If you were born late 60s/early 70s please could you help me...

[ChickenNugget86]

I know this is really random but I'm at a point in my life where I'd love to find out about life growing up for my mum in the late 60s early 70s.

She was born in 1967 and unfortunately she passed away suddenly aged 42 when I was still living at home age 18. My family totally broke down from it and never talk about her, which really upsets me.

When I got married I asked about her wedding got nothing back. Had my first child they wouldn't speak about my mums labour to help paint a picture etc....

I understand people grieve in different ways but it's been over 10 years now and no one will talk about her which makes me sad. I often wonder what it would have been like being a child during these times - foods, hobbies, school life, toys etc...

Her parents are still alive and refuse to acknowledge she died. I know it must be horrible to lose a child but id love some answers about her life. My dad's family don't speak to me and I no longer have a relationship with my dad. (they were married when she died)

Her friends and work colleagues have told me bits but it's mainly things I already know.

I feel silly for asking but was hoping some people could share their experiences, might help me to get a picture??

Primary/early secondary school, late 60s/ early 70s.

Kids played jacks in primary school, and French skipping. There was a kind of divide between those who had modern, washable nylon fabrics for their clothes, and those that had their sisters cotton voluminous-skirted old-fashioned hand-me-downs to wear.
PE was with the Southampton Apparatus. Kids would hand upside down from the top bar, with no fear of falling. Country dancing was very popular too. Lessons were unstructured, and writing spontaneous. Less emphasis was placed on the importance of SPAG. We were shown flowers on the nature table and asked to write endless poems about nature.
Quite a few trainee teachers were hippies wearing long skirts. Conker fights, snowball fights: not much regard for health and safety. Tag and 'Last one on the white'.

Parenting could be neglectful - relatively. We would run along the bridge parapet over the railway track when the train was coming. We all played outside, with the older children taking charge of the younger ones.
Television was the thing: Crackerjack, Blue Peter, Dr Who. Children's TV ran till 6pm; then it was the evening news and adult broadcasting began.
Winter's seemed colder in the countryside and deep snow was to be expected. Christmas ran for 12 days and was a sumptuous holiday. Nobody seemed to say that it was a lot of fuss for one day.

Older boys wore long hair and looked great. The beginning of permissiveness, and a bit of wife-swapping between families. (Names of boys were Lee and Dean and loads of Mark and Andrews. Jackie and Julie reigned.) Platform shoes were in, and when the new headteachers banned high heels, the tough girls just got a knife and cut off the bottom of them, so they slanted in, or came to secondary school with plastic bags on their feet.

Lots of girls and boys formed serious relationships at fifteen and sixteen, and probably went on to marry those partners. Romance was loving, and music was, and maybe still is, the backdrop to all those affairs. Minnie Ripperton and Barry White bring back those memories of cheesecloth blouses and double denim.

Girls would smoke Consulate and More, thinking the menthol masked the smell, and Gold spot breath-freshener for before you went home.

I'm a year younger than your mum. There was a close just up the road that was almost car-free and almost all the kids in the street would congregate there to play from littlies of maybe 2 or 3 to 11-12 yr olds. We'd take everything with us from our house in the morning (at least three houses away) to take care of eventualities (bike, roller skates, marbles). Also spent ages doing competitive hand-stands on one particular garden. One family did not play out and they were considered Very Strange. We had access to fields, bridleways, and woods and went all over the place. No watches so I have no idea how or when we came back again.

At the weekend we were given 5p for sweets and went to the nearest shop (seemed miles but I'm sure it wasn't ), which included crossing one busy road, to buy the paper for DDad. Spent AGES with the 5p deciding which sweets we wanted as they were the only ones we got each week. 6 jelly babies for 1/2p was very good value... Must have driven the shopkeeper mad .

We walked ourselves anywhere we needed or wanted to go - to school or brownies (so were definitely under 9). Kids who got lifts to school were few & far between. One of our friends got a VHS machine when I was about 12 - we thought they were very fancy. Microwaves - you could get special microwave dishes to cook things in them.

The roaming was great - and of course we didn't appreciate it!

And made perfume from rose petals.

Water fights with empty fairy washing up bottles.

