To think there'so something very wierd abotu the way people regard the time line of recent history....

[Hakluyt]

Not sure if the title's clear. But what I mean is that people seem to telescope time. So all older people are regarded as having the attitudes and beliefs and tastes were current in the 40s and 50s -even though somebody 70 today was born in 1945, was a young person in the 60s!

There's a thred currently about a grandmother leaving a baby to cry and people are saying things like "Oh, that generation believed it was good for their lungs". It turns out that the grandmother concerned is younger than I am (!) and when my dd was born it was all slings and attachment parenting and co sleeping........

I first to think about it when my ds's choir went to entertain people at Retirement home, and they learned songs from the First World War to sing to people who were probably mostly not even born in 1918!

It's as if history is in chunks, rather than linear.........older people come from the chunk between 1920 and 1940.........

Yes - I do wonder about that.

I think this "time lag" happens because people fix their ideas about older generations when they are fairly young and don't revisit their preconceptions as they age.

I do this to some extent. When I think of people turning 40, I think of my mother's 40th birthday, not my friends. When I think of the older generation, I think of my grandparents, but my remaining grandmother, the youngest of them all, is 90 this year and was only in her early teens when WWII broke out. My grandfathers that fought in the war are now all dead; my late paternal grandfather would have been 110 this year.

In short, my references were probably set sometime in my teens, probably around the time I was 18-ish. Old people were my grandparents (the war generation), middle-aged people were my parents, young people were my generation, babies were my little cousins.

However, I do think that one reason for the general impression that previous generations were less tolerant, open-minded etc than newer generations is that we have seen a kind of "progressive metanarrative" take hold over historical consciousness in the last sixty years. This metanarrative now infiltrates almost all social, cultural and political thinking in Britain. A perfect example of this is the choice of the M People song "Things can only get better" for the 1997 Labour GE campaign.

The problem with this metanarrative is that for it to be valid and have power, previous eras need to be perceived as worse in various social, cultural, economic and political terms. And believe me, there has been and still is an underlying drive to portray previous eras in a negative manner.

I notice it most particularly when it comes to women's issues. On both sides of the political spectrum, there is this pervasive notion that prior to about 1975, married women simply did not work and that married women once they had children were not economically active at all for the rest of their lives. There is also this vague suggestion that females, full stop, didn't really work before they were married either.

Connected to this is the idea that women married in their late teens and early twenties, that no couples cohabited, that all couples got married in a church, that illegitimate children were few and far between, that female gang violence is a modern phenomenon ... I could go on. Incidentally, there is also a belief that formula milk is a modern invention.

All of this is utter bollocks, but both the left and right perpetuate this revisionism: the left so they can convey the idea that their ideology rescued women from these confines, and the right to describe a utopia where society was prosperous and stable, and to which we should return.

One thing I think is rather fascinating to consider in light of this thread is that Jimi Hendrix would be 72 if he were still alive.

Peppermint ... I am afraid to say that quotation appears to be a twentieth century invention. It is attributed to a variety of classical authors: Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Livy, Hesiod, Peter the Hermit ... well, the first problem is that Socrates left no written work, so he is out of the running from the off.

I know many feminists in their 60's and 70's. All say that women's rights are worse now in some ways than they used to be. Yes we do have a narrative that things are getting better, but that is not always true. Usually some things get better, and some worse.

The history of Feminism is often too much the story of middle and upper class women. Working class women have always worked.

You sometimes see "twenty years ago..." referring to some archaic attitude such as homophobia. Twenty years ago was 1995! Jarvis Cocker was waving his arse at Michael Jackson on the Brits! It wasn't the dark ages.

My DMum is 60 this year - the soundtrack to my childhood was Cher, MeatLoaf and Tina Turner interspersed with Bon Jovi and Heart - I wonder if when she's older and at a pensioners tea will local school children come and do a rousing chorus of "Simply the Best".

I work with a couple of "elderly" women who were at and supported the peace camp at Green Common. It is very important not to stereotype any generation.

I wonder if when she's older and at a pensioners tea will local school children come and do a rousing chorus of "Simply the Best"

Care homes seem to perpetuate this myth. We've been looking at them lately for my parents, and they look at us as if we were Martians if we ask whether wifi is available for the residents. They really ought to regard this as being as automatic as providing TV reception.

The history of feminism in books is of middle class and upper class women. It has never been the reality. And I see the same today. It is campaigns by middle class women that get featured in the press, not the many working class feminist campaigns happening.
I spent some time reading lo or original pamphlets, minutes and articles of the suffragettes. There were lots of mill women, there was a South Asian women's suffragette branch in London, and other working class women involved. You never read about them in textbooks.
At greenham there were young women whose fathers were miners and mothers were cleaners . These were not the women the press interviewed.

Interesting point about WiFi. My Grandad just moved into a retirement community and is wary of the Internet although he does use it. Grandad-in-law is the same age and the last time he was here he asked the password for our WiFi so he didn't use all his data while playing on his phone. Their needs and interests are as different as they were when they were young men.

I find food interesting. "Old" people don't like spicy food because they didn't have it when they were younger - except that my late stepfather was one of the many that fled India for the UK in 1962. Those people increased the demand for spices and plenty of them opened restaurants. And I'm guessing that the people who were in their twenties and thirties in the early sixties were those most likely to go the new restaurants.

