Missing the 70s, 80s and 90s and wondering if good times ever return

[Bottleneckturning]

I desperately miss the 70s/80s/90s.... my sibling was still alive, life was SO much easier, my parents were younger and had their whole lives ahead of them rather than now where they are coming to the later of their lives, all the family for Christmas etc - there were lots of us cousins all the same age - NYE with family, us cousins all playing and getting to stay up late. Mum making dinner .. Friday was fish and chips, Saturday was fry up, Sunday was roast. I had a wonderful childhood.

FF to now .. debt, responsibilities, constant demands & pressures from everyone (friends/DC/work ), life is literally non stop.

If i close my eyes I can literally hear and smell the good old times again.

Are there ever any "good old times" when you get older ?

Im 51 & married for context.

Currently watching very old 'only fools and horses' and crying at the nostalgia

The 70s and 80s weren’t good times. 3 day week, constant strikes, irregular electricity, 17% interest rates and highest unemployment rate. I think you mean you miss being a child.

You could always have a fish supper on Fridays and the other meals at the weekends...

Life is as 'good' and as exciting as you make it, but I have zero truck with nostalgia.

They were good because you were young. If you were old and decrepit in 1985 you'd be harking back to 1940 and saying it was better back then. We all had our time.

However - i do think there's something to be said for the time before kids lives were swallowed up by tech. Which ever time you pick. I'd pick early naughties 😊

It’s a yearning for your youth and a lack of responsibility. It’s not the times per se. I do remember the 90s as being super optimistic but that’s not coming back. Have a comfort jacket potato and a glass of good wine, an early night and read a good book. Don’t watch the awful news or think about the budget. All this will only make you sad!

I remember the 70's / 80's fondly but the reality of it was that as a child I was shielded from the effects of the poverty we experienced and had no worries at all about how bills would be paid or whether we would have enough coal to light a fire in our freezing house. At one point my Mum had 3 jobs to keep food on the table and a car which should have been scrapped on the road.

It's a lot different going back to that era as a kid when you had no responsibilities compared with having to relive those years as a adult. Be thankful that the adults in your life helped you to make those memories and your childhood so carefree and happy.

It's hard work getting older, responsibilities increase and your support system can decrease. Care of elderly relatives is now a real concern from a lot of angles.

Losing a sibling must have been awful and I wonder if you are still grieving for them and dwelling on what they would be doing now and how your life would have been if they'd still been around.

On a lighter note, if I start thinking I'd rather be back in the 70's I'll trying turning off all the power in the house, sitting in the cold and dark all evening with just a couple of candles and make myself a pot noodle for dinner by spending an hour trying to heat water on one of those one ring gas stoves that you can take camping.

I would probably settle for going back to 2019. It wasn’t perfect but my god things are so much bleaker now.

I'm of similar age and I miss them too. Generally my life has gone downhill since the mid-90s although I do remember a brief, quite optimistic atmosphere in the UK around 2012.

I don't really care whether it's because I was young and in my prime in the 20th Century, or whether it's due to external factors, or a combination of several things. It's how I feel.

These decades clearly weren't "the good times" from a socio-economic perspective. What you're missing, OP, is being a child - ie, you had no responsibilities. You didn't have to think about money, somebody else fed you every day, and there was no pressure in life. It's the same for all children.
But remember that you also had no control and no independence back then. Now, life is what you make it - yes, there's pressure, but there's opportunity too. So take control - start with small things, and if you want fish and chips on a Friday, go and get them!

You were young with no responsibilities, life is always better when you are not the one to make decisions.

It also depends on very personal circumstances. My friendship group aged between 48 and 65 have had very varying outcomes and experiences in life.

I remember nightlights in the bathroom due to the strikes, as a kid it was just quite fun for me. Now as an adult I would worry. I remember when you couldn’t buy sugar for love nor money. The Miners strike was so far away it didn’t concern me on the South coast because I was a young teen more worried about my O levels and if David liked me. That is the blessing of youth or it was. Now they would struggle to walk about in blissful ignorance due to 24/7 news and social media. It was blissful ignorance, we were very lucky growing up then.

That’s what they have now loads of knowledge and information flying around that they can’t get away from, no wonder there are so many messed up kids.

You just miss being young!

I miss the 00s and 10s for the same reason.

Things were better back then. Proper childhoods - that cost nothing. No organised activities. No tech. Pure joy. Just don't seem to see it anymore.

No those times not coming back.

I was 9 when the 90s ended so not many memories there but I LOVED growing up in the 2000s. Great music, great fashion, a little bit of tech to make life easier but nothing that destroyed socialising or made you anxious. Blind Date, Airline, Saturday night game shows, people still have proper parties and didn’t tie themselves up in knots about their kids walking to the corner shop. It just felt fun, even for my parents. You didn’t have to ‘watch what you said’ as much (I don’t mean the racism and homophobia - glad that’s gone - but people felt less on edge looking for alternate motives, and just took what you said at face value).

Im was a child of the 70s and 80s and I don't miss those years as had a difficult childhood.

I do miss the 90s. Things were better for not being all online imo. I miss mooching round 2nd hand record shops, having a decent selection of clothes shops on the high street.

You need to start doing something fun/ out of your comfort zone be it a hobby/ holiday/ reaching out to old friends/ relatives (we only see each other at funerals so I’m making a trip up to them later in the year for tea!!) / starting a book club- life needs to be fun for you again. Also start up some of your old traditions with your dh and book a night away or something and go play a board game or game of cards with your parents or go just solely for a chat. x

I am a similar age. I grew up in a very dysfunctional family in what was your golden era. It was not good.

This age now is the most amazing phase of my life, I am so utterly happy and content. I love the family I have created for myself, I have very high quality friendships I enjoy. I have lovely hobbies and interests.

