To wonder if it was as bad as people say in the 70s?

[juicee2]

I am quite curious about it.

What caused the poverty? I thought the 80s were a poor decade - am I wrong?

I remember quite a few people I knew (they were not wealthy) had those huge freezers like you get in Iceland

How much frozen food does one family need

How much frozen food does one family need

We had a big chest freezer and a large garden. The freezer was filled over the summer with soft fruit and veg and apples. We were also occasionally recipients of half a pig or something, or a brace of pheasants (grew up on a farm,) and that would mostly all be frozen. I haven't eaten brawn since then, mind you.

We used to have to go out to the garden before school in the summer and pick at least half a colander each of strawberries or raspberries or gooseberries or whatever was in glut, and the same when we got home. Used to get sick of strawberries with every single meal. However, we used to all sit round the big kitchen table and top and tail the fruit or pod peas together, and chat or listen to the radio, and that was quite fun.

In winter, the table would be covered with newspaper and we'd all sit and clean the brass and silver together.

We had a Rayburn and open fires. There was still no central heatIng when my mother died 9 years ago.

I think it probably was hard for my parents, but I loved most of my '70s childhood.

I remember quite a few people I knew (they were not wealthy) had those huge freezers like you get in Iceland

I've got one now, it's wonderful! I hate everything jammed in a drawer freezer, I like being able to see what's in there!

I remember running after the ice cream van when I was allowed to have an icecream. If I was really lucky mum would let me have a 99 with a flake in.
We didn't have frozen ice cream.
We had a milk man too and had milk with cream on top.

I loved the 1970s - summer days spent riding my pony round the local villages. Leaving the house at 8am and not coming back until tea time.
No phone
No central heating
Food was ok - my parents were hippies and we ate some strange home made stuff
Music was amazing
And then I found punk in the late 1970s and they became my tribe!

We weren't poor or rich - dad was an artist and Mum a nurse but we lived out in the countryside and had freedom.

Born in 1970, I remember going out to play in the morning, reappearing for a sandwich at lunch time then not going back again until it was dark. On our bikes everywhere (I had a Budgie, smaller than a Chopper but part of the same family).
Everybody seemed to have been flashed at by someone in a mac, we just screamed and ran.
Heavy snow in winter, long sunny days in summer.
Storing as much bread as we could buy in our friend's chest freezer during the bread strike.
Racism, sexism, and adults looking down if people 'had to get married' - what a stupid phrase!
Hearing the siren go signalling end of work at the nearby factories and the whole road being full of people leaving work on foot or bike

I think the lack of consumerism and materialism is the main difference I remember between the 70s and now. Everyone's houses had mis matched carpets and curtains and old bits and pieces of furniture gathered from here and there. If someone bought a new sofa the neighbours would come in to admire it.
Kids wore hand me downs as a matter of course and there was no such thing as children's fashion.
The vast majority of people holidayed by the seaside or went to a caravan somewhere. Very few went abroad or stayed in hotels.
Christmas meant a main present under the tree, something like a doll or a pair of roller skates, and a few stocking fillers. One bicycle or scooter was often shared between several children, and new toys only really happened at birthdays or Christmas.
People saved up for things, no one had credit cards and in general people lived within their means.

It's so different nowadays. Young couples starting out have perfectly furnished houses, and older couples downsizing find it very difficult to get rid of their furniture because younger people want everything new.

Many children have playrooms piled full of toys, mounds of stuff under the tree at Christmas and expensive gadgets from a young age.

Several holidays a year has become the norm, many paid for using credit cards. It's no longer enough to have a car, the year and make are important. Gadgets and machines go out of date almost as soon as you've bought them, and are replaced by bigger better versions.

We have more stuff, but I don't think we value things as much as we used to. Everything's disposable, nothing's cherished, repaired, made to last.

I'm generalising, I realise, but I do think we were better off as a society when we had less choice and less pressure to keep buying more and more stuff.