I remember wearing tank tops and long socks.

We wore long dresses to parties where we ate sandwiches and crisps followed by jelly and icecream in paper bowls with petal shaped edges. We played party games. The parties were always in people's houses.

High slides that would never be allowed in playgrounds now on health and safely grounds.

I was born in 1965. I lived in a village and my childhood was all about making dens in the woods etc. By secondary school I could go into town with my friend and spend some money in C&A or Chelsea Girl if I was feeling flush. Ra-ra skirts were popular, leg-warmers because of Fame! Drainpipe jeans were in, then stonewashed or snow washed denim became popular.

School was quite old fashioned, boys still got the cane, did woodwork, tech drawing, and girls did cookery and typing, though we all could do sciences, humanities and languages. My school was a comprehensive and only the top set did O levels, most of the rest did CSEs but there were Easter leavers who could leave without taking any exams if they were already 16. Usually straight to a factory job.

We listened to Adam and the Ants, The Specials, Boy George, Duran Duran and everyone watched Top of the Pops! Eye-shadow was extreme.

Yogurts became popular, and suddenly everyone had a microwave. Frozen, microwaveable pizzas were a delicacy! Food in my house had been quite plain, meat and veg, lots of chips, basically potatoes with every meal, never rice or pasta until I was in my late teens.

Drinks were Woodpecker cider or maybe a Cinzano and lemonade or Laski Reisling wine. Until I discovered vodka and orange. Avoided Pernod and black!

I hope that gives you a taste of the time.

We were relatively wealthy and had central heating from when I was born. But this was definitely far less common in the late 60’s / early 70’s. Perhaps half the population had central heating at this stage. We didn’t have fitted carpet downstairs though. Large rugs were common place.

I remember getting our first washing machine and sat and watched it, fascinated, like it was a tv. As has been discussed, we only had 3 channels and they stopped during the day and at night when the national anthem played on the bbc. It was therefore the girl test card on the tv or the washing machine.

Most people had one car or none at all. The 1973 oil embargo sent oil prices sky rocketing and petrol was rationed for a time. Car owners struggled to pay for petrol. People walked a lot more than today and I vaguely remember my great grandfather, who cycled everywhere despite being in his late 70’s. About 10 miles to and from work every day until he retired.

I had far more freedom to roam around and my parents allowed me to do much more than the current generation. Going to the pub and getting served from about 15/16 was common place even though some of the landlords knew my friends and I were underage. The first time my friend and I got asked for ID, we were 18 and we found it outrageous and hilarious all rolled into one.

Life was far more regimented. Shops closed at 5.30. Local small shops all had half day closing on the same day and nothing was open on a Sunday. A lot of children had nothing to do so going to Sunday school seemed like a good idea as it gave us something to do and a way of seeing other children; didn’t play with our friends on Sunday either. These were family days.

Jimmy Saville was a country treasure with his programme Jim I’ll Fix It. He sat on the tv with a massive cigar in his mouth and a little kid on his lap. I was a bit too old for Rolf Harris but he had his own tv show and used to hum and sing along as he drew a picture for the viewers. People were very naive and trusting.

I was born in 1964 and married in the 80's. We were really quite poor and had very little 'stuff' but we had a lot of freedom to roam around and do as we pleased. School was much stricter and corporal punishment was the norm but i enjoyed my schooldays all the same. We played chasing, or with marbles or skipping ropes at break time. There wasn't a lot of after school activities although i did dancing for a year or two and swimming for a couple of terms. My favourite hobby was stamp collecting, and of course reading, and i had a couple of pen pals i wrote to regularly. My father rarely if ever went to the pub and my mother never drank at all so that wasn't the norm for everyone. We never went out for dinner but would go to a cafe occasionally if we were shopping in town. We didn't have a toy shop as such but a trip to woolworths was a big treat, buying sweets and mooching through the toys. Cheap shops like primark were opening just as i hit my teens so i was able to buy fashionable clothes with money i made from babysitting. Disco bars were the in thing in the 80s and the social scene was pretty great, where i live anyway. I had my children in the 90s and i think it was a golden age really, lots of understanding about bonding etc and encouragment to breastfeed without any of the social media judgyness around now. I married young but felt no pressure to marry or have babies, if i had been ambitious i felt i could have pursued a career. It wasn't all rosy, but i feel the 70s and 80s were a time of great optimism.

