To think the 70s/80s/90s were better?

[alienbaby]

Okay, so I was born in 1987 so missed the 70s. But I've always kind of fetishised this decade. It seems like it was a great time to be young. Same with the 80s and 90s. Freedom and opportunities but without the more rigid feel we have now.

It was 2006 when I went off and travelled and started living alone, and it was great because we had the internet of course, but it wasnt as pervasive. It meant there was still a kind of mystery about things, like you still had to engage and improvise whereas now you can just sort things out online ahead of time.

Am I just romanticising or do you think too that in a lot of ways the 70s/80s/90s were kind of a "sweet spot" where we had progress but not so much progress that we felt disconnected?

As a 93 baby I regard myself highly lucky I was probably one of the last years to avoid social media becoming what it is today. It was just taking off when I finished secondary

Born mid 80’s so most of my childhood memories are of the 90s. I think it was better for kids than now ie kids tv, toys, games, music, way of life (no screens/internet, playing outside with other kids etc). I sometimes feel sorry for my own children that some of the more wholesome childhood experiences I had, they won’t.

1970s kid here.

OP - YABU about the 70s and 80s, but YANBU about the 90s.

70s - it still wasn't great to be a woman. They were mostly stay-at-home and housework was more difficult back then because the appliances were more basic. E.g. washing machine was twin-tub. Fridges were commonplace but freezers were a luxury. There were lots of power cuts. Rooms were divided up, so rooms were smaller, and fairly dimly lit compared to nowaday lighting. The toilet was often outside the house. Central heating wasn't that common yet. Sexism, racism and homophobia was rife. The main positive about the 70s though was 70s disco :-)

80s - a bit better, again with disco, music in general, and a great decade for movies. However, the fear of having a nuclear war was very real. This cast a shadow over most of the decade, and Chernobyl + aftermath only made it worse. Inflation was through the roof. Sexism/racism was still pretty bad.

90s - this is where I agree with the OP, that this decade was better than the 2010s-present. Music was at its best, especially Britpop/indie/dance. Politics started to ease off, especially with the voting in of Labour, and the IRA finally reached a peace agreement in the late 90s. It was a great time to be a clubber. Sexism/racism started to ease off a bit but still far from perfect.

00s - still pretty decent with early 00s music, internet and mobiles. Politics remained on the wayside, although 9/11 soured it somewhat.

10s and 20s - the rise of social media, and with that, the politics minefield. The left vs the right and Brexit. Corbyn destroying the Labour party so we're now a 1-party state. People getting into trouble on social media because of a witch-hunt digging up historic racist posts, but if it wasn't racist, they still get into trouble because someone got triggered. Then there is cancel culture for the same reasons. It's a minefield.

30s - probably a dystopian state and no one will have a voice any more.

The 90s was the best decade. Life was cheap. Everyone could get a council house, everyone working could buy a house. Food and fuel were cheap. Music and TV were great.

Going to the cinema was £3 and there were fab films out every week.

I feel sorry for my DC's.

I was born late 77 and think I have the best of all worlds. Old enough to remember most of the 80s music but the internet & computers were coming in as I went to college. No social media much in college so had a great time. Used maps and wrote letters or phoned friends, but had an SLR and later camera phones for travelling and holidays. I do wish we'd had more photos of ourselves as kids and there were no videos, my mother died in 2010 and I only have one video of her.

In saying that I was lucky enough to get a decent job before the recession and we managed to get married & buy a house a few years ago, things are more difficult now for young people.

Born mid 80’s so most of my childhood memories are of the 90s. I think it was better for kids than now ie kids tv, toys, games, music, way of life (no screens/internet, playing outside with other kids etc).

You didn't have TV in the 90s?

I saw what life was like in the UK in the late 1970s/early 1980s. It was shitty. People were poor. The food was terrible. The toilet paper was like wax paper. It was normal for uni students to live in bedsits where they would eat breakfast and supper with someone else's family and just live in an empty bedroom, but have to keep a constant supply of five p pieces to shove into the heater. I couldn't believe how little people got paid, yet how high the prices were. I don't know how people got by. People today are much luckier.

