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?

sorry, * why is it that 'children can no longer go off alone'?

Changes in medicine would cut the number of childhood deaths - immunisation not just against things like measles but tetanus and antibiotics.

Cars I would have thought were the biggest change. Growing up in London commuter belt, there were only 3 cars in our road in the 1960's. Now every house in that road has 2 if not 3 cars.

Similarly, I was of the able to walk to school aged 5 brigade too - across main roads BUT there were so few cars. I was able to be out on my bike all day, coming home for a meal, this was WITHOUT mobile phones. This was also just after the Moors Murders (although we lived in London) and local parents were not neurotic about serial killers.

You have the whole change in community. When I was growing up, mums didn't work, everyone did know everyone else, lots of us didn't have televisions until the mid 70's - old Mr So-and-So would be out front after work weeding his petunias or doing some little piece of DIY - we were watched by the community and looked after. We wouldn't have dared cheek any one or we would have rightly got a thick ear from the neighbour concerned.

Broad statistics don't change - 7 or 8 children are abducted and killed every year by a stranger. But 12 times that amount 80ish are abducted by someone they know (usually a step parent) and murdered. So no matter what laws change, education put in place the fact remains danger is inside the home not outside it. But contextually, deaths by vehicle, either as a passenger or pedestrian will have gone through the roof because there are more cars and more children being transported in them.

Changes in medicine would cut the number of childhood deaths - immunisation not just against things like measles but tetanus and antibiotics.

That reminds me of a thread on here where someone said: 'We never had all this food allergy stuff and nonsense when I were a nipper.'

And someone else replied: 'Yes, that's because children died.'

Taking it (much much!) further back- I was saying to my Dad the other day how I couldn't eat any mould ripened cheese or runny yolked eggs over Christmas now I'm pregnant. He chuckled and said "If only all those cave people all those years ago had known what they should have been doing..." So I said "Well what do you think the infant mortality rate was back in those 'cave people' times!?" He stopped and considered it and said "Hmm well actually it was probably high like 80% or more" and I was like "Exactly!"

My pet hate is my parents disdain for any kind of therapy or counselling in the aftermath of a tragedy. Their stock refrain is 'they didn't have namby pamby councillors for those who fought in the second world war, everyone just got on with their lives.'

Yes, but how many of them drunk themselves to early graves, took their eage out on wi es or kids or merely suffered mental anguish for years afterwards? We can never know.

Every era brings a different danger.

Ironically, I know a lot of parents who won't allow their kids to play in the street in case they happen upon a pedophile, so they keep them indoors playing on their phones, laptops and tablets.

But many of them have no idea about Facebook privacy settings, how Twitter and Instagram works or who their kids are 'happening upon' online.

Add to that the amount of parents who think checking their children's phones, is 'prying' and the whole thing is just weird.

limited and junior - you have unwittingly opened a debate on darwinism and evolution. Survival of the best fitted. Medical advances have stopped that.

I'm going to try and hunt down a piece I was reading on humankin not having made any evolutionary strides in the past 150 years.

We got away with all sorts of things as children, DD2 has managed to break her arm twice. (Tree and trampoline). They have had one horrible accident at school. We never seriously hurt anyone.

This sort of childhood stuff is largely down to luck.

What has changed for the better, and rightly so, is car and household safety. The death and injury rates on the roads with today's traffic would be horrific if we still had DCs in the back with the luggage.

And sadly, this means I'm pretty blasé about trees, trampolines, climbing frames, etc., but I don't encourage my DDs to cycle. I spent my life on my bike, but I'm secretly quite happy if DDs stay in the garage. Our lanes are narrow, the local tractors huge and the delivery vans and cars are always in a hurry.

BohemianGirl- send me the link, sounds interesting

I dunno. You can't wrap them in cotton wool. They have to learn how to live in the world and that sometimes means taking risks. I think I had a much more fun childhood than most kids do today. Vaccinations = good. Better awareness of general safety issues = good. Attempt to avoid ALL potential risks/litigious society = bad.

badtime, I think the biggest change is traffic. I walked to school on my own from 6 and also went to the local shops for my mum at 6. My DD is 6 and isn't even allowed outside on her own because she might get run over :(

Bohemiangirl I'd also forgotten about the community. If I was naughty (Which was rare) my mum would have been told about it before I even got home. There were eyes and ears everywhere. I'm sure that did make communities safer. Plus of course "other people" felt entitled to tell off naughty children, and when it was reported to the parents the reportees didn't get an earful of abuse.

It's true about the traffic. DH and i were chatting yesterday about how far we would both ride on our bikes aged 9 up to 13 or 14. Bloody miles! Going to parks and petting zoo's etc. And mostly all in the road. This was in West London, Heathrow area, late 70's up to mid 80's.

We both got sent on cycling proficiency lessons and off we went. (helmetless!)

No way i'd cycle on those same roads these days, even as an adult, let alone as a kid.

I don't deny anything anyone's written, it's all pretty sensible. I just feel that to bang on about idyllic childhoods whilst saying 'did us no harm' is really conceited. A great many children didn't survive due not to bad luck or wrong place, wrong time but because of parental/societal ignorance. There's also an underlying, menacing Daily Fail 'how dare the H&S police stop children drowning in reservoirs?' flavour to these 'lighthearted' Facebook posts.

As a child growing up in a small village in the 80's, I was always aware that other adults could tell me off and most of them knew me and my friends. Sounds cliche but I did know all my neighbours. I remember the elderly couple who owned the post office tucking notes into my pocket to tell my parents that I had been helpful that morning when I trotted home for lunch.

