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 1990. My mum was an absolute fanatic with the sun cream, sun hats, shade, shoulders covered (I was literally never allowed vest tops). Mum's brother died of melanoma in his early 30s, after a childhood and adulthood of constantly being outside topless and burning his "pale redhead" skin.

I bet you have beautiful skin now.

Kids played out in the street in the 70s and 80s, so as soon as it wasnt raining we were all out there in our shorts and sandals. Getting lots of sun on us before actual summer. This was south london for me so no forests for shade, just hard concrete paving and hot cars!

I definitely burnt and I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if I get skin cancer

I remember camping holidays to the south of France in the early 80s when sun cream was new to us and although it did exist we were not primed to use it religiously like we are today. I remember my cousin in particular suffered badly with blisters that would then be popped. It’s shocking looking back.

The reference to the 1970s puzzles me.
I was covered in suncream whenever we went to the beach in the 1950s, & DM was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Grew up in the 80s and I don't remember burning much. I loathe wearing suntan lotion, even as an