Are you not living a life that is true to yourself? Why are you not enjoying your life now? Maybe you need to make some changes so you can enjoy life now.

I was born in 1973 and have been saying for a long time just how much I miss the 70's and 80's and how things were so much better back then. I would spend my evenings watching Tik Tok clips of the 'good old days' and weeping for those times.

But then I saw a quote which read "I miss the way I viewed the world before I knew too much about it" and realise that's just it. I was young and living a great childhood shielded from all the shit that was going on and still goes on. It all feels so much worse now because all the info about the world is available to us 24/7 with a constant drip feed of doom and gloom which we just didn't have back then. It's social media which has spoiled everything for us all. I do think people were happier back then because let's face it, ignorance is often bliss.

"I miss the way I viewed the world before I knew too much about it"

That... I am not miserable now but every person I know who harks back to mythical easier past and says now is awful, just didn't see the problems back then as being so important. What has changed is perception, not the world really.

As for 70s & 80s, one mic drop for you : Constant spoken threat of nuclear annihilation.

I’m a bit older than you, and agree that you are wearing rose tinted glasses and missing being young. And the 70s were crap, I remember the three day week, power black outs and as I am from NI, the worst of the Troubles. The music in the 80s was great, but apart from that I remember people were pretty poor. I lived in London in the 90s and had a fantastic time, but that’s because I was earning lots of money, I was in my 20s and worked and played very hard!But now I’m in my 50s, change is inevitable and we are getting older and life isn’t as euphoric as back then. But it can still be fun! You won’t get anywhere by wallowing in nostalgia though, getting older isn’t for the weak.

I’m the same age as you OP and it’s nostalgia. You were young and had a protected view of the world. No adult worries. I can remember my mum crying about struggling to afford oil for heating. I can remember dad being worried about bills. I remember not being able to afford days out. Eating a lot of leftovers for dinner the next day. Dad making yoghurt as shop bought were expensive. My parents were both teachers so not in badly paid jobs.

Your age - it’s a reflective time of life

many of the things you remember with affection - fish and chips, Sunday roast, staying up late with people you like - all possible now

if life feels none stop - take some control. If you don’t want to cut down anything - that is your choice - see it as a positive thing you choose

maybes - make Sunday boring again - don’t do anything then but make family dinner. If people want lifts - they can bus or walk, if they want visits, it’s a different day. Take some space to work out what matters to you and if it’s everything that’s at least your choice.

think about the things you want to do in your life - what makes you happy now and build that in as priority. And remember those happy times most people had far less free cash than they do now ( you have less probably than in the 2010s but certainly more than the 1970s unless you had a privileged upbringing) . You like going out to dinner with friends ? It was dinner parties in the ‘70s - cheaper - and less ostentatious than today a

Yes! I miss the late 80s, 90s and naughties. I don't think it's just a longing for youth. I definitely think there was more optimism back then. And more socialising and face-to-face fun (because we didn't have tech).
I don't know if you've watched the series One Day but that made me soooo nostalgic for the 90s!

We were saying this whilst watching All Creatures the other night, despite us not being old enough to live through that period of time. We had parents/grandparents who did, and despite the "simplicity" of life, harder work, less money, they always said the sense of community etc was immeasurably better back then. It's something that we've really lost.

Back in the 70s/80s, there was always something to do, somewhere to go, whether the pub, disco, adult education classes, clubs & societies, sports, even shopping on a Saturday you'd always find friends or relatives to have a chat to, hang out with, etc. Where I lived, as a teen, I'd go out and just randomly look at the school playing fields (now fenced and locked) to see who was playing footie or just sitting and chatting, if I didn't fancy it, I'd go to the church hall where there'd usually be teens playing on the pool table or darts, or just sitting and chilling, or maybe drop in on a random school friend (many lived on our road or nearby) to listen to music or play cards etc. None of us was getting into mischief, smoking, drinking nor drug taking, we were just "hanging out" with people we knew, sometimes having a laugh, other times, just sat quietly in "companionable silence" - it was all stress free and innocent.

A lot of the rot was TV (then of course the internet) - prior to that, there was often no TV on during the day and only 3/4 channels at night, so you couldn't just "sit and vegetate" watching mindless nonsense all day.

Then successive governments imposed cost cutting which cut down youth groups, virtually eliminated adult education classes, etc., then of course, scouts and girl guide groups closing down, plus lack of funding meant some armed forces cadet groups closed down. I knew a few who were cadets in St John's Ambulance which has now also closed down in our town.

Fencing and locking school playing fields has meant kids have nowhere to go for a kickabout or to hang out with their mates. Likewise, our council now lock our closest park in the evenings, so kids can't go in their either.

But another "biggie" has to be that families don't stay together anymore. I'm not just meaning partners/spouses, but also kids go off to Uni and often never return to live/work in their home towns, especially in the run down regions, so families are fragmented often all over the UK, meaning siblings, cousins etc no longer live near each other so that's another "community" that's been lost.

I agree with everyone else.

70s wasn't great fun with 3 day weeks, rubbish not collected, rats from rubbish being piled up on the pavements, bread shortages, sugar shortages, inflations running at 70% at one point. The lovely long summers in 75 and 76 were great for kids, not so great as a parents having to queue for a standpipe in your street.

You are missing being a child, with no responsibility, rather than any decade being better than another.

Oooh I'll give that a watch - no doubt I will be in tears all the way through it ! happy tears .. I found boys & pubs at a certain young age in the 90s .. I thought the world had fallen at my feet and all I wanted was a car - literally any car -during what felt like an endless summer spent in pub gardens (and getting served - I was only 17), going to nightclubs for the first time and being driven around by the boy of my dreams ... or so I thought he was at the time. Fantastic times that will never be repeated