There was an older single man who used to give all the kids lemonade and we would help him with his chickens. I doubt that would happen now.

Know I have no idea what the children over the road are called and haven't spoken to many of my neighbours beside a polite hello. I still live in the same village but it is much bigger now.

I couldn't imagine telling someone's child off or even starting a conversation with them as they played outside. Everyone keeps to themselves now.

I would be embarrassed to post one of these cringy platitudes on FB. It's one of the many reasons I'm not on FB anymore.

come join us over in the SW - we know all our neighbours, talk to all the kids - whoever is home and not busy, does hot chocolate on cold days for all of those playing out in the cul-de-sac - sometimes adults join in in the street cricket too.... we all tell off whoever needs telling off - the kids range from littlest being pushed round in the pram by his "big" 6 year old sister to mine who are 11 and 13..

not everything HAS changed everywhere....

My favourite one of these involved 'we had lead paint on our cots!'. Lead paint flaking and being ingested carries serious long term health risks! I don't mind a bit of nostalgia but come on. Heavy metal poisoning is a bad thing.

It also gets up my nose when people younger than me post ones with things like 'and not a TV or computer game in sight!'. You were born in 1992!

Yes- things were potentially bad back then. But they were also so green. I wonder how many children these days will ever experience going out of a summer's dawn and seeing a newly-woven spider web glinting in the early sunlight?

My friend is 29. She's a Portsmouth fan so loved Harry Redknapp, or did before he left them .

She was asking what was up with his face.

I said he'd gone through a windscreen. She'd never seen it but I can remember lots of people having that distinctive scarring and rearranged features before compulsory seatbelts and safety glass.

That's if they survived. My sister's friend went through a windscreen once. He didn't learn his lesson about seatbelts and drinking and driving and didn't survive the second accident.

I remember them bringing in the seatbelt law and breathing a sigh of relief because I could say to my boyfriend: 'Of course I think you're an excellent driver. It's just that I'd hate for you to get fined for me breaking the law. and you're actually quite shit at driving though at least you don't drink and drive.'

I read that more children these days need glasses, because they don't spend enough time outdoors in normal light. I think the reduction in children playing outdoors is the biggest health and safety issue of our time. And I do wonder how all those over protected children will function as much older adults when they really are on their own.

But YANBU UP.

There's a whole macho thing about safety rules that driving brings into focus.

I've heard the joke that it's more acceptable to criticise a man's technique in bed than behind the wheel.

Boris Johnson droned on about bouncing around in the back of a car as a child and how it never did him any harm and I thought so did I, but though I don't blame my parents, it wasn't a good idea and if they'd have been able to get car seats and told how good they were they'd have bought them.

I had a boyfriend who had a beautiful TR4 that was too old for seat belts. I fancied him madly and his car. But it's not good, is it?

I also dimly remember them bringing in compulsory helmets for motorcyclists and the furore over it.

I'm of the generation where drinking and driving became unacceptable. People slightly older than me thought it was okay but I can remember my friends and I thinking it was shameful - plus humiliating and expensive to be caught.

I don't know whether that's changed for younger people especially given that people seem to do more drugs than when I was a girl

What I'm trying to say is that I do take risks, some of which other people might think are mad, I have a sunbed habit. What can I say, I came of age in the '80s but most health and safety rules haven't curtailed my freedom overmuch.

I'm probably older than most of you. And I think it's close to a miracle that I've survived this far. I can think of maybe 6 occasions when I could have died badly.

But what do I regret? I regret the green pastures, the many animals and insects that were around - even playing with seed pods which kids now won't likely see because they'll be 'herbicided'.

I'll be glad to go.

grennie my eyesight rapidly deteriorated when we switched from typewriters to computer screens in the mid-Eighties. Six months and I needed glasses for occasional use. Now I need them all the time.

DH has only recently needed glasses for short sight aged 53. I guess it's because his job involves regularly switching his gaze from long to short though he regularly does very close work with embroidery.

I never saw my parents without spectacles. I saw pictures of them when they were both really young recently and to me, that's weird.

My mother blamed it on WWII blackouts. Maybe she was right, though I don't think there were quite a lot of bright lights where my father was .

I do wonder how the Armed Forces cope with loads of 20-somethings who need to soak their contact lenses, but I imagine they do.

cozietoesie let's have a pact not to reveal our ages

However I used to love staring out of my primary school window at the goldfinches grabbing thistledown for their nests. This wasn't a rural idyll. It was suburban Essex.

I haven't seen a goldfinch in years.

However all may not be lost. I live in Westminster and was chatting to a neighbour up the road because she was trimming the ivy on her wall and she was a bit small and in danger of falling off her ladder.

Suddenly I noticed that there were loads of birds in her garden. Not goldfinches, sadly, but tits mostly, and a robin, and they were almost tame. She said: 'I like the birds and they like me.'

We have loads of crows, magpies and the occasional jay round here. Raptors, obviously. But I quite like them. Starlings have gone down, blackbirds are holding up and sparrows seem to be making a comeback. My neighbour is doing her bit for the little ones.

Gah.
It pisses me off no end when people bleat in about "the good old days"
Programmes like "heartbeat" and others paint it as if it were a garden if Eden from which we are all exiled.
The reality, of course, is that children died from infections we can now vaccinate against.
The disabled were tarted appallingly, as were women. Divorce? Don't think so! And you would probably lose your kids too.
The present isn't perfect, by any means, but it's no worse than the past IMO.
I am quite glad my dc won't have the freedom I had...I didn't always use it wisely :)