AIBU to detest this obsession with 'The Way We Were'...?

[YokoUhOh]

NB Not the Barbara Streisand song

Having just read YET ANOTHER of those Facebook 'you survived being neglected as a child, no-one died, you fell out of trees and played outside, the Elf and Safety Brigade are crackers' style posts, just wanted to check I'm not going mad. LOADS of children died in the 30s/40s/50s and beyond due to 'benign neglect'. We were the lucky ones!

My DF nearly died after setting fire to a shed; DH's great uncle got knocked down by a car, got loads more examples just from my extended family. Why do we also have to hear about weird ideas about child-rearing: My MIL showed me a photo at Christmas of tiny 2 month old DH having 'a crust with marmite' shoved down his gullet in 1972 - she then had the gall to cats bum mouth at me breast-feeding 13mo DS...

Won't anyone save us from The Good Old Days Brigade? Or AIBU?

I don't know, I think there must be a middle
Ground somewhere between we played football with asbestos and my children can't play football in the garden in case next door watch them.

YANBU

That attitude drives me nuts. As if we shouldn't change ideas/policies/attitudes in the face of new evidence. Worryingly it seems to be prevalent in much of government policy.

Asbestos football

YANBU. Also, dying isn't the only thing. My great aunt was severely brain damaged- she fell out of a climbing frame at school. Children DID die, or get injured. Many Victorians survived...I'm not copying what they did!

The other thing is that I am seeing these posts from people who were born in the 80s! I guess we all look back with rosé coloured glasses. I was born in the 1960s and had my childhood in the 70s. To me those who had their childhood in the 90s had a really restricted one!

But why do people forget? We left the house in the morning and came home at tea time, true. But all the parents were under so much stress. Dads out of work or doing god awful jobs at long hours and mums working all hours to make ends meet. We were out all day on a Saturday, often because there was no one at home as they were at work and nearly all the girls aged 10 and older had young siblings, some babies, to look after. We were out all day Sunday because it was the only day out parents had to sleep.

Sure we had a lot of independence but we also had next to no family time.

And children still got hurt. One of Mary Bell's vict

YABU

I think kids today are having their childhoods compromised because of an disproportionate fear of what might happen. Of course there are risks, but not enough to take away the freedoms that gave me such wonderful memories and skills. Such a shame.

People find it hard to look outside their own experiences. My mil has been known to say that car seats are unnecessary as none of her children died in a car accident!

However, I do think it is a shame that some parents now don't have the confidence to make choices about danger for their children, with regards to climbing trees etc, things that are relatively low risk and can bring so much joy, but someone will have died falling out of a tree once.

None of us know how tolerant of new ideas we will be in the future. I really hope that I will never say 'that's not how we did it in my day' but weaning, sleeping, everything surrounding the rearing of children changes so much that it is almost unrecongnisable.

Also, I think it is sometimes defensive, in that by not accepting that the old way was the right way, you are criticising their parenting.

So YANBU in the longest, most rambling way possible. But there is a balance to be struck.

Good point about looking after younger siblings. My DF's family raised each other; 6mo Auntie got taken out in the pram by siblings all day long

victim's was a five year old boy who got up, got his younger sister her morning bottle in her cot as was his job so his parents could have a sleep in, then when his mum woke up cheerily waved her goodbye and went out to play on his own as he always did, and was what all kids did.

I'm not saying we should put kids under lock and key as we are seemingly forced to nowadays. Just that it wasn't all fabulous and idyllic in the past.

The 'it never did us any harm' brigade drive me up the wall too. You hear it less these days about smoking (both in general and in pregnancy) because you'd have to be a real hard core idiot to think/say that now. But i can remember hearing it said plenty about smoking when i was in my teens.

Now we have 'it never did us any harm' about giving baby rice in bottles at weeks old, weaning early, 2nd hand smoke inhalation and other stuff.

Why do people cling to outdated wisdom when it comes to health?

Kids still have tragic accidents today though, bad stuff hasn't stopped happening because of more "hands on" parenting. There have been plenty of deaths and serious injuries reported in the press as a result of playground games or messing about in the last year or so. I'm thinking specifically of that little girl who died after her liver was perforated during a game of British Bulldog at school.

Perhaps because stories like these are publicised more people are becoming increasingly cautious. There's a balance to be struck between benign neglect and hovering IMHO.

I think Celia is right about implicit criticism of doing things in a new-fangled way: as if doing something based on evidence is an insult to the traditional way. Plus MIL takes everything personally :)

craic I wonder if there are statistics on death in childhood accidents over the years?

children still have accidents nowadays though yes some peoples childhoods were bleak and miserable but tbh most people just got on with being children I think that is what the way we were posts are about,

when i was at school a boy was knocked over going to school it was a tragic accident his mum was with him this was 30 odd yrs ago recently a girl was knocked over near where i live she was fine but she was on her own things happen

Totally with you on this, OP. I can't stand it. Particularly CeliaLytton's excellent example of "my children never wore seat belts and they were fine". Yes, of course we can also fall into the trap of overprotecting.
But I think that this idea that our children will somehow be hobbled by the way we've overprotected them is rubbish. I believe children grow up adapted to the general environment that prevailed at the time, and they'll just find their own way through and develop their own survival mechanisms, same as we did.