User completely agree. There wasn't the volume of stuff avaialbel (imports from abroad weren't anything like what you can get today); there wasn't the pressure to have "stuff" and there wasn't the funds, as most ordinary people didn't have credit cards. People lived within their means far more. As children we didn't have a tenth of the toys/entertainment that kids today have access to. By today's standards we'd be "poor" except we weren't poor then by those standards. Hand me downs, mismatching, old furniture, things were expected to last long beyond their trend or new condition.

and the childrens fashions - exactly. We were dressed for the weather/temperature, not for fashion. You couldn't get cheap clothes in supermarkets or throwaway fashion or clothes online, you'd have to go to a real shop for everything and if you lived in a village or suburb, that meant a trip to the nearest town or city and that only happened a few times a year. Sometimes things like bedding or curtains would be picked up on the local market, but furnishings and decorations largely didn't change from one decade to the next.

My kids never wore hand me downs, they had decent presents e.g. an Atari console one year, Scalextric another. My house was small terraced and it definitely didn't have mismatched curtains and carpets.

I was a teenage mum in 1971, we weren't well off and didn't have a car and only had a foreign holiday once in the 70s but I never knew any neighbours to go and look at new furniture. That sounds more like the 50s to me.

So yes you are generalising.

peach I had friends of similar "ordinary" status that had better or more toys and a more affluent lifestyle. My parents just were very careful with money. (sometimes, too careful - we could have had a nicer time). Although we had some second hand and hand me down stuff, and lived an ordinary sometimes frugal lifestyle, we as children never worried about money, that a bill wouldn't be paid, or there wouldn't be food in the house, and I always knew as a kid that my parents had savings in the bank. (more than just a few notes in a tin for a rainy day).

But definitely if a neighbour got a new suite or a new car, it was news, and would generate an admiring comment or two, because new suites were expensive and a large household purchase (not so much now with IKEA and online stores doing inexpensive versions). and people didn't tend to change them very often.

I know someone who kept the plastic wrap on their new suite and on the seats of the car for years. I don't think they sat down directly on the fabric ever!

We had handme down clothes and I remember having a brown nylon dress with giant orange flowers which I thought was so beautiful. 😂

No mobile phones, ipads, PCs - we cycled everywhere and made our own fun.
Power cuts and B&W TV - not so great.

Sunday your parents chose to live that way so not really "the 70s" presumably they would be the same if they were parents of kids now?

Friends would admire a new sofa but inviting random neighbours in? No I never heard of that, I vaguely remember it with TV in the 50s but they were a novelty so a bit different. Then again my DD had new sofas last year and I admired them but I wouldn't say that was a 2017 thing.

I was thinking about this last night. How the shopping was done at the parade of shops locally - butchers, bakers, grocers, etc., and only for a couple of days at a time as my Mum didn't drive so it was what we could carry. The greengrocer used to save leaves and things for my sister's rabbits. Indeed, our next door neighbour (keen gardeners) used to throw spare lettuces etc over the fence "for the rabbits" and my Dad would rescue them and we'd eat them ourselves nothing to do with being the 70s and everything to do with being my Dad
Did anyone else get electric shocks from the nylon sheets, when we had blankets and eiderdowns before the very posh, new fangled 'Continental Quilts' started to come in?
Did anyone else have the striped flannelette sheets ?
Pre-seat belts, my Dad used to offer all our friends a lift and we'd have 5 or 6 across the backseat of the car sometimes. Does anyone remember the bench seats in the front of cars (more 60s I guess, unless you hung on to your car for a while).
We had to wait for the TV to 'warm up' when we put it on - really annoys me in the film version of Hairspray, set in 1962, that Penny rushes in to Tracey's home and the TV comes on instantly .
Just the 3 channels and being able to video things to watch later didn't become commonplace until towards the end of the 70s(? or was it into the 80s?).
Cheesecloth shirts, long denim skirts, skirts with an extra frill round the bottom, Laura Ashley for really posh, long hair for the boys, then the perms came in.

Backforgood
I remember getting electric shocks from all the nylon/polyester. I had a nightie and it was so bad when I pulled it over my head my hair would be standing in end with all the static.
We didn't have continental quilts either just lots of heavy blankets and a bedspread which slipped off the bed.
I also had a skirt with a lace frill around the bottom.
I had to wear clothes even when I'd outgrown them. I had a brown and cream dress with a big picture of a girl on the front (holly hobby ?) and remember bending my knees so it looked longer when I had clearly outgrown it.
We never had new furniture.
All the furniture was old and bulky.

Oh and lots of us cramming
Into my uncles mini, before it was compulsory to wear a seat belt.
I remember the seat belt adverts too with Jimmy Savile.