Some of the things that I remember. I was born in 66.
Playing on building sites. We lived on a new build estate. The new houses weren't surrounded by security fences.
The rep from Pearl Insurance coming round to collect installments.
Single glazed windows in our 60's house. Cold in winter, hot in summer.
Mum going to the post office with her family allowance (like child benefit) book. It had coupons which the postmaster would stamp and mum would get cash.
Standing outside shops next to the pram holding my DSIS while mum went shopping.
Mum drinking Cinzano and lemonade. Dad drinking best bitter.

I was born in 1968. I remember coming home from school at lunchtime for school dinners and walking to school from the age of about seven on my own. I played out a lot with a gang of kids in the road, we played on our bikes a lot making ramps. In the summer we would go to an amazing play scheme at the local school and do crafts and go on a bouncy castle and watch films in the afternoon. Every saturday afternoon was visiting grand parents and listening to the hugely boring list of football results on the TV.
TV channels were very limited, we watched Grange Hill as teenagers, Crackerjack and the bionic man and Charlies angels, Starsky and Hutch and later Dallas ,and Dynasty. We went to the newsagents once a week to buy our Jackie magazine and read about teenage problems and romances. Holidays were always in the UK - seaside towns or visiting family, day trips were picnics etc.

So sorry OP. I was born in 1968.

Summers in the 1970s were hot, and winters were cold. In the summer of 1977 there were street parties for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, with lots of bunting and jollity. We watched Blue Peter on our new colour TVs and submitted terrible designs for commemorative stamps and covers of the Radio Times.

Boys (usually boys) raced around on Chopper bikes and played with Action Man, who sometimes did improper things to their sisters’ Sindy dolls.

The milkman delivered milk in bottles to the doorstep very early in the morning, with foil lids which used to get pecked at by blue tits wanting the cream. Milk was not homogenised and so the cream separated out at the top.

School dinners were lukewarm and stodgy, with a main course often followed by a steamed pudding or crumble with slightly congealed Bird’s custard. Primary school children also got free milk at morning break, provided in tiny individual bottles each with a straw through the foil lid.

Pocket money was small change really, but enough to go to the corner shop and get a brown paper packet of sweets chosen from old-fashioned glass jars which had tiny sweet shovels in them (but only the shopkeeper was allowed to touch them). If you had a whole pound note then that was a big deal and would probably get you a single (record) with change left over.

The winter of 1978-9 was famously long and cold. It was still snowing in the first week of May! That was the week of the general election at which Margaret Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister.

Food started to become more packaged and processed in the early 80s. M&S first packaged a sandwich in about 1980, and with the arrival of microwave ovens shortly afterwards it also cornered the market in new-fangled “ready meals”.

Daytime TV wasn’t really a thing (at least on the BBC) until the mid-80s. There was something called Pebble Mill at One, aimed I presume at bored housewives, but then there wasn’t a lot until the children’s after-school programmes.

A pp has mentioned that phone calls were cheaper after 6pm, but there was also a premium period before 1pm when they were most expensive. In our house nobody made a phone call in the morning!

I was born in this era too. Memories of Top of the Pops on a Thursday night, lived in a cul de sac and there was always someone outside to hang out with, was given relative freedom but always in by dark and mum would call us in from the house when it was dinner. I do recall a tough financial time in the 70s but the 80s were easier. Extended family were more important than they seem to be now, this could be because the family has moved out from London and scattered across the South of England. Hobbies were reading, frequented the local library as books were expensive, Rubix cube, swimming, ice skating. Television was limited in choice and so listened to the radio more. Food was whatever was in the house, there weren't frequent trips to the shops. Making daisy chains and flower pressing were popular too. Hope you get some answers, people do deal with grief in different ways.

Born 73 and pretty well off.

Memories.

3tv channels. Then 4. Kids TV at weekend was morning only and then horseracing and grand Prix seemed to be on for hours. So you kind of had to find stuff to do.

