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

I once listened to a historian discussing the fact we are wistful for the past. His counter was that people rarely have a specific year instead will say the 50's or 20's etc and that actually any widespread era had lots of good things however each year also has some awful things or the throw back to awesome things for example to look back on last year lots of the things that worried us etc arent year specific so when people reflect they will under estimate the impact certain things had eg. Crime against children isnt especially high and terrorism wise 9/11 was 19 years ago (i think!) but fear is fairly high

He also pointed out that when we go back, we go back as a point of privilege eg when people talk about how lovely the 60's were for example they think of being part of the beatles fanclub, dont imagine themselves as a huge proportion of society eg those that didnt fair so well eg a proportion were suffering the effects of war, aproximately 3 million people lived in slums, 1/10 houses were classed (by standards at the time) as unfit for habitation. Let alone the experience of minorities.

A really good example is the nostalgia for 40s britain, theres whole fairs dedicated to it, keep calm signs are dying off but i know a fair few people with thing like "make do and mend" or similar posters about growing food up. They have almsot become seperated from the fact that you had to do so because there was no food! It wasnt a lifestyle choice. While some people had a lovely time with victory curls and dancing and forces sweethearts, it was very much against a background of poverty, men dying in fields and general difficulties.

I think we miss community spirit but forget that often community spirit is generated by real hardship

I think the acceptance of porn has had a massive detrimental effect on society. Of course there were sex obsessed predators then as now, but it seems to have become very addictive. I think the same goes for internet gambling, people did gamble of course but at least going to the bookies was an effort!

Having easy credit available is difficult for many to handle, too. I remember when my sister first got credit cards her whole lifestyle changed

Fallofrain good point

In Eastern Germany (former DDR) I have witnessed nostalgia for the solidarity and community support (whilst fully acknowledging the awfulness of the regime, and how hard life was)

I think lots of British people “miss” that blitz spirit and solidarity

My mum, born in 1935, remembers living through the war in Europe and has no such nostalgia. She remembers hunger and fear and always thanks her lucky stars for the comforts and luxury of modern life. So I never grew up with nostalgia as a thing

Just realised that sounded like i was judging people for doing it!

Im into fashion and i look at older clothes eg from downton abbey and think i wish we had that sense of decorum etc. However its very statistically that any one would be part of the small class that wore them even the maids etc was a high class job let alone someone like me due to various factors i wouldnt even be allowed in as a potwasher and would have to join the masses outside!

I think the acceptance of porn has had a massive detrimental effect on society. Of course there were sex obsessed predators then as now, but it seems to have become very addictive.

Is it acceptance or is it because it's now more readily accessible because of the internet?

This is one of the downsides of progress, the upside is that working from home has now become very common.

MissSmith1 I grew up in the fifties and we had the Home Service (radio 4) the Light Programme (radio 2) and the Third Programme (radio 3). Some factories broadcast the wireless for the workers to listen to as they thought it increased productivity. My family were more of a Home Service family but I think we must have listened to the Light Programme sometimes. We had a wireless rented from Radio Rentals.

Phil perhaps I should have said ready availability. It certainly has become normalised. You read of people "collecting" very extreme numbers of images, almost like a modern version of trainspotting! I think some people have an addictive personality, and for them the internet can be a problem.

I am a very old person and to go back to the 1950s would be hell! I suppose the nostalgia is partly because we remember our loved ones, now all gone.

When you said 'the past' I thought you meant 40s and 50s or before! I'm in my late 50s, still have kids in school and am a very active member of my community - not ready for living in a retirement home reminiscing!
I bet when you get to a certain age you might look back with fondness to a time you didn't have to worry about a job, paying a mortgage, dealing with family problems... being an kid with minimal responsibilities might seem like life was better than the reality of aging and financial burdens!
I look back and can daydream of carefree lazy summer days and bountiful Christmases - but I know the reality was very different.

According to millenials, it was easy in past generations so I’m glad people are saying how it really was. I grew up poor, it was shit. Its far easier now

Something to note is that digitisation and social media have completely changed the world over the last 20 years. Not everyone is happy with that. Anyone older than 40 will have grown up in a very different world. People in their 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, even more so. Of course, some people are happy with the digital world we live in, irrespective of their age, but others wish we could return to a world that wasn't ruled by technology.

Newmetoday

Some things were better in the past, social mobility for one. That is now declining at a rate of knots with a legion of negatives attached.

Millenial’s are a broad school too. The eldest turn 40 this year, the youngest 24. I think you probably mean Generation Z.

