Things that were normal but wouldn't fly these days

[ChopSuey2]

Not really an AIBU but we totally derailed another thread. Following on from the thread about TV programmes that may or may not have been appropriate for young children, I'm wondering what things were totally normal in your childhood but would not be considered acceptable today.

Some of the ones I have been reminded of from the other thread include

• travelling without a seatbelt, in the footwell, in the boot, in the back of a van on a cardboard box
• graphic public safety videos at primary school
• watching graphic true crime under the age of 10
• smoking in cars and homes with kids, smoking in pubs and taking kids to pubs late at night
• playing out under the age of 10 with parents not knowing where their kids are precisely

The ‘dollybirds’ is so not in the past. Check out any Moto GP race-lots of scantily clad fixed grin women holding a parasol/umbrella over the competitors. Very old fashioned and should be banned.

Seems a bit mild when we can switch on the tv and see such shit as 'naked & afraid', 'love island', 'naked attraction' etc and a myriad of sex shows in the name of entertainment.

Photocopying your passport with a different birthdate expertly applied and being able to use it as ID to get into clubs. 🤣

There was loads around in the 90s, largely due to angry, rubbish, parent-centred parenting. Eating disorders out the wazoo too.

I don't think it is! I have lived all over Scotland and it's definitely not the norm.

When I was in the SIxth form we were supposed to walk up to the Church in town for a Carol service, it was pouring down and one of the teachers was walking to his car, quite a small convertible. 5 of us persuaded him to give us a lift, three squashed into the back and two in the front, I was in the front with another girl on my lap, we had to get out though so he could put the handbrake off, No bloody way am I putting my hand under there!

@garlictwist as have I

Sending your 6 year old to the shop for cigarettes. Getting into pubs/clubs underage, no identification needed. Leaving your baby in a pram outside a shop unattended.

But in the 70s and into the 80s there were no car seats for babies, only for toddlers so when we were travelling the carry cot would be on the back seat, the baby not strapped in in any way so did tend to roll a bit. We travelled back and forth to our work home in Europe many times like that.

You're brave, voicing what a lot of us think!

I was taught "catch a piggie by its toe" and couldn't figure out why a friend told me I couldn't sing it because it was racist. I grew up outside the UK.
When I moved back in the early 90s, the "P shop" expression was used a lot where we lived and naive as I was I couldn't figure out what it meant

Working in an office full of paper with people smoking all around me and flicking their ash into a bin of paper. 1990!

When a couple of us forgot our swimming kit at school, the teacher took us along with him while he got some shopping while the class was having their lesson.

I remember sitting on my grannies knee in the back seat of the car in the early 90s. If there weren't enough seatbelts, it was a shrug and "oh well."

As a primary school teacher now, I also goggle at the memory of schools being wide open to the public into the early 90s. Thinking about my secondary school, anyone could have walked right into a classroom from outside. Nowadays schools are like fort knox.

A friend of mine told me she was sent to the corner shop on her own to buy something for her mum at the age of three.

I was certainly using buses on my own from the age of about seven, walking to school with the other kids (eldest nine) aged five, playing in the river half a mile from home with no adult supervising aged about eight, in and out of all the houses of neighbours who had children all day and every day in the holidays and my mother would have no idea where we were and wasn't bothered.

The decline of smoking is the biggest one for me.

My 11 year old DD is disgusted by the smell of cigarettes even outside (which is a good thing). I was explaining to her that until about 20 years ago every pub, bar and even many restaurants reeked of tobacco. I flew long-haul at the age of 19 on a plane where about half the passengers were smoking. People would routinely smoke in cars and offices. It was totally normal, even smokers didn't really question it and people who disliked it were accused of being precious.

I even had a boss who was allowed a special dispensation to continue smoking in our (open plan) office for years after the smoking ban because the company was so scared to lose her.

It's just unthinkable today that smoking indoors in a commercial or public space would be tolerated but it was totally normal until about 2004. I think a lot of Gen Zs can't get their heads around how ubiquitous tobacco was.

In my profession (funeral) I obviously come across a few elderly people (widows/widowers) we have a black funeral Director, and he’s often referred to as ‘the coloured one’ by them. It makes me cringe, but I smile brightly as I know that wasn’t offensive in their day.

Was there? I worked in mental health in the 90s, and definitely wouldn’t have said this. (Although worked in secure services so possibly wouldn’t have seen it). Anecdotally from friends who have always worked with young people is how much more demand there is now and how ‘normal’ life experiences are medicalised more readily now.

I miss those days, everything is so uptight now.

This is me, granny sent me to the corner shop for 20 Silk Cut aged 6

Me too @StarInTheHeavens !!!

My dad used to leave me on my own in the car with a bar of chocolate while he played golf for an hour at the driving range. About 1988.

Sitting outside a pub on the kerb with a little glass bottle of lemonade and a paper straw if you were lucky. Your parents were inside! No children allowed in pubs in the 70s.

This was the norm. My mother used to do the train journey, Edinburgh to London, 'care of the guard'. This would be in the early 1940s.

I remember feeling a bit disappointed when the crash helmet law came in, as I had enjoyed feeling the wind in my hair on the back of a boy's motor bike, doing a ton. (My mother would have had kittens if she knew)

Going upstairs on the bus, to be allowed to smoke, but it stank so badly. Most places did. People who literally had brown nicotine stains on their fingers.

Piling into cars and vans as teenagers, no seat belts, no seats in some cases.

Drunk driving

Awful sexism as normal behaviour from boys and men of all ages.

To my eternal shame (now) I smoked throughout pregnancy. It was never suggested that it was a bad idea in 1975.