I thought the reason that there was white dog poo around in the 70s was because it didn't tend to get cleared away in those days (either by the owner or the council cleaners) and therefore ended up sitting on the pavement for ages,eventually getting bleached by the sun.

I failed an O level in 1980,so I don't think 1976 could have been the last year you could fail them!

a great decade at least for anyone with an interest in social history :)

Like many on this thread I've a somewhat selective memory but for me, almost 16 when the decade ended, it was a largely happy time with long hot summers - reality check here not every summer in the 70s was endless sunshine, it just seems that way thinking back.

I think the late 70s had the excitement in our house at least of a video recorder, great for the multi-channel, well three channels, TV which by that time was also colour,,,,possibly. TOTP on a Thursday evening; brilliant and hugely evolving music generally; making home made cassette tapes; saving up 2Ps and going with my friend next door to the phone box on the corner to arrange our social lives. Happy times growing up.

For adults though, a lot of inflation, the '73 oil crisis, three day week in early 1974 (not the entire decade); powercuts around the same time; a proper Cold War, maybe not such a great time.

I was born in 74 so a young child in the 70s and my memory very selective.

I remember the luxury of getting central heating and a shower. I think we were quite lucky because we moved into a new build when I was 4 that had lots of luxuries - shower, heating, fitted kitchen. Going to visit elderly relatives was miserable especially in winter where everyone was huddled round the coal or gas fire.

Lots of freedom and lots of man made fibres! Nylon nightie and nylon sheets was not a good combination.

I reckon it was a good time to be s child but pretty rotten for lots of adults. My grandparents weren’t much older than I am now but they looked and seemed much older than similar aged adults now or even my own parents. They had lived through the war, gone out to work in fairly manual jobs at a young age and hadn’t had the same level of healthcare and it seemed to take its toll.

We didn’t seem to want for anything. Compared to lots of my neighbours and school friends we were ok. I had plenty of toys and clothes but there wasn’t the same gap. Perhaps because there was much less to buy. There wasn’t the same range of shops and lots of things were bought in the local high street. I can remember going to the co-op for school uniform, and into the individual butchers, bakers etc. It was normal for my mum and us to walk to the high street and all the shopping went into the basket in the pram.

I remember the 80s being much brighter

Peach I don't really know why you'd say "your parents chose to live that way so not really "the 70s" presumably they would be the same if they were parents of kids now?"

They didn't "choose" to live that way (what way?) ...My 70s childhood experience compares very similarly with lots of others on this thread so I'm not convinced my parents were making any conscious lifestyle choices against the grain of everyone else. What in particular I said has made you think that? I'm curious.

I was little in the 1970s, so only a few memories but I remember hand me down clothes as standard. No TV. Cinema was a very rare treat. No foreign holidays but we got a big family tent that was very exciting and used to go to the seaside and camp. Single income households were the norm, I think, and I didn't know any of my friends had working mums but I used to hear pitying comments about "latch key kids".

Although our mums weren't glued to our sides! We all used to roam about a lot. We lived in a cul de sac and the rules were that I couldn't go past the bottom of the road, and had to be home by tea but that was it. I'm sure no parent would think of that now!

A few more 1970s memories - the man made fibres! I remember upgrading DCs bedding, sheets and bedspreads from Brentford Nylons. So easy to wash and dry, but never the most pleasant feeling in summer.

We had the same furniture for years, some second hand, we bought nylon stretch covers for the sofa and chairs a couple of times as we couldn't afford to replace them.

Nothing to do with poverty but i remember the excitement if you got to see your favourite band on top of the pops or being interviewed on the radio. We didn't have the immediate access of the internet so no way to listen to music out of the house other than a transistor radio. I remember in the early 70's all my friends gathered round mine listening to the chart countdown on radio 1. Magazines with song words in them. Clothes wise platform shoes, bell bottoms that became French cut then straight legs. Smock dresses, peg trousers, cheese cloth shirts, corduroy bomber jackets, skirts with the white frill at the bottom, skinny rib jumpers, leather trench coats. Make up was blue eye shadow from Woolworths , kajal by Miners. Eyebrows plucked into a very thin line. Later in the 70's punk arrived and it was like nothing heard before. The outrage in the media! Then the mod revival in the late 70's. That was my favourite time.

Yes falang to all of those wonderful things!
Tuesday at 1pm when Radio 1 would announce the charts for the week then Thursday 7.20pm for TOTPs!