To think that many older people look at the past through rose tinted glasses

[Mammylamb]

I’m on a lot of local chat groups on Facebook, many of which are really interesting.

But every week or so, there will be a post lamenting the good old days when supposedly everything was great and people were just better, men were men, kids were well behaved and women looked after the home(although they had less money)

Every time I see these posts I just get intensely irritated; kids and young people today are not worse behaved than in the past (many young folk seem to have better manners than older people). And the old days were not perfect, child abuse and domestic violence were rife. Men were legally able to rape their wife.

Aibu to get irritated by this

Just scroll past these messages if they annoy you

The best has gone. It’s not rose tinted , it’s reality. Getting old is not rosy.

Why not mention rose-tinted glasses? It's a fair point. That kind of attitude has given us Brexit.

I do agree that those posts are irritating but as an older person I’ve got mixed feelings about your premise. I think lots of stupid people post lots of stupid things on Facebook and singling out older people is a bit unfair.

We never dared answer are parents back, because in my case I loved and respected them.
Wages covered a house and food, and grand parents or family were around to babysit.
Kids played outside, were happy to do so.
School was a walk away, not a car journey.
We knew our neighbours.

@windycuntryside why do you think the best has gone?

I am an old gimmer and have mixed feelings on this one.

There were some things were better in years gone by yet some were worse but I think the biggest difference now is an aggressive mainstream media and social media telling us constantly that life is shit, politicians are dishonest, every teenager wants to stab people at random, you are likely to be robbed or murdered if you open your door and generally keeping people afraid. It is easy to feel nostalgic for what seemed to be simpler times. Doesn't man everything was better back then though

Back in the day, ( in my 50s) kids were kids.
We just were! Only went home for tea.
I feel that parents are far too precious these days and I find it odd that parents , these days, feel it compulsory to only feed beige food.
However.. in my day , we had rickets, polio, tuberculosis and so much more.
We had men touching up women’s breasts and pinching their arses.
TV comedians were racist, homophobic and sexist.. ah! Those were the days! 🙄
And women earned so much less than men.
Yet homes were cheap ( mortgage only relied on main income) and MacFisheries was everywhere!

It’s not intentional. I once read that our brains protect us from remembering upsetting or distressing things and so it picks out the good bits and it seems like everything was lovely in the past.

That said, I remember a time when jobs in my town were plentiful, now it’s only zero hour retail or care work. When I was at school (30+ years ago), my mum didn’t work nor did many of my friends parents as they didn’t need to, just to pay the mortgage. We had a proper high street with butchers, bakers, greengrocers etc. - I’ve got to travel miles now if I want to shop somewhere that isn’t a supermarket.

I was watching ‘Man About the House’ a few weeks ago and they mention their rent being £8 a week. In South Kensington! I always said I was born too late as I’d love the chance to go back just to see what it was like.

Don't mock,you will do the same when you have more behind than in front of you.
Unless you had a really tough life time fades out the bad bits and emphasises the good backed up by photos which are mostly if people smiling.

@Mammylamb what 'past' are they saying was SO good?

Is it people born in the 1960s raving about the 1970s (when they were a kid,) and the 1980s?

Or people born further back, raving about life in the 1960s and before?

We never dared answer are parents back, because in my case I loved and respected them. Wages covered a house and food, and grand parents or family were around to babysit. Kids played outside, were happy to do so. School was a walk away, not a car journey. We knew our neighbours.

Women, ethnic minorities, gay people and the disabled could legally be refused employment, or fired, just because they were female, gay, black. Women could be legally raped by the man they married. The unquestioning respect for your elders you so fondly remember led to countless cases of physical and sexual abuse going unreported or being ignored. Britain’s economy was in the doldrums with a three-day week.

No one is saying life in 2020 is perfect. But this long-lost utopia you describe never really existed.

Unfortunately, too many younger people seem to be buying into that crap.

I'm 50 and while the 80s were fun for me, as a teen, they were very unequal. The 70s were grey and cold. Except when they were hot, but they were mostly grey and cold.

I do think it was better before social media was invented. And, yes, I know mumsnet is also social media and, yes, I’m a hypocrite.

I would love to have grown up and have brought my son up in 'simpler times'. Life is so complicated now and expectations are so high. You're also judged for absolutely everything too.

I have bought into a lot of the modern day stuff. I grew up in the 90's and it was nice. Kids played outside all day, in all weathers and it was still kind of a situation where one parent could work without one parent needing to earn quite a high salary to accommodate it. I think people were also kinder to each other overall and there was more community spirit.

Don't get me wrong, lots of things have improved such as medicine, education, living standards etc but I think true freedom is gone unless you're very strict and live off grid

Or maybe, you know, they are just thinking about their past, like the blue remembered hills where you can never walk again .
I am probably old compared to you , and I often think about my past. I think about my Dad, my husband and uncles and aunties and grandparents.
They are all gone now, I will never see them again but they were there in the past, my past. So to me the past is good to look back on and remember, because it's a time they were still alive.

I say the 80s are my happy place, lol!

The 60s teenagers who were middle aged in my youth were REALLY unbearable about their music being the best. Totally deluded of course.

Generally some stuff is worse some is better imo.

On a local level there was more connection to a face to face local community merely by dint of lower level of car ownership, no gaming or chatting via internet and the fact you couldn't get so much delivered but had to venture outside to get necessities.

You couldn't moan about stuff on the Facebook page though, so all the rage was likely pent up!

I see this all the time in my local group. People saying the 60’s and 70’s were great, that the town was thriving etc, then someone recently shared photos of the town at that time with lots of empty shops. They also seem to have forgotten difficulties of those times.

I guess you tend to remember the good ones and capture those on camera and forget the hard times. Like when you have a baby and they grow up and you kind of forget just how relentless it can be.

Some things were better in the past, some things were worse - a lot worse. So if people are chatting nostalgically i will add my comments about things that were better. But if people are trying to pretend the past was all better I point out all the things that were much worse.

IME younger parents often refuse to believe the things that were different in the past. I worked with kids when I left school at 16 and young children were much more capable of doing things for themselves. And it is still like that in some other countries.

The 90s was the best decade. Gavel.

YANBU.

Objectively, of course, things were not better in the ‘good old days’. People now live much longer, and in better health than ever before. Standards of living for most people are far higher. Women are much more equal to men, and have the same opportunities. People are better educated. Society is much more diverse and more accepting of differences. Even the weather is better.

When older people express nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ they are really mourning their own youth, and regretting the fact that it has passed.

The nineties was a just a sixties rerun though..

I’ve seen plenty of people in their 30s look back to their childhood in the 90s and even people in their 20s look back to the 00s and remark that it was a better time back then. This is not an unusual thing to do. People associate the past with good things because they had less obligations and were more carefree and optimistic when they were younger.

Accept certain inalienable truths
prices will rise
politicians will philander
you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young
prices were reasonable
politicians were noble
and children respected their elders

I remember a lot if racism, shocking poverty - a mobile lorry with showers coming to primary school because so many kids were dirty, lots of anti lesbian and gay comments, routine sexism. My first job all the girls who started straight from school were paid less than the boys who started straight from school. You only applied to the workplace and they allocated you a job. All the girls were allocated to lower paid jobs with only girls doing them. Also sexual harassment was far more routine.
And I remember the repossessions of houses, high unemployment and devastation of some towns in the 80's In some places the 80s were a time of plenty, in other places it was incredibly grim.