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

But poverty was worse, racism, sexism, disablism and homophobia was worse and more explicit

I'm going to disagree slightly with this. I'm of an age to have benefitted from my mother's generation fighting sexism, they fought the battles, we reaped the benefits.

Over the last few years it is back with a bang though. I think it is the worst it has been in my lifetime.

@weesleekit Yes I agree things have started to get worse again. And we need to fight that. But no you don't routinely get the level of sexual harassment in the workplace that there was when I was young. The reason many young women left male dominated industries back then. We do also have better laws around rape and domestic violence.

Am approaching 70. No it was not better it was worse in many ways. Nostalgia for the old days did not give us Brexit. Watching the EU over the last 40 years evolve into what it is now did. Why Brexit blaming manages to pop into every problem beats me. Can we blame Brexit for Harry and Meghan?

karencantobe oh yes there was some truth behind people being weaker but it was accompanied with a heavy dose of therefore society had declined. Even though over 100 years had passed and things had developed.

So I agree with you about there being facts but they are usually accompanied by rose tinted nostalgia. And it was ever thus.

Because those who voted for Brexit did so after 40 years of close observation and analysis? Yeah right. Surveys show that almost no-one cared about the EU until Farage and the press whipped them into a frenzy.

And we talk about Brexit because it is transforming our country for the worse. Your generation still talks about the war, which transformed our country 75 years ago.

@OlaEliza
"Children are worse behaved nowadays. We would never dare carry on the way kids do today. Certainly not in public."
Because we were under the threat of being smacked or have another cruel punishment inflicted. We weren't better people, or children.

"And the gang problem has only become rife since it became wrong to smack. Just saying.."
Then you're forgetting the football hooliganism that was around in the 70's onwards, that was akin to gang warfare. We had right wing gangs, that young men could join, to do a bit of paki bashing, if they so wished (and they were often left to it by the Police).

If you wanted to be violent, as a man, there were people, including your wife and children, that you could target, without the law getting involved.

Look on the thread "strangest thing you saw in your childhood". Lots of abuse and poverty, in every post.

I was one of the children whose teachers ignored the bruises (to be fair, the police would have done as well). Thank god things have changed.

I often meet men, in their 50's, which is my age, who seem pissed off that they aren't Gods in the way the previous generation of men were.

Torchlightt, who are you addressing your points to? There's very few, people still around that can reference the War. They'd be 85.

I'm mid 50's, I'm not quite yet 'older', but I'd say 65+ is.

Kids behaviour in the past - Personally I think kids were better behaved in the past in some situations. Kids in the past were more likely to play outside with far less supervision and much more chance to let off steam. So the actual amount of time they were expected to behave was far less. Kids had longer breaks at school and would run around the playground shouting, screaming, etc.

Kids these days seem to be expected to behave for much longer periods of time than in the past. I suspect that has affected behaviour. Because it is far easier to sit and behave for 20 minutes in the Drs waiting room if you are spending 3 hours before bedtime running around and shouting outside.

I don't think it actually has anything at all to do with smacking. I do think it is like dogs. If dogs get masses of time running about outside, they do tend to behave better when in the house.

To me they were the good old days, they were the days of my youth/younger years and exciting. Lots of the aspects of it others have mentioned either passed me by (no social media/internet), didn't impact me or I was resilient enough to get on with it. The world was smaller, it was your own bubble so there was so much you werent aware of.

Of course anyone can critic individual items/events, but overall life, although it had it's challenges, didn't seem to me as hard as the youth of today make out theirs is!!!

I think social media creates a false picture of what an ordinary life is. Instagram makes it worse. So young people think they are missing out on a good life when actually they are living a good life.
I also think the philosophy of you can be what you want to be, is setting up people to fail.

I like the philosophy of - feel the fear and do it anyway.

Olaeliza Children are worse behaved nowadays. We would never dare carry on the way kids do today. Certainly not in public.

And the gang problem has only become rife since it became wrong to smack. Just saying..

Yes because taking all your anger out on your kids and hitting them instead of been a parent definitely didn't do any damage and make them think violence is ok
Lunatic.

Hmmm,

I am in my late 60's. In many ways the sexism, racism etc of the past impacted many of my generation detrimentally but it made us fight harder for justice and equality. Things are better nowadays we are all better informed and there are far more opportunities available to everyone than say in the 70's or 80's.
I often wonder what I could have achieved had I had easier access to childcare (I had to give up my career as a full time nanny wiped my entire (quite high) salary out).
Children nowadays, do appear to be over protected, this has crept on in the last 30 years.
What I do dislike about current habits is the constant "face in the ''phone" people are not interacting with one another any more.
Yes nostalgia is fun, but you have to live in the moment and embrace it.

Life isn’t perfect now but from a human rights perspective, it’s a lot fucking better. I have heard young people saying they would like to go back to the 1950s/60s and live like that, they think it was a more simplistic way to live.

I just think sexism/blatant misogyny, homophobia (and the fact it was actually illegal to be homosexual) and racism was absolutely rampant. My Grandma is quite sensible, she’s Jewish so experienced lots of anti-semitism in the 1940s-60s growing up and as an adult. She was also olive skinned with jet black hair and brown eyes so was called a ‘darky’ at school and people wouldn’t play with her as a result. She prefers the way the world is now as someone who grew up to be a teacher in a multicultural school, she was pleased bullying and racism were absolutely stamped out.