I always laugh a bit when the 'children used to play outside' thing cones up. Yes, yes they did. Well some of them did. Some of them stayed in the house. Some of them found a quiet place outside and didn't play but merely passed the time away until it was ok to go home. Nobody listened to them.

People with Autism and mental illness were put into institutions and seriously misunderstood.

A bit of nostalgia can be good for you.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-nostalgia-is-good-for-you/

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

Probably a comparable number to the younger people who view elders as having eaten all the pies/bought the houses/ wallow in pensions/fucked the planet.

We are an environmental disaster because of 'choice' - we don't need to make so many things. We don't need to buy so many things.

This. I was at a recycling place today, and you should have seen the electronic goods which had been thrown away! Things used to be made to last, and if something went wrong mostly they could be fixed. I hate the shoddiness of so many goods today, and the fact that we live in such a throwaway society.

As for the posters who say how wonderful it is to have dishwashers, tumble dryers etc - I've never had a dishwasher, and when my tumble dryer died I didn't replace it. We did have a fridge/freezer when I was a kid, and while no automatic washing machine there was nothing wrong with the machine we had, it did the job.

Incidentally OP, child abuse and domestic violence are still rife, and while men can no longer legally rape their wives there are still those who do so and get away with it.

YANBU there's some interesting videos on YouTube about life in the 60s and 70s and it was bloody grim to watch nothing rosy about it everyone was piss poor the benefits system was nothing like it was now and kids were running round in rags hungry aye the good old days

@eaglejulesk That is true. But now schools report suspected child abuse and domestic violence and there are services like refuges, even if they are underfunded. When i was young there was no childline, refuges were just beginning to be set up, and the idea that you could rape your wife was seen as an extreme left-wing view.
We should not forget that things have improved.

I am a member of a FB group about Old (where I live). I have noticed that a lot of the posts are about how people lived in slum housing without indoor toilets sleeping multiple children to the one bed.
I have lived all my life in this place. The home I lived in after being born was a huge flat. I know because that very flat came up for sale and I viewed it. It had 3 bedrooms and a bathroom. Both sets of grandparents lived in houses with bathrooms, they were married pre 1920s. I remember both of those houses. My grandfathers has cars, as did my father when I was born. My mother had her own car.
At no time did I ever realise in childhood that I was so privileged. I thought the way my family lived was totally normal/average.
There have been posts about how men had the right to rape their wives. It may have happened in some places but I don't think it happened in every household. Men back in those days did not have mobile phone cameras taking covert photos of naked wives.

I am sure there were very few men who would have purposefully set out to be "cocklodgers" like we have now. This has happened among my relatives. I find that beneath description.
There were very few people who were immigrants in (the place I live) in those days. I am watching TV at the moment and there is a woman of colour shouting over everyone and calling everyone racist. I find her bad manners and she is losing any sympathy for her cause. In the last 20 years, despite being born in this place which is part of the UK my parents grandparents and ancestors all born in the UK, I have faced racism in my own country by a person who was clearly an immigrant to this country. Apparently a UK language or dialect is not to be spoken while that person talked "jargon" like a language.
Things have changed a lot in my lifetime and I don't think it is all for the good. I am glad that in my time I was able to be at home with my DC and started working part time once all were at school and I was there when they were at home.

Every time has its good and bad.

@zoobincan I think for children with good healthy and reasonably well-off parents, the past was better. Because some kids still got lots of attention and to play outside. But yes there was also a lot of neglect. And kids with disabilities were either institutionalised, or parents struggled alone.

I agree. I’m on a Facebook page for old pictures of my town. Every time someone posts a picture everyone farts on about how things aren’t what they used to be.

What they mean is that they liked it before all the foreign people moved here.

I read a book a while ago that was a memoir of a now famous person who grew up a couple of streets away from where I live. This was the 50s. In one part she is on the bus going into town with her grandmother who goes on about how the town isn’t what it once was and how dreadful if is now.

Nothing has changed.

And yes, things including clothes were better made.

YABsomewhatU.

People often go on about the not so good stuff from the past too and have long memories.

As someone who remembers the 80s/90s yes, it's nice to reminisce, but there's a lot of remembering the miner's strike, the IRA bombs, the AIDS crisis. Hadn't you noticed all the older people who spent the last four years pointing out Corbyn was a disaster because his little Momentum clique are just militant all over again?

Don't you notice when older people look back in horror at the way our parents used to pile us in cars? 4 in the back seat, three in the boot, not a seatbelt to be seen? Or when older people joke about some of the dubious foods that were once all the rage?

Some things about the past were worse, some were better. All humans like a bit of nostalgia, you will too as you age, but the best thing about the old days is there was no sodding Facebook.