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

Then came hot summer holidays and the hole in the ozone layer. Plus sun beds (how on earth they are still legal I do not know)

I know! One opened in the next village a few weeks ago! I was surprised that 1- they are still legal and 2- anyone thinks there's a market fit

That is true. But sun exposure in the 70s was a lot like how smoking was viewed in the 50s. The general public opinion was that you don’t need sun cream as the sun isn’t some awful cancer causing threat to life. Many, like my dad, thought it was overpriced snake oil and the chemicals in it more likely to cause cancer than a bit of Sun. A certain % even thought a tan was healthy……get that sun on you,

literally my mum would put me naked on a picnic blanket in the full sun in our garden for at least a couple hours as a baby all summer because she thought it was good for me- to prevent rickets and because I was jaundiced she told me.

I had never heard of sunscreen in the 70s, and people here used to try and get burnt. I can remember my friend and I putting baby oil on our legs and sitting in the doorway in our tea breaks at work, hoping to get a tan. People really had no idea how dangerous the sun was when I was a child in the 60s and even as a teen in the 70s. We used to sit beside the school pool all day watching the swimming sports with not a hat in sight and no sunscreen.

I’d completely forgotten about the ‘building the tan up gradually’ theory. We all did it.

But the sun cream that was available was wholly inadequate for those of us with fair skin, no matter how responsible our parents were. Factor 15 came out whilst I was a kid and was considered very high protection through most of my youth. I think my every day moisturiser is that protective now! There was no water resistant sunscreen even invented until the late 70s and a lot of the products around in my childhood really only protected against UVB anyway . So it's not just a matter of people being unaware (though I don't think that knowledge around the risks of excessive sun exposure were widely known) or not caring, really effective products were simply not available.

Yep, and for awhile the theory was if you have a base tan before going on holiday you are less likely to burn. So a base tan was good and protective.
The thought was only severe sunburns are linked to skin cancer at the time.

Yes and we didn’t all understand them. I was a Uni student and used SPF 8 which was considered sensible at the time. SPF 4 with tan accelerator was what the pool side crew who worked on their tan used.

I was sporty- cycling, camping, canoeing- so not in a bikini and didn’t care about a tan just anvoiding burns. I was told SPF 8 protected for 8 hours unless you went swimming, so thought this is good for me to use when outside all day. I would sweat and it would run into my eyes and sting, so I would reapply anyway. They didn’t have special suncream for the face then.

But still SPF 8 is pitifully low. I knew that ten years later when I had children. They had SPF 50 - the kind that went on like white paste!

This is actually still not safe. I live in Australia and there is so much emphasis at the moment on how harmful incidental sun exposure is. We have a lot of melanoma here.

literally my mum would put me naked on a picnic blanket in the full sun in our garden for at least a couple hours as a baby all summer because she thought it was good for me- to prevent rickets and because I was jaundiced she told me.

UV light is a treatment for jaundice, so it's quite likely that she was told to do this when you were newborn and whether she was told to continue or she just assumed that it would be a good idea, either is plausible.

Also vitamin D does help prevent rickets and we do get this from sun exposure. It's a bit of a balancing act really.

I honestly had never heard of sunscreen as a child in the 70’s
By the 80’s it was ‘sun tan lotion’ and it was specifically bought to encourage a tan - I think it was factor 2 or 4 and looked like cooking oil.
I also remember it being very expensive and my parents definitely didn’t think it was a necessary purchase and couldn’t have afforded it anyway.

The first sunscreen I owned, I bought myself as an adult in the 90’s and it was for my baby.

Yes, her intentions were good 😊 my point was more that she didn’t know any better and as you say, might have even been advised by a health visitor to do it. People just didn’t know back then.

I’m pretty sure my mum put suncream on us , neither of my sisters ever burned , one of them is dark the other mousy blonde , I was a ginger blonde . Our adult son has the same colouring that I had and he still burns irrespective of using factor 50 just not as badly as I did back in the day when suncream wasn’t as effective . Also we spent all day in and out of the sea and I don’t think you noticed you were burnt until you got home in the evening .

My MIL believes in this too and it was a source of tension when my DC were young as she thought I should leave my children naked in the sun to prevent rickets and obviously I wouldn't comply! But she is not British and had her own children in the 60s so would, I am sure, have been given very different advice.
Lack of vitamin D is a consideration and is being taken much more seriously now, but you certainly don't need to be naked for 2 hours a day to get enough, and there are also dietary sources and supplements available so it doesn't need to be either/or!