Oh dear I hadn't thought of this. When I am doddery and in a care home they better blimmin well not be singing Yellow Polka Dot Bikini at me. I might be ok with a bit of retro La Bamba or Rock Around the Clock because I loved rock n roll music as a kid. But dear lord in heaven if they sing Take That or Boyzone at me I will throttle them. Nirvana or Soundgarden please.

mariamin I am sorry, but what you say about textbooks and history books is simply not true. There must be thousands and thousands of books and academic articles about 'ordinary' women in the past, written from the 1920s until today, on both sides of the Atlantic. Have you perhaps never heard of Sheila Rowbotham, for example, or Deirdre Beddoe - and the hundreds of researchers they inspired? Or of Jill Liddington's project: www.jliddington.org.uk/cig1.html Or the work of Pat Hudson? www.history-ontheweb.co.uk/sources/womens_history.htm

Here is an article that names just a few of these pioneers: www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/womens_history.html

There has also been a great deal of work done on women in Trades Unions - here is just one well-known example: www.amazon.co.uk/Rights-Not-Roses-Working-class-Feminism/dp/0252068343

There have also been courses like this taught at universities:
[[http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/fpsc/programme/handbook_feminism_module2a.doc]]

For children, this is just one of many websites: www.schoolshistory.org.uk/IndustrialRevolution/womenandchildren.htm#.VSqQZvCTpdg

And there is the Women in World History Curriculum: www.womeninworldhistory.com/lesson7.html

All the above work is not new and is very well known. In recent years, feminists have also suggested that looking at history in terms of gender rather than class might produce a better understanding of the past; see, for instance: plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-class/

There are even university courses exploriing in detail the relationship between feminist history writing and class, such as www.dur.ac.uk/history/postgraduate/current/george_stevenson/

All the above is just the tip of a very large iceberg - other Mumsnetters may know much more.

Sorry, this link in the message above was full of typos:

"There have also been courses like this taught at universities:
www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/fpsc/programme/handbook_feminism_module2a.doc "

Fair point. Interesting thread
Thing is, everyone is different. Whatever generation they hail from.

This thread is interesting-it hadn't occurred to me that almost everyone who fought in WW2 would be over 90 now-and there is some truth in the idea that our perceptions of what it is to be old are formed in our youth.

Have you noticed that in children's book grandparents are all delightful, grey-haired old dears with aprons on. That's not the case for most grandparents I know, who work full time, wear current clothes, not M&S Classic, use technology happily and basically lead lives! The images in books are far more suited to great-grandparents.

I think it happens in part because some schools seem to think history can be taught thematically, or picking and choosing chunks or just through the lens of historiography without conveying an overall sense of a narrative. Certainly that's what I recall from History GCSE.

So for lots of people there's Recent Past (basically like us), More Distant But Still Sort Of Modern Past (basically WW2) then Old Past (anything with horses and carriages) and Really Old Past (where the Romans and Vikings lived).

The second one is where old people live, even if the individual in question wasn't born until 1955

I suspect the Baby Boomer generation will be in the vanguard of squashing these ageist assumptions about older people.

Haven't RTFT so I don't know if this has been mentioned - but I was very aware of this phenomenon in the Paddington film.

Nicole Kidman's father seemed to have been some sort of explorer in the 20s, Jim Broadbent's character talked about having been sent to Britain during the war as an approximately 8/9 year old (the actor is 65, born in 1949), and worst of all, the mum and dad in the family were shown turning up at the hospital for the birth of their first child, apparently sometime in the 70s by their clothes and motorbike/beige volvo - the girl was about 14 in the film, so born in 2000!

Good point, Manatee, but it's not schools but governments that decide what children must study.
It anyone wants to see the new National Curriculum for history, the legal requirements are here:

Primary: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239035/PRIMARY_national_curriculum_-_History.pdf

Secondary: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239075/SECONDARY_national_curriculum_-_History.pdf

I quite look forward to Old Tyme Raves at my nursing home - perhaps by then we will all be prescribed regular MDMA anyway. And singing along to 'pump up the volume' followed by 'straight outta compton' would be ideal for improving your breath support if your respiratory system is a bit shot.

Eddiemairswife, to be fair to David Cameron (which strict impartiality requires me to do), he could have been referring to people who fought in any of the largely colonial wars in the decades after 1945 - Malaya, Korea, Cyprus, even Suez, Northern Ireland, Falklands (someone who was 35 in 1982 is 68 now) - the list goes on and Korea in particular was large-scale. I can see though why he didn't invoke any of these, as they are not as politically 'clean' as WWII. He was just deliberately vague, by the sound of it.

When I think of people turning 40, I think of my mother's 40th birthday, not my friends.

Yes, me too - it's one thing that's made me feel old, because it is the age of parents, not me. I never knew them as teenagers and in their 20s, so they were my ages, but from about 35 onwards, those are their ages that I remember. It's odd to think that when my mother was the age I am now, that was when I was heading off to university.

But I also find time a bit confusing, because we spoke about my great-great grandfather and great-grandfather in just the same way that we spoke about my grandfather and all his siblings, so we were talking about Victorians in the same way that we spoke about people who were still alive and well, despite the fact they had died over a generation before I was born. (I have been told by others that this is not normal in most families - most people don't chat about former family members in quite the same way.) So I've always had a very strong sense of history and it hasn't seemed so far away.

EqualRites, I haven't seen 'Paddington' but the book dates back to my childhood (I'm 50). Is it possible the film sought to represent the decade I. Which the book was written/set?

My mum said the other day that when she is in a retirement home, she hopes that the Brownies will pop by and sing 'Jumping Jack Flash' and dress up at Mick Jagger to entertain her. She will not be forced to listen to 'Roll out the Barrel'. She's 68, not 98!