To wonder about sunburnt children before suncream was popularised?

[Leah5678]

Apparently wasn't popularised until the 70s. With children playing outside practically every day back in the days before television was invented how did they not burn? Did they just get used to it?
Apologies if this is an extremely stupid question just something I've been wondering about with the last few days of decent weather

I remember having the hump about having to put on sunscreen when I was on holiday in Spain in the early 60's . I was about 6 or 7 . My mum pinned me down and smothered me. I was playing with a brother and sister the same age as me and their mum didn't smother them. I moaned every time she put it on me until one morning they didn't come out to play. They had such severe sunburn their back was one huge blister. I can remember seeing it clearly even now some 50 odd years later. It was awful and they were in such pain. Mum didn't need to actually pin me down after that.

I was born in the 1960s and, as young children, we had baby oil put on us. It did protect us a bit but paler family members did get sunburn a little.

I'm quite lucky as I only go brown, albeit slowly. During the 1980s I used tanning oil to get a deeper tan. I'm much more careful these days and tend to use factor 15 on exposed areas.

red head here with classic pale skin born in the mid 50s spent most of the summer a pretty shade r red with millions of freckles

I used to get horrendous sunburn, my mum didn’t like the feel of sun cream so she either didn’t put it on or such a small amount it did nothing. My dads hands were so rough I didn’t like him putting it on

70s baby here, pale, freckly always burned, never tanned. Sun cream was rarely used. Have already had one non melanoma skin cancer removed....

Yeah, that was kind of my point, lol.

The people who got awful burns in the seventies are the ones who are having cancers and moles removed now.

What do you make of all the posts on this thread from posters who were regularly burned to blistering? The posts about scarring and heatstroke and skin cancer in later life? Are we all making it up?

The "building up a base tan" idea doesn't work for those of a naturally pale complexion. Didn't in the 70s and doesn't now.

@fieldsofbutterflies sorry I think I was meant to quote someone else. I definitely agree!

Badly sunburned as a child throughout the 70’s (hotter, sunnier country than the UK).

I have bad sun damage. As soon as I was old enough to take control and have access to sun protection I sorted it out myself, maybe from about age 13, but the damage was done.

I still resent my mother (olive skin, never burned) for letting blistering sunburn happen to me again and again. I remember being bedridden with it when I was 5.

i had my first basal cell carcinoma removed in my 40s.

My mum was actually pretty militant about sun protection for the time. It's just that when 15 was the strongest sun cream you could buy, it still wasn't that strong. I do remember getting red, but not to blister or peeling stage, so definitely better than a lot of my friends who "burnt to tan". I do remember mum getting very cross with my dad when he took me to a water park and didn't reapply the cream, so I burnt. I have carried this on and been careful with the sun my whole adult life.

I grew up in the 70s, my parents were quite ahead of themselves as I was fair skinned and blonde.

I used to be covered in a product called Maws Sun and Wind Cream (what is windburn anyway and how can a cream protect me from it??)

Liberally rubbed in with a bit of sand for effect, I think it was very zinc oxide heavy but it worked a treat.

Same. And my parents didn’t seem overly concerned about it either. I spent many holidays abroad having Savlon plastered on my badly burnt shoulders and back. The thing that worries me is that medical bodies say that a lot of skin cancers in late life are as a result of being badly burned as children.

My dad and brother were fishermen , dad had many surgeries for skin cancer before he passed away and my brother had massive surgery to his head for skin cancer last year even though he was darker skinned like my mam.

I was burned every holiday , I think it’s inevitable I will get skin cancer too

I was born 1964 and Mum always pit suncream on me, and herself, if we were at the beach. She got it from Avon or Boots. Only burnt once when Dad was in charge for the day and didn't bother.

Born in the mid 70s and wore sun cream but only on the beach or in swimsuits and remember friends burning. I am fair but not ultra fair and didn’t burn on my arms and legs as they were out all year round and weathered. Most burns I remember (mine and friends) were shoulders or backs in swimwear.

I was talking to my mum about this recently. She said they used to put olive oil on!

I was 10 in 1976 the year of the endless summer, we'd never heard ofsuncream lol. I didn't go abroad til I was thirteen and burnt badly ' peeling' was like a rite of passage. I think it wasn't good but genes also play a part in cancer. I did have one friend who died of skin cancer and my dad had endless ' moles removed ( he worked outside all his working life) I think it's worth putting on suncream now but not to be obsessed we need sun for vit D 😁

I shouldn’t have opened this thread, it’s terrifying.

I've had melanoma twice. No one else in my family has. When I go to the clinic- I feel like one of the young ones there...

Fanatical about sunscreen - and always have been. Can only remember being burnt once.

Many atypical moles.

My kids have been lathered in factor 50 almost daily since young.

Working at sea and a love of sunbeds

I was that child before suncream. We used to burn and then have fun peeling off whole sheets of burnt white skin. This was every single time we were on our local beach. I was sunburnt a lot.

Today's and indeed yesterday's children are so protected and rightly so.

It was not a lipoma. The consultant wrote in the letter to my GP; 'This is clinically not a lipoma'. I had a number of MRIs and scans and a biopsy. And a letter of apology from my GP for misdiagnosis.

I was going to say that about the olive oil! I never did it. I got burned repeatedly team with sunstroke. I wore a hat and kept out of the sun as much as I could!

I'm very fair, vintage 1950s, and every picture of me as a toddler on holiday has me wearing long sleeves, trousers and a very wide brimmed sombrero hat. Don't recall sun protection cream until the 70s, and even then, you were basting the skin rather than protecting it.
As an adult, I've always been careful not to burn, but when you're as fair as I am it's not easy. I could burn one arm and half of my face having the window down in the car, until I used sun beds in the early 80s. God only knows what they did to my skin, but I do not burn so ridiculously easily since, though I am still very careful and never rely on sunblock. Whilst I will snooze in the sun after a swim on holiday until my swimsuit is dry - 5 minutes each side tops - I have never sunbathed abroad. How people can lay out all day in tropical sun is beyond me. They anoint themselves with sun cream, so maybe they don't actually burn, but I wonder what else the sun and the chemicals in the screen are doing to them.

That is utter bollocks. I never ever "built up a gradual tan" - I am very fair-skinned! Even now I really only go a deeper shade of pale!