I also think of the illnesses we have now all but eradicated thanks to vaccinations and the women who died as a result of illegal abortions.

I remember talking to an elderly woman in hospital who had restricted growth. She had spent time in and out of hospital her entire life. I asked her if things in hospital were better in the past or now, she said definitely now.

I had an 80s/ 90s childhood and youth and think that broadly, childhood was easier and more free. There is too much stress in the education system. While things for SEN children have got better, at the moment we have peaked and a decade of reduced funding is reducing support again. Children have lost freedom and independence, but being home on a phone/ computer is not necessarily safer.

I remember the late 90s/ early millenium as being a very optomistic time. We were past the early 90s recession and there had been good developments in regeneration. I think there is more than my youth and coming of age in those recollections. The comforts of life were broadly similar, the internet was new and exciting, but we hadn't got to the stage of never being turned off.

The past decade has been regressive. Darker issues such as gang violence, racism had been brushed under the carpet not eliminated. We are very aware of problems in society and that's what makes the world stressful and more threatening.

In the 90s we were going through an economic boom. I think the 90s was a better time.

I was born in 1941 and do not look at the old days with rose coloured spectacles. There have been good things and things that were definitely not so good. Food and clothes deprivation was evident as I grew up and so much was on ration. If you wanted to communicate you wrote letters as we didn’t have a phone until I was in my twenties. Radio was the main entertainment. You went to the cinema to see the news. Television arrived but was only one channel seen on a 9 inch tv. In black and white. There was easy parking but we didn’t have a car until the sixties. Murders and drug related crimes were rare and we thanked our lucky stars this country wasn’t like America which appeared to suffer in this respect. Also divorce was rare and not something that people talked about unless in undertones. However, people put up with unhappiness and abuse in many cases. This is something that doesn’t happen so much these days as young people are not prepared to put up with so much now. Also women’s rights have improved out of all recognition. For example you couldn’t do much unless your dh put his signature to things. There were good things. When I left school in the late fifties you could leave on a Friday and start work on a Monday. No long interviews “just when can you start?” However, no long holidays other than two weeks and bank holidays. You hoped Christmas fell on aMonday so you got four days off. NewYears Day was worked. If you rang up an insurance company and required any change they would require time to go and find your file so will ring you a few hours later! Yes life was not wonderful. Good and bad. Just like today. I love my iPad, I love my iPhone, I love the variety of food in the shops and the cheaper clothes, especially for children. I don’t like the long waits for hospital appointments but there have been wonderful medical advancements. Cancer was a word that was whispered in dread when I was young but people have recovered from things today that killed my grandparents. Housing is a difficult problem now and it used to be easier to find affordable rents but when we got married in 1960 it was difficult to find an unfurnished flat as you could be evicted easily if it contained any item of furniture. Up to around 1959/1960 there was rent control so people could live for years paying reasonable rents. When this was abandoned it caused misery for so many people. As a young person I saw this at first hand as I worked in an estate agency and I went home and cried about it. Mortgages were lower but so were wages. We saved up for five years before we could buy a small house in a cheap,area but prices were kept down as only the husband’s earnings were taken into consideration so there were lots of SAHMs but little money. So I say, there is good and bad. There was hardship then and there is definitely hardship now. However, many enjoy a lifestyle unheard of in “the good old days”. As for a multiracial society well I love it. We have vibrancy, interesting food and society.

I don't know if age is linked

just maybe how your life worked out

my late father absolutely hated people looking back on past things as better - he thought life in the UK had improved massively since the 70s.

I think the last couple of years in London in particular have been horrendous; the 90s and early 00s were a golden age, the rest of it was okay, but the last 2 have been grim. However, when I go out towards my parents' area I see life chugging along as normal.

I was also ill a lot in my 20s so I probably don't have a real perspective on that time anyway.

however, the cost of housing and overpopulation are also massive issues. So it's not as simple as being older or younger or whatever.

Most people remember their childhood and youth through rose tinted glasses surely , I was born in late 73 and don't remember much until the mid to late 70,s I was at school.throughout the 80,s the 90,s were my decade at the start I left a school and by the end who f it I was a qualified nurse buying my own home I remember all the winters of my childhood with deep snow and all the summer's as blazing bit I'm sure that wasent the case but you remember the extremes .

They were certainly not the good old days. There's a sickening "poem" which sometimes emerges on Facebook, about how wonderful life was, about Mum being happy at home "content with her lot", Dad being boss, kids getting slapped and having mouths washed out with soap if they swore.....It turns my stomach everytime I read it, because I remember those days!

Life was genuinely better in the old days when I used to believe that the University Challenge teams sat on top of each other.

All periods of time are shit in their own special way, but people will always look back at the time when they were young, healthy and carefree as a less shit time than the present 🤷‍♀️

The late 90’s and 2000’s was when a Labour were in power. People are mentioning that it was a golden time, and l think the same. Never really connected the two until now.

The late 90’s and 2000’s was when a Labour were in power. People are mentioning that it was a golden time, and l think the same

Labour were in power in the 70s and that was one of the worse times to be around.
Even if you died you couldn’t guarantee your body wouldn’t end up in some freezer van rather than be buried