There does have to be compromise, yes children died and where injured, but now we will have a generation where life expectancy is shorter than the previous. There was child poverty but there still is. My children do not have the freedom I did, I probably had to much and them not enough.

NynaevesSister I was also born in the 1960s and I don't recognise the life you've posted. My dad left the house at 8.45 on his bicycle and was home for lunch at 12.20, and home for tea at 5.20. My mum didn't work. There was no stress that I was aware of.

We spent Saturday mornings at Picture Club while the parents went grocery shopping and Sunday mornings at Sunday School. we spent the holidays outdoors. Our parents weren't expected to entertain us. At all.

We got 3 weeks a year camping (enforced family time ) and spent all the major holidays with doting grandparents.

I wish I could have recreated a similar upbringing for my kids but DH works all the hours god sends, I work ft (through necessity) and children can no longer go off alone.

But having said that, yes children did get hurt. It just seems to have swung too far the other way.

I was born in the 50s. I had a brilliant childhood.
Out playing all day, going everywhere I was told not to go!
I walked on my own to school from age 6 (800 yards), then changed school when I was eight.
I went to the new school three miles away on a normal bus on my own.
My older siblings went far further afield on their bikes, though did often come home wet and muddy from the river estuary 10 miles away.

Now children reach 11 years old and are often incapable of crossing a road as they have never been allowed out on their own.

You do all know that the weaning guidelines and babies sleeping on their backs will all change within a few years.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

I always wonder if the people who spout this crap also agree with no seatbelts, no car seats and drink driving. All things that were acceptable and from which people did die.

There were fewer cars on the road so less accidents because of that. You only have to see film of the first ever motorways to be astonished by how few cars used them - you wonder why they needed to build them.

I have a photo of myself and a friend standing outside my Mum's house - hardly a parked car in sight. Nowadays that same street will be choked with cars. A friend still got knocked down there when I was little though...

A friend and I had an encounter with a dodgy "Parkie" when we were about 9. Another friend met a flasher in the park when we were about 10, although I don't think he flashed at her, she thought he was "doing something funny" and was telling me about it when a flustered woman dashed over and asked if he had done anything to her, so something had obviously happened to her. These were all in the "good old days" and contribute highly to me not wanting my DCs out playing in the park on their own - I actually think it is probably safer nowadays!

I'm not sure if there would be data specifically for deaths resulting from accidents rather than just a general figure, especially pre-1950. Of course childhood mortality was higher then, due in part to poorer healthcare provision, children in the workplace (my own grandfather left school at 13 to work in a biscuit factory fgs), etc. Both factors don't really come into play these days.

IRT the stats on weaning, car safety, smoking, cot deaths etc, we know that there are precautions that reduce risk. There have been studies which prove the current advice is the way to go. What I don't personally like is the attitude by some parents in respect of perceived risk, whether it's risk of injury in the playground, abduction or anything else. We've all seen the threads on MN along the lines of "should I let my 14 year old into the town on the bus on her own". At the same time you're reducing the "risk" of your child getting lost or picked up by a stranger in a white van, you're limiting their chances of being able to cope with a curveball situation where they have to think for themselves.

Basically I agree with you, up to a point. My bum is sore from sitting on the fence.

I like health and safety. When I was growing up my friend trapped her leg in the rusty metal rocking horse in the playground - do you remember those ones where about six of you sat one behind the other?

The wound was terrible. Another friend ripped his upper lip clean through right up to his nose on the chains that held the swings.

He was playing that game where you shuffle round and round tightening the chains to the top and then take your feet off the ground and spin round madly.

Except he lay his face on the chains as he lifted his feet. His lip was flapping open like curtains.

Another boy fractured his skull falling from the climbing frame onto the asphalt.

I thought of him when I read a predictable Littledick column complaining about some namby-pamby headmistress who'd insisted on rubberised flooring and made a rule that the bigger kids weren't allowed to join the infants at playtime because the games were bit too boisterous.

I agree you should allow people to take risks. Just that you should try and make it as safe as possible.

I was listening to the press conference about Michael Schumacher who sounds like he's in a bad way even though he was wearing a crash hat and is apparently a good ski-er.

What really annoyed me were the dafties asking: 'Do you think he'll be able to get over this because he's a terrific competitor and therefore a fighter?'

I really don't know how the doctor refrained from saying: 'He's got a catastrophic brain injury, you twat.'

tallulah, why can 'children can no longer go off alone'?

(I am generally a big fan of H&S, but I think the issues are really (1) that people don't understand risk (statistics), and (2) the media are concerned with sales/views rather than public safety).