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 was born in 1978 and remember our annual holiday to nothing wales and regularly being burnt

You may be right, which is sad. I know the medical system in the US leaves a lot to be desired, but we get preventative and screening services (blood work, skin checks, mammograms, colonoscopies, annual gyno check ups, etc.) easily and for free or very low cost. I'm fortunate to have insurance of course, but I know that there are services available for uninsured people too.

It's a good point. I'm 50. I don't R.E.M. burning much as a child just the odd but so guess k has suncream in the 70's

Many a fine I would lay in the garden as a teen so 1988 ish and use oil qns sizzle

Shudders now

What I hate seeing now is burnt kids

No need at all !!!

Mini blondes 7 is in f50. We are in tenerife. She will go brown. Tans well. Never burns

I have to work at it but use 30 sometimes higher for first week. Then maybe 20/15

We got burnt, but it was quite normal. You'd go red, peel, then you'd have a tan and you wouldn't get burnt so much. Children would be very dark brown in a hot summer - I remember one hot year the dark brown hair on my arms and legs bleached white, and I thought it looked cool against my deep oak brown skin. I'm naturally pale olive so didn't burn as badly as many.

We had to buy factor 20 for my dad as he has a skin graft on his thigh, and I remember that seeming like a crazy high factor, it was so thick and gloopy.

I was born mid 70s. My mum was very forward thinking and when we went on holiday she bought the highest factor suncream she could get and would make us wear t shirts for the first week when swimming so we didn't burn. I don't know whether my dad being half greek made a difference to either her attitude or us burning - I have pretty fair skin but generally don't burn if I have sun cream on. My other half, however, went on hot holidays and his mum didn't put any sun cream on him, he used to burn badly and one time tells me of a blister the size of of entire upper back!!!!!!!! So painful on the plane home that he couldn't lean on the seat back! He worries about his risk of skin cancer now with repeat burning and lots of moles and now stays covered in the Summer.

At our GP, you can have 'up to three' moles or lesions checked at a time. I've done this. But I have the sort of skin with hundreds if not thousands of moles...

Yeah we just burned and peeled and didn't die.

I still never wear it but also rarely burn

Yet...

A lipoma is a benign tumour though? So the nhs diagnosed you with a benign tumour, then the private hospital did too?

They don’t usually require treatment unless cosmetic.

i don’t trust private medicine as I have seen too many cases of over treatment 🤷‍♀️

i get a skin check on the nhs. GP, or actually the practice nurse, referred me to dermatology.

We burned. If you went abroad it was normal to come back with red raw peeling backs, shoulders and nose. Even blisters.

I was a child in the 60's and can't remember being burnt. Im fair skinned so maybe it was because we lived so far north we didn't see a lot of sun. I can remember being very burnt as a teenage in the 70's to the point I had sun stroke. We lived further south then though.

Presumably those that did die aren’t online to tell us about it…

like car seats. We never used them and no one died…

60s kid. We did burn occasionally, but mostly what I remember is being nut brown in the summers, with just a white bum! I am dark haired with olive skin anyway so it was rare that I burnt but my sister has pale skin and frequently did so. I wouldn't use sunscreen now unless I was going to a hot country. I just tan gradually from May onwards.

I got burned every summer, blisters and peeling and sometimes the dreaded Hell Itch. One year I fell asleep in the sun in Brittany and got huge yellow blisters, I remember my dad ripping holes in my t shirt for them to poke through. Also had heatstroke several times.

Hope you are okay now @PinotPony.
My mum had a pre-cancerous mole removed, so was lucky. Same with my uncle. Both in their early 70s, when you doused yourself in cooking oil when the sun came out. Package holidays were becoming popular in the 70s and 80s, so to have a good tan was to show off that you could afford a posh holiday! I remember peeling and even blistering in the 80s. Db was taken to the hospital to have his huge blisters popped and dressed. The idea was to burn and then tan. We hired sunbeds and didn't read the warnings about time limits or goggles. I hope I got away with it, time will tell I suppose. I'm proud that my dc never burned in the sun when they were little. My youngest burned for the first time at 16yo last year and was read the riot act.

Yeah another child of the 80s here with pale skin, freckles etc. Getting sunburned was part of summer. It used to be quite satisfying peeling big pieces of burnt skin off (after the initial pain wore off obviously).

It seems totally mad now looking back. My DM is still of the belief that if I let the sun get me a bit brown it will protect me for the summer 🙄. I don't go brown, I just burn! That belief persists despite my ginger DF getting skin cancer! (They are divorced).

I'm quite proud that my two DC (one ginger, one blonde, both very pale) have never caught the sun. Factor 50 all the way for us.

It's self check in UK and you can get individual moles checked if you are concerned about them.

https://www.cuh.nhs.uk/our-services/dermatology/skin-cancer-service/how-to-check-your-skin-for-cancer/

OP, that makes sense if you were born in the 00s as I think sun protection was already well established by then. I have younger half siblings born then and I remember them having big sun hats with the flaps at the back.

However you have also given me a new MN milestone as being the first MNer I've come across born in the same decade as my eldest child this was unexpected.

Meanwhile the cases of skin cancer has soared :

news.cancerresearchuk.org/2023/07/07/soaring-skin-cancer-cases-hit-a-record-high/

I was a child in the late eighties and early nineties. We used some sun screen back them but would usually just apply once a day. We all used to get terribly sunburnt at the first hint of sun. We would all be like blistery lobsters. We would enjoy peeling each others skin off in the folllowing days. I don’t even like the sun and remember getting sunburnt like this multiple times every holiday. There was a strange belief around that a sunburn would ‘fade to a tan’ and that a tan was good for you / would protect you 🫤

The word soared interests me because even in the more distant past children played out all day without sun screen or worked all day in the fields harvesting I guess in the 1800s A lot were in factories all day though.
Some previous posters mentioned holes in the ozone layer and foreign holidays to hotter countries so that could explain it

We honestly thought that to get a tan, you had to burn and peel. There was something in it as the skin after the burn would be browner than the non-burned part.
I remember a friend's sister putting cooking oil on herself 😬
I remember my parents being more cautious than most - we at least owned some suncream (factor 15).

The sun wasn't as strong- ozone layer! Factor 4 would largely protect someone with sallow skin. We did get sunburnt regularly though.

60s kid here. Grew up at the seaside. I have no recollection of getting sunburnt back then

That seems kind of obvious

Even if some didn’t burn, they still would have invisible sun damage.