Playing out with other local kids and not being home for hours
Reading a lot
Making up shit incomprehensible games with my brother that we played for hours

When older. Being able to spend a whole day with a friend on the high street just in Freeman hardy Willis, a small top shop and boots looking at makeup

Wearing a lot of white clothes

Mini stilettoes

Lots of tits everywhere. Page 3, garages, pubs all sorts of places you were confronted with breasts. I didn't like that.

Films! Star wars, Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters.. that was good.

Everything except garden centres shut on Sunday. Like, everything. As a teen Sundays were awful.

Great music with a wide range of styles etc- top of the pops. The emergence of electronics music and hip hop to mainstream. Madonna, Wham, pet shop boys.

Dracula teeth and sherbert dipdabs.

BIG HAIR

I'm sorry about your mum op. It was a great time to be young.

Older. Awesome clubs

Oh yes! Hottest summer. Massive storm.

Blackouts in the 70s. My parents had a gas lamp thing on standby!

Also not so good.

Cold war. Nukes. Poll tax. Miners strike. IRA bombs.

Where did your mum live op? Experiences varied widely, depending on which part of the country you grew up in and what social class you belonged to.

If you Google Follyfoot on youtube you get an idea of how " sparse" life was in the early 70s. I watched it recently and I'd forgotten things were that way, having a coal fire etc. I also rewatched the Didakoi and the violence of the kids just wouldnt be portrayed in tv programmes aimed at children nowadays.

Persevere with your grandparents though, it will.be therapeutic for them to talk about her if only they'd open up Sorry for your loss.

@LimaFoxtrotCharlie

Parenting was not neglectful in the 60s/70s. And not all fathers spent time in the pub, and women were definitely in pubs too if they wanted. This may have been true for your family but certainly not for mine

Agree.

I was born in 1967 and don't recognise Ludo's neglectful parenting by our standards at all. Quite the opposite actually. One could argue that parenting is more neglectful now as parents seem to be less 'present' even when they're with their children.

I can only give you my own experiences of course. Mum and dad were lovely, warm funny people. The house was always warm and tidy, mum worked part time and dad was home every night. My sister and I went to brownies and dancing lessons and spent a lot of time outdoors. We lived The Osmonds, The Bay City Rollers and David Cassidy and the Alpine lorry came round every Wednesday with various bottles of flourescent looking ginger (fizzy drinks). We had scotch pies and chips every Friday night for a treat and I loved coming through the front door every night after school because the kitchen door would be open and I could see mum in the kitchen making us toast as a snack. My grandpa lived round the corner so he was there most days too and on a Sunday we'd visit my gran's massive house with our cousin's and we'd play for hours sliding down the bannister's on the double staircase.

TV programmes I remember were Trumpton, Camberwick Green, the Clangers, Mr Benn, Fingerbobs, Magpie, Blue Peter, Grange Hill and Runaround.

Come the early 80s it was all Adam and the Ants, Haircut 100 and Spandau Ballet. I got a Walkman for my birthday and thought I was the bee's knees. I had a very happy childhood.

I lived in the outskirts of a fairly industrial town in a council house. Both mum and dad worked , my mum worked part time. When dad came home he expected a home cooked dinner on the table, and this happened every night.
We had an open fire and no central heating , so it was freezing upstairs in the winter.
When I was under 10 ish my mum made most of my clothes as she was very good with a sewing machine , and she knitted a fair bit as well . My dad was kind but quite strict . I can remember being smacked by both of them if I was naughty . I was allowed to catch the bus into town with my friend to watch Saturday's morning pictures ( cinema) which was quite a thing back then for kids . It showed an ongoing series , and a film but not a big Disney or anything like that.
Teachers were fairly strict , and you were given scary stories about going up to Secondary school about being beatned up by the big kids but I don't think that really happened.
There wasn't many after school activities . Girls mainly did ballet, brownies or guides .
Where I lived we had an indoor swimming pool in town , but as a family was taken to the outdoor one in the local park in the summer.
Back then children we given a lot more freedom to play outside and I probably was allowed to go to the local wreck ( play park ) from about 10 ish without adult supervision .

How about if you went to your local library. They should be able to recommend books written that could relate to that location and time period.