I was very young in the 70s. It was a great decade for music and social progress. We had so much more freedom than
kids of today.

Not so great for technology and medicine.
No ultra sound scans in pregnancy until the mid 70s, no internet, 3 TV channels, cancer was a death sentence and few people lived to beyond 80.

I was a child in the 70s and teen in the 80s and often think it was the best of times. So many rules, regulations and red tape these days and big brother tracking your every move. No mobiles or internet, simple pleasures and freedom. I feel sorry for the kids of today.

I wasn't an adult until the 1980s so no, that's not what I said Saysama. I said many people who are over 40 now.

I agree with you in that there are somethings going on now that are making life extremely difficult - to the extent that if I were young enough I might not dare to have children.

But there were difficult things in the 1970s like massive inflation, and society changing so much that though it was fun people could get hurt. Also remember things like rape in marriage was legal; women couldn’t get mortgages or loans on their own; men could abuse their wives with impunity. Abortion wasn’t easy till later. There was the tree day week. There were constant strikes. Power would get turned off at one stage. It was more difficult for women to have good careers in a wide variety of fields.

In the 1980s a lot of young people, especially young men died of AIDS. Until 1989 there was still the Berlin Wall. There was apartheid in South Africa for most of that decade. There was a lot of racism in general.

One really horrible thing that just wasn’t around was mainlining porn. People had romantic relationships where in general no one would have thought of strangling you and spitting on you and trying to have anal sex with you. I do not recall the prevalence of date rape drugs. Sex was more likely to be called making love, or sleeping with someone.

This is really niche but I really long for my childhood Christmases in 80s. Lights were coloured and from Woolworths (I love it so much I’m collecting them from eBay), I love the little baubles made of foil cones, the glittery Father Christmases…

Sorry this is such a specific part of the 80s but I loved it. We had hardly any money but there was no better joy than sitting in our dark (beige) living room with just the colourful tree lights on. Wonderful. I am trying to recreate it for my children.

I would love to think that every generation feels this way and is nostalgic for the past... But unfortunately I think you're right. So much feels like it's going wrong on such a big scale. People don't seem as content with life on the whole. So much distraction, consumption, waste.

I would have loved to have been a teen in the 70s. I long for it. I experienced the tail end of the 90s and wish I was just 10 years older as that was great too.

@A580Hojas I’m I over 40. Please tell me when this time when queer people were less marginalised was, as I seem to have missed it.

As I’ve said, discrimination protections came to pass fairly recently, so unless you’re talking about the noughties (which aren’t the subject of this thread and, as you’re also talking about pre-internet times, seems unlikely), then you’re just wrong. For example, discrimination protections on sexual orientation in employment only came into being in 2003. I’m not sure how any sane person can look at that and still think things are worse for queer people today. We could literally be sacked for our orientation and it wasn’t illegal, and this was whilst I (and all your queer friends over 40) were adults.

If you were straight and white, sure. If you were black, brown or gay, you were pretty much fucked. It wasn’t a particularly good time to be a woman or disabled, either. Or have mental health issues.

Sums it up perfectly.

If you were straight and white, sure. If you were black, brown or gay, you were pretty much fucked. It wasn’t a particularly good time to be a woman or disabled, either. Or have mental health issues.

Sums it up perfectly.

Aztec Camera from 1990

My MIL used to work in retail. She was pregnant with DH in the early 70s, she had to come off the shop floor once her pregnancy showed as they didn't have maternity uniforms. She wasn't encouraged to come back after having DH.

Many women were discouraged to work either after getting married or having a baby. She also left school at 15 with no qualifications.

I remember strikes and the power cuts in the 70s

I remember 3 children in my class were knocked down by cars during our time at Primary School, one was killed. Children having more freedom outside wasn't always a good thing.

