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.........

I don't know thecat, but it's definitely set in present day London. I think one shot of the city lingered on the Shard.

equalrites it was a good film, but I noticed that, too! I was baffled by the 1920s style footage, when, given Nicole Kidman's age, he must have been going to Darkest Peru in the early 70s. Didn't seem to spoil it for my children, although anything pre-2007 is ancient history to them.

Littlecaf - I'm sure that will happen! It sounds hilarious but what else are elderly people who were young in the sixties and seventies going to listen to?

I think the reason it's funny is because these songs were specifically anthems of youth and rebellion - for the generation who proclaimed "I hope I die before I get old"!

Oh yes, we all loved the film, the timelines were just a bit distracting :)

I remember a bit of a Lenny Henry comedy routine, where he does an impression of a young boy asking "Sing me a song from the old days, Granda!" and the grey-haired wheezy old grandfather breaks into a rendition of "Pass the Duchy" by Musical Youth.

My musical taste covers the 50s-70s influenced by my parents, and my early memories of the 80s are influenced by having an older sibling, then my own taste picks up later 80s and 90s liking some music until the present day.

The 20th century had very clearly defined characteristics for each decade. Since the late 90s, it seems harder to identify such distinctive cultural trends. I'm not sure if it's the lack of distance to identify the distinctions more clearly, or that the Internet providing more customised media is part of that. Children of the 70s and 80s will. eminisce from a limited range of TV shows and music from a limited range of channels and magazines. My DCs have a wide range of media on TV and smart devices, so there is less common point of identity.

Going back pre 20th century, there were fashions, but class will have been a bigger influence on lives. The lack of media and rate of technology becoming part of normal life meant that the pace of change was slower with less distinction between one generation and the next. Because of the long reign of Queen Victoria, that homogenises our view of the 19th century.

Getting closer to the original point, my NDN was a proper old lady with pinnies and tight grey curls. I got a shock when I found out that she was the same age as DM who has a younger look and is clinging on to middle age and resisting old age. (70s) Some of it will be mindset and some company. Physical health also makes a difference. I noticed DM suddenly aged due to the pain and mobility issues around the time she had a joint replaced. My Mil could pass as 20 years younger than her age of mid-80s. She mixes with much younger people, and engages with her DCs and DCs which helps keep her mindset currently rather than fixed in her past.

I agree op people seem to forget that people now drawing their pensions were born in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Within a few years, the original punks will be pensioners. Although engrained in many people's minds is the idea that pensioners were adults during the second world war, when to have played any active part in the war you'd need to be pushing 90.

On another thread a poster was complaining about her mother being racist. She was howled down by some posters claiming that older people aren't used to seeing black or Asian people and that multicultural Britain must have been a shock to them.

The mother was 67, so born in 1948 the year after the Windush docked. She would have reached adulthood in the mid to late 60s and would not be able to remember a time before there was a significant black and asian population in the UK.

ComposHat - Depends where they live. Some people still live most of their lives in very white areas. Not that that is an excuse for racism though.

Well that's geography not age isn't it? there are areas of the UK where you'd have little or no contact with minorities and that hasn't changed in 50 odd years.

They served this country in the war" is often trotted out

I know. I want to scream just bloody think about it for a second and do some basic maths. Ww2 veterans are a small and dwindling part of the pensioner population.

I think politicians milk this sentiment for all its worth deploying the 'honouring the generation who sacrificed so much for us' rhetoric for all it is worth when justifying policies aimed at enriching pensioners. I suppose the alternative of: "over 60s vote in disproportionately large numbers so we need to stuff their mouths with gold to ensure we gain/stay in power."

Have you noticed that in children's book grandparents are all delightful, grey-haired old dears with aprons on.

But far less so, now, I think. One of my DDs recent reading books had a wolf, looking for a gran to eat (I think for parents the stereotypical old, slow easy to catch gran would have been implied). A gran came along: slim, with earrings wearing hiking gear and carrying a big rucksack. She casually whacked the wolf with her frying pan and set up camp. I loved this.

I used to use the word "grannyish" to describe clothes or decor that I thought were a bit frumpy. I realised my mistake when DM kept laughing at me for using it when she became (at a youthful 45) a granny herself. She was, and is, very stylish, tasteful and modern. As is my MIL.
It has a new meaning for me now!

YANBU OP, that's a really good point.

I do think a lot of it is down to upbringing though. For example, my DM and MIL are only a few years apart and literally could not be more different. My DM grew up in North west London in the late 60s and would bunk off school to hang out with beatniks in cafés and talk about the strikes and Marxism. My MIL grew up in a small village and never wanted to seek out anything else, bought up to cook and clean and so has very different ignorant views on things. My DM gets mightily annoyed when people like my MIL say it's 'Their generation'

Has anyone else noticed the Shreddies 'Nana state' adverts? Jeez.

She would have reached adulthood in the mid to late 60s and would not be able to remember a time before there was a significant black and asian population in the UK.

Ooh, I dunno about "significant". By 1983, West Indian migrants and their descendants (children and grandchildren) in the UK only numbered about 583,000.

People forget that there were only about 172,000 people born in the West Indies in Britain by 1961.

That really isn't a lot at all.

There are huge parts of the country now with no significant non white population- whatever the politicians try to tell us. I live in one!

It's confusing when you're a kid - my family basically missed a generation due to the war (mum born when gran was 41) and higher education (mum 31 when she had me) compared to my DH's family who all had their kids in early 20s. So my dd has a gran and 2 great grans all very close in age, but my mum & dad will form part of her 'grandparents generation' generalisations as a kid.

Also I studied the sixties as a OU module when working as a secretary in a big factory complex in a small town. One of the other secretaries approved of my learning :) and arranged interviews for me with staff (mostly fairly senior) who had been adults in the 60s. Their recollections of attitudes, permissiveness and even things like what music they liked (which you would think would be a purely personal thing) varied widely according to where they were from. Those from cities e.g. London, Liverpool 'experienced' the 60s. These from small towns/rural on the whole never really experienced the 60s revolution.

I don't know what I'm saying really :) maybe because generalisation is therefore impossible, why not fall back on (outdated) stereotypes?

Ooh, I dunno about "significant". By 1983, West Indian migrants and their descendants (children and grandchildren) in the UK only numbered about 583,000.

That's roughly the same number of people resident in the UK at the last census. Even if you lived in an area with relatively few Polish people living there, you'd be aware that there is a significant number of Polish people in the UK and they've been a significant number of the past decade or so.

That nan state advert lady basically looks like old people used to look when I was a kid in the 70s. I would usually assume that the creative directors were approximately the same age as me and that is when our internal imagery was set.

I look forward to the time when care assistants leave off Roll out the Barrel and start learning the words to Anarchy in the UK. By the time my time in a Home comes around I will bellow out the original version of Hurt at them (and possibly get expelled).

Sisters yes exactly. But shouldn't we expect creative directors (who I believe are normally reasonably well paid) to be a little bit more ... well creative?

I would love to go to a school and ask the kids to draw a pensioner.

My globe trotting, caravan loving DF might not fit that image.