had a 70s childhood. By the end of Primary , one child in my year ( of 50) had died playing "chicken" on the main road. Another seriously injured falling from scaffolding on a building site.

That’s not really true- grammar schools had working class children in them who stayed for sixth form. My parents couldn’t have been more working class ( fathers were a miner and a tenant farmer) and they met at uni in 1966 having gone to their local grammar schools. And it was all free- grants to live on and no tuition fees. It wasn’t as common as now, but also your degree actually gave you social mobility so swings and roundabouts I guess.

Also there weee a lot more jobs you could do without having a degree- teaching and nursing and going into the city.

Late 70's-80's for me. Our childhood was amazing, we could basically do/go wherever we wanted.
So lucky
Doon the Glen with pieces n jam and bottles of diluting orange, never-ending days.
We really did have it made then 😊

Yes deaths from childhood accidents were not uncommon, one boy in my class died from messing about on the railway. Too much freedom and very hands off/ laid back parenting didn't always work out so well.

This sounds like my childhood. I was born in '74 tho 😅

Born 1959. Didn't roam the fields and hills as I was in MC suburbia. Childhood (from 8) with 3 younger siblings in house with big garden. (Plus local kids). We:

• had a (well built, bungalow height) Wendy house with a tree alongside which we climbed up and played on the pitched roof. No parental involvement.

• garage with similar arrangement. Why not?
• cherry tree with a tree house platform from which we played assault/defend. Cowboys and Indians, mostly. We made bows, then arrows from dried stems of goldenrod. No eye injuries I can recall.
• I hit my brother over the head once with a litre (glass) bottle of coca cola. Why not?
• Took the bus back from senior school and we'd get off early and spend the tiny saving on a few Fruit Salad and Blackjack chewy sweets.
• Yes to a PP memory of Saturday morning cinema! Kids on the balcony chucking down stuff on the kids below. Kids up on stage lying that it was their birthday for some reward. The hysterical exodus when the National Anthem started.
• Some kids from another school tried to set fire to my hair on the bus to senior school….

Happy days. Great thread.

I don't think things really changed that much until maybe the mid to late 90's when home technology became a thing. After that it escalated with kids' bedrooms becoming places where they basically lived almost separately from the family, rather than where they just slept.

My id forgotten that playing at running a post office etc.
Ne Scotland it was called"playing shoppies"
Small concrete wall the wide blocks on top was the counter,empty boxes ,packets were you're stock.
The 70s wasn't all sweetness and light growing up.A lot of domestic violence etc but as above it had its moments of fun out of nothing.

Yeah, unsure of precisely where/when things got more insular for our kids. It's rather sad though, isn't it?
I'm trying to give my 8yr old a bit more freedom but it's hard when her peers dps are fearful. I'm worried that I'm mb perceived as negligent, rather than trying to teach resillience/independance to her.
Minefield 😂

Yes a lot of freedom to roam 70s kid.had to tell roughly where you'd be..more often that not some where completely different and probably shouldn't be..

Those things still happen now, I don't think anyone is suggesting that accidents have gone away are they?

I'm speaking from my experience, yours is different, which I respect, but that does not mean mine is untrue.

It must be so difficult these days. I guess you can't encourage your child to go and knock on friends' doors, or play in the street if nobody else is doing it! I don't think there's any way to turn the clock back unfortunately. The genie is out of the bottle.

So very different from now. I know there are children in my street but never see them. I guess they are sitting in front of a screen? No wonder there's so much child obesity.
Born '46, so nothing in the shops much. Certainly no sweets. No TV. One present at Christmas. Very little in the way of toys, clothes.

Re poverty
-My cousin taught uncertificated for 1 year in Salford 1957. Half a class was the rule. She taught 90 - they just couldn't get teachers! (Pre war teachers were sacked if they married. Hence 'Miss'.) No one ever passed the 11+
-In 1975 the Deputy Head decided to check on children who were absent from school, eg girl couldn't go to school because the only clothes she had were not dry! There was no furniture in the room, only a couple of boxes!
-My uncle shown me a picture of his class (NE). Half the class had no shoes.

Re freedom 1950s
Friends walked to school 2 miles and back from 7 on their own. (The thought that no one under 16 can be trusted now to pick up a child from school just seems amazing!)
The rule was 'I'm going out now ' shouted to your mother as you closed the door. She would reply 'Don't be late for dinner at 1! She would have no idea what we would be doing eg running along the top of the wall on the top of the train embankment, rowing on the park lake, going down to the river, playing on the bomb sites etc. She never asked either! At 8 I would do the shopping, check the change etc.
My sister (7) and I (5) would take the bus to see relatives. My friend ( 11) cycled down to the station, caught a train, then a bus to get to school (in all weathers Derbyshire!) My friend 9, would take her 2 siblings 7 and 5 on the bus to the centre of Manchester to meet her Mum who finished work at 1pm.
There was only 1 car on our road ( 1957 fairly affluent South Manchester).

Judging by our local facebook page, a whole lot of kids still doing that today. Kicking in people’s doors at 10pm, nicking stuff, setting fire to things, etc.

That said, my childhood was like what you describe in the 80s and I’d say my dc’s childhood has been similar ish. One challenge being that we live rurally so friends are a 5+ minute walk across fields or a 20 minute walk into the village. But mine have been roaming to friends houses and riding bikes from about 4. We have a WhatsApp group so we can track down what field they’re in. They build dens and ride bikes and swim in the river or a neighbour’s pond. We do generally know where they are and they don’t get up to anything bad. They do get sent back when requested for meals.

My brother had a birthday every other month at the ABC Minors.

Fab! What did he (they) get? Mine was a Regal cinema....

I wasn't allowed free roaming in the 90s until I was secondary age, except when we were on holiday abroad, then me and my brother were allowed to explore freely. Which makes me think the only reason we weren't allowed at home was because my mum feared someone calling SS if we did!

Now I live in Finland and my children, born in the 2010s, are able to roam freely from 6/7 years old. Dark is not a limit to this (as that would be an unworkable limit in Finland in winter - if they couldn't go out in the dark they'd not be able to get to school!). They do have phones/watch phones though so I am able to be in contact with them but I try not to track them, I only check if they're not back when expected. This is normal for childhood here, which can be difficult for newcomers to adjust to. I overheard at parents evening two immigrant parents expressing concern to the teacher that their 8 year old has to be home alone in the morning and leave for school by himself because of their work schedules, and the teacher patiently explained that this is normal and expected of children this age here, that 8 year olds can cope with this just fine.

I was out and about locally with friends from age 7+ and all over town from 9+. But I also spent a lot of time playing at home on my own. I was always home for meals and rarely out in the evenings, definitely I was always home well before dark as a preteen, my parents would not have liked me out alone in the dark. And we did a lot as a family together, regular walks Sunday afternoons, often went shopping to a city nearby as a family on Saturdays, played board games and cards and watched the tv together in the evenings. My dad would play catch and ball games in the yard. Mum and I went to the local library every Friday. I had to help a bit, shopping and washing up and cleaning the car as I got older. All in all I had a great childhood, with a great deal more freedom than kids today, though a great deal less belongings and clothes and treats than nowadays too. And the food was so basic and boring in comparison!

All my female friends and I were out all day riding bikes, swimming in reservoirs 😱, exploring abandoned buildings and many other adventures. We had a brilliant childhood. 1960s and 70s.