Yanbu. Way better. Quite apart from the lack of lockdowns, before everyone had internet on phones, employers didn’t expect employees to work 24/7, and couples both watched tv together instead of staring at different stuff on their phones.

I was in my 20s in the 1970s. It was dire. The only good thing about it was that I was in my 20s but I was as bitter as hell that I was too young to have enjoyed the 60s. As for fashion, it was the decade style forgot. Politically it was a shitshower and the music was rubbish (the Bay City Rollers FFS!).

@DerAlteMann

I was in my 20s in the 1970s. It was dire. The only good thing about it was that I was in my 20s but I was as bitter as hell that I was too young to have enjoyed the 60s. As for fashion, it was the decade style forgot. Politically it was a shitshower and the music was rubbish (the Bay City Rollers FFS!).

In what way was it dire?

Not a fan of 70s music.

Not ignoring replies, just need to go to bed.

YANBU

Am really enjoying reading some of the posts!

I was a late 70s baby, teenager in the 90s!

I was born in 1980. My main memory of the 90s was how totally acceptable sexual assault was, and memories of the violence and abuse a guy family member faced.

I'll stick where we are, thanks.

Yeah it's nostalgia. You've getting old OP 😉

I think it's generally easier to have a good quality of life now: houses are in better condition, less draughty, it's cheaper to decorate, furnish and carpet nicely, cars are much much better (cars broke down all the fucking time in the 70s and 80s), clothes are way cheaper compared to wages, sorting things out is easier. Eg you could easily spend a day paying bills in the 70s, just that and nothing more, or buying a train ticket or something.

That said although it seems easier to make choices now re spending I do end up feeling baffled with the way information is put out to us by corps and orgs and I'm sure that is on purpose. It's like we feel we know more but in fact it's just different kinds of obfuscations and reading everything all through is time consuming and often not particularly elucidating.

I guess in the end we always end up limited by ourselves. Eg I got really excited about kazaa back in the day - imagine! Listen to any music you want! I spent hours doing just that, downloading loads of tracks I hadn't heard in years, suddenly it was all there for me without having to wait for it to hit a radio playlist. I really thought it would open up a new world for me

Now ofc I have Spotify and can do the same, but legally, but actually all Spotify does it let me listen to music I listen to anyway, or music very close to it. I can do more of the same, but not anything different.

As the years go by I've found that the best way of really opening up to new ideas is through the same mediums I always used and that were always there - trying different radio stations, at different times, reading new literature, physically going to live theatre and music, especially if it's an invitation from someone I don't know so well. For all the charms and convenience of the digital world, it's the analogue world that gets me moving forward.

I was a child/teenager in the 70s and a young adult in the 80s, and I agree that they were great times. Of course some things have improved since then, but life was so much more simple and people seemed to have more time to enjoy life. There wasn't the pressure there is now, and people interacted more - and as we didn't have the internet or mobile phones we didn't miss them! Fashion and music was so much fun.

OP, the good thing about living now is that you can enjoy all the '70s music and fashion without any of the social shit that was happening then. For me, as a kid in 1970s Sydney, it was a time of freedom and sunshine, eating icypoles and roaming the neighbourhood. Dogs and kids would be shooed out in the morning and left to free-range until sundown.

For my mother, who had to work full time to support us, it was no fun:

No after-school or holiday childcare
Frequent blackouts and snap transport strikes
Shops shut at 5pm, so she spent her lunchbreak queuing for food
Almost no women's refuges; Australia's first was started in a derelict house in Sydney in 1974, and the managers dealt marijuana to fund it as there was no govt support
Police and courts refused to take DV seriously
Drinking and driving was a man's inviolable right
Cost of food, utilities, clothes and medical care was sky-high compared to wages.

Gay people had a terrible time. Being sacked from their jobs and told to leave the state was not uncommon. "Poofter bashing" was a sport, as any gay man who survived being thrown off the cliffs at Bondi would tell you. Many did not survive, and the police didn't bother investigating. "Just another bloody poofter ... er, accident, sir."