Is she in her 80s like my mum?

Yes she is. And when and where she was born I can well believe that rickets was more of a public health issue than skin cancer so I can see that her advice came from a place of genuine concern. But times change of course.

I still call it suntan lotion!

What an ignorant post. Have you actually thought about this? What were they supposed to do?

Suncream didn’t exist as we know it today. Not sure if you realise that children literally played outside on their own all day, every day. After school and all day on weekends/holidays. Ask your parents! There was no one making sure that little Timmy had his hat on or was sticking to the shade. Keeping your child indoors all day in case of burning would be cruel when all the other children were playing outside. They also didn’t have the clothes we have today - rash vests etc, so your child would’ve just worn shorts and a T-shirt in summer, and a swimming costume on the beach. And burnt.

Also burning wasn’t seen to be as dangerous as we know it is today - they weren’t aware of links with skin cancer etc. It was just ‘oh well, it’ll hurt for a couple of days and you’ll be fine.’ The parents weren’t being deliberately cruel or stupid, honestly!

I'm a late 60's baby. And a redhead. Suncream was rare, and expensive so we burnt! My mum used Acriflex and Savlon to take the sting out of it! I think many people of my generation have skin cancer....

We got burnt - but I don't remember getting burned badly. I do remember being told off for getting burnt.

Mum was quite keen on us covering up, though we spent much of the time in the garden. We got brown on forearms and lower legs. Dad worked most of the summer in just denim shorts and sandals (farmer) but I don't remember him burning (this doesn't mean he didn't.) We never had foreign holidays, and UK holidays were taken May/October (summer was harvest.) And though we went to beaches, we also did a lot of museums and walking in the rain...

I did a lot of exam revision in the garden - ghetto blaster out of the window on an extension lead, sun bed with books and notes carefully arranged either side. I did actually revise, but I was also in the shade some of the time at least. At school, I remember some girls at lunchtime sitting in the sun, socks pushed down, skirts pulled up, blouses unbuttoned as much as possible, "burn me! Burn me!" But I'd rather have been with a book, and then as now, didn't bother with make up and so on, and wasn't bothered about tanning - it was just a side effect of walking and cycling and gardening and stuff.

We weren't far from the coast, and had lots of evening trips down to the beach to swim. The one time I do remember getting badly burnt was age about 14 - my best friend and I got the train down and spent the day on the beach. We did put on suncream, but spent the day swimming with short breaks on the beach, and not reapplying cream - my shoulders got so burnt they blistered. I hadn't known till this point that it was possible to get sunburnt so badly it would blister like that, and I've never burned so badly since.

I do catch the sun easily if I'm not careful. Pretty much the last thing my mother said to me was, "You've caught the sun" - I'd been planting out in the garden, and my arms and nose showed it, though I'd put cream on. I just forget to reapply if I'm busy with something.

There is one in our town, it’s really busy, so many brown leather women around here. I just don’t get how they think they look good.

I’m 60 and i remember being covered in ‘sun tan cream’ (not oil because mum thought we’d fry), such as it was. We wore long sleeved shirts and huge hats in the sun, especially when we were on holiday in Wales.
The sunburn happened when we were at home. We lived on a farm, so I spent all day everyday outside in summer, either with my ponies, helping with the cows or harvesting. Having ginger hair and pale skin didn’t help.
I’ve had a few BCCs and SCCs removed in the last ten years and now I live in Australia, I have a full skin check every year so anything dodgy is picked up very quickly, thankfully. We have bottles of factor 50 all over the house!

@AliceMcK
@IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads

I know what you mean on Sun beds!

I saw one the other day in a town and was genuinely surprised that they still existed and that people still use them.

It was like a 1990's time slip...

The kids in the school where I work are starting to develop a tan now- faces and arms of the ones that regularly play out are turning brown- none of them are peeling or red. Children do build up a base tan gradually, just like I remember my friends and I doing so as children. Little by little.

Of course if you are going to go in the sun for extended periods then you will likely burn, especially if you are very fair and have had little previous exposure, but skin can protect itself to gradual and moderate exposure- that's the whole reason we go brown in the first place.

If you burnt in the 70s and 80s then your parents were irresponsible because there was just no need if you were sensible.

We used calamine lotion and sun hats. The North West coast isn't the hottest place.

But a tan is still sun damage and still puts you at risk of getting skin cancer. It's not a good thing.