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

Smoking in the office, includig the reception area when dealing with the public!

@Cherrysoup the motor racing grid girls, and boxing ring girls have been banned for a few years now.

As a child I didn't know it was a slur. I find it very hard to believe that adults didn't know that, though, especially the adults in my neighbourhood (a fairly diverse area of central London).

So can I ask what will the middle aged be writing about in 40 years time that passes us by now do you think ?
It probably sounds wrong but these thread make me nostalgic even though all these things should have rightly been consigned to history

QueenSmartypants, in the States this is known as free-range kids / parenting. Neighbours have called the cops on folk who let their kids walk to school alone. Fucking mad... (although, yes, gun crime). I let my kid so as he pleases, and lots of other parents don’t like it.

They are live and kicking in Moto GP, which is what I specified. Very Europe focused, but also travels worldwide, including the UK last year.

Things that were normal for me ( late 80’s)

• Being put in the boot of the car for a journey ,if the back seat was full
• Getting left unsupervised at the cinema or kids indoor play area ( for hours whilst parents at the pub )
• getting sent to the shops alone age 5 or 6 to buy biscuits etc for my gran ( shops were not in sight of house and inside a precinct )
• hanging around in a family room at the back of a pub with my cousins with crisps and cola and given money to play the fruit machines
• watching 18 rated movies from a really young age
• sitting on home made booster seats in back of car made out of foam cubes parcel taped together ( definitely never had a real car seat or booster seat)

These were all standard things that we happily went along with that would be completely unacceptable nowadays.

Give them a cheap PAYG phone with no internet access.

Children often don't. They hear a word and copy it then these things get bandied round the playground and you have lots of children using words they don't fully understand, because they take things at face value.

I remember watching this - Whacko I think it was with Jimmy Edwards. I honestly thought nothing of it at the time.

Dave Allen always had a cigarette in his hand while doing stand up comedy(he actually sat on a stool)

This thread is fascinating and as I was born in the late 60s, I can relate to much that has already been mentioned.
In 1982, aged 15, a group of us went on a school holiday to Majorca.
We (some of us) used to bribe the porter to let us out at night time to hit the local nightspots when we we’re supposedly tucked up in bed…
After getting away with this at least twice, the teachers called a meeting to inform us they’d got wind of this (we went to the meeting in the free t shirts we’d been given by one venue - ‘club cocaine’ - totally brazen 😂) but instead of punishment, they said we could carry on, but they would accompany us!
So that’s what they did, whilst we all carried on (as did they) drinking and smoking. I distinctly remember having a crème de menthe, as I thought this was a really sophisticated drink.
If this happened now, it would’ve been in the tabloids and the teachers would’ve lost their jobs!

@ChopSuey2 I'm sorry to say that the shouting of sexual comments from vans/cars still happens according to my teen daughter, at underage girls in school uniform.

Sexual abuse.

Walking down to the local shop with a note from my mum and a fistful of cash to buy her fags from the age of 6/7 and upwards.

Probably unfettered access to social media and the internet. It’s still a Wild West & especially for kids, dependant on parents being tech savvy enough to manage.

Smoking really wasn't as well tolerated as some people think. My first job was in 1983 and there was a kind of "unwritten" rule of no smoking in open offices, communal areas, kitchen, loos, etc. Most people would go and smoke in a kind of "lean to" at the back of the building - not open air, more of a store room. A few "senior" staff who had their own offices smoked in them. My second firm in 1986, it seems open season for smokers - people would wonder between offices puffing away, people smoked in open plan offices, etc. Third firm in 1989 was a definitely "no smoking", not even for people in their own offices - it was definitely "smoke free" and if you wanted to smoke, you went into the back yard to do it. Fourth firm in 1993 had an upstairs floor used for archive filing and storage which also had a room with darts board and pool table - that's where staff went to smoke, strict no smoking on the main floors and communal areas where most people worked. So it definitely varied between firms over just a decade of my early working experience.

It just seemed normalised. One parent I have had to continually correct about language and they're only 60 so I guess they did know. I personally never associated any bad connotations with the words back then so I suppose it was casual racism that went over my head.

Oh, sure. But it wasn't just children using it, it was parents too. It just really surprises me looking back because as long as I've known the n word, I've known that it was unacceptable to use - so why was the p word acceptable? I guess my point is that the parents in that neighbourhood would've almost certainly known that it was a slur, and yet nobody ever challenged its use.

Children orking in a cotton mill; going up chimneys. O tempora, o mores!

I don't think I mentioned the 90s, did I?

It was in fairly common use until about the mid 80s from memory, or maybe early 80s.

And by that I mean used genuinely as a 'normal' or even 'affectionate' term by many. Then I think the NF, racist football fans etc turned it into a racist insult.

But some TV 'comedy' shows were still including the word until at least the late 80s.

You might want to @QueenSmartypants but someone will probably call the police. When I looked up the Avanti policy for my 9 year old, because my sister wanted to meet him off the train (one stop, 30 minutes), it said that they hand all unaccompanied children under 13 over to BTP. Not sure if that would actually happen, but no way would I risk my poor kid being put in that situation. The stories on this thread about working mothers who in the past were perfectly able to go to work and not pay a fortune for childcare makes me think this isn't really progress.

Being left outside school for hours while waiting for a parent to collect me.
The Cleaners would come and go.
The Caretaker use to lock the gates in the end and I’d be waiting on the kerb in the dark.
Happened most days, no one cared.

Being able-as a fairly young teenager-to buy single cigarettes from the corner shop.