Also, many news papers also have digital archives, so you could look at the newspaper topics/headlines for those places and times. Local newspapers also include may photos.

Also, if you do know the school, then they may have a record/store of older photographs, etc.

Re childbirth etc - rare for dads to be allowed into the delivery suite. My mum was just with hospital staff, and the family don’t know much about my birth as they weren’t there. Also rare to talk about it. Dad would have been horrified to have known any details. He was at home having tea, cooked by his parents when I finally was born.
In a Nightingale ward of 20 beds, only 1 woman was breast feeding and that’s because she insisted. It wasn’t really the done thing (north east). Staff were quite 🙄 with her.
In hospital for a week, babies taken to the nursery overnight so mums could rest. Strict visiting hours and no sitting on the bed.
No buggies - traditional prams, my mum didn’t drive so walked everywhere and the shopping went underneath on a basket.
On the rare occasions we went in a car I didn’t have a seat. Or a belt. Just sat on mum’s knee.
Solids at 3 months apparently- rusks first and then mashed up home cooked dinners.

Toilet-timed and sat on the potty regularly. I was trained by 13 months.
There were few working mums where I lived, and all the mums walked their kids to school - nobody did a ‘I’ll walk them all on a Monday if you do Tuesday’ kind of routine. I remember the mums all chatting together while we jumped in puddles. No mums drove.

I hope this is useful, and is helping you, OP. It’s bringing lots of lovely memories back for me 😘

What geographical area & economic status was she OP? I ask because my early life in a council house in a mining area & teenage years through the miners strike will be completely different to that of a doctor's daughter in the home counties.

Hi OP
can you perhaps look at threads local to where your mum grew up or went to school? You often find that people talk about more local things and that may give you a special view. Do your mum's friends have any stories, I am sure they would love to tell you about her schooldays.

I was born in the 60s .Remember growing up having lots of freedom ,cycling for miles , "Playing out" . Lost my dad at 8 so see where you are coming from .Seems a pity your family cant talk about her .When Dad died I wanted to talk about him, but my GP and DM didnt like to discuss him with me as I "got upset!" Just how it was then I think . That whole period of the 70s was as PP said somewhat misogynistic really .

I'm close in age to your mum. We used to go out to play all day unsupervised, building camps in the woods, football on the field, hide and seek. Home in time for tea!

Tv was three channels and you had to press a button to change programs, kids tv was on for a short while at lunchtime and after school.

We didn't have central heating so in winter would get dressed in the living room in front of the fire, and sleep with hot water bottles.

I recall my school dinners being great, we would sit in class mouths watering during the morning. Our school served roast dinners, steak pie, and lovely puddings. At home frozen food was just becoming popular so we had things like fish fingers, frozen pizza, findus crispy pancakes etc. When I was a teen my dm started cooking spaghetti bolognese which was quite exciting at the time.

My parents would go out together to the local members club on Saturday nights, where they had a Cabaret on with mixed entertainment. Dad would go out Sunday lunchtimes whilst dm cooked Sunday lunch. We never went for family meals out until I was a teenager, even then choice was limited. No such thing as fast food. Think McDonald's opened locally when I was about 16 in the mid 80s.

I was also born in 68, and grew up in a leafy village in the south east, my mum born during the war had grown up in a council house and my dads parents were better off. Both lived close by and we saw them all the time.
We moved home when I was 5 and I can remember playing out with friends from the first house so we were outside unsupervised at a very young age.
My brother is 9 years younger than me and I can remember that we would take him to the park on our own as a toddler, and that we would go out for hours to the park and beyond to the stream to play, this all has to be before the age of 12 as we drifted apart from our friends on the street when we went to secondary school.
We had 1 tv in the lounge with 3 channels although we didn’t really watch itv as it was ‘common’ my favourite programme growing up was Blake’s 7. The lounge was brown and cream with some sort of fuzzy wallpaper. The kitchen orange and we had a twin tub washing machine.

My dad’s family had their own business so we had 2 cars, mum didn’t work again after I was born so we would spend the summer holidays at the seaside in a caravan. We went abroad for the first time when I was 12 but I didn’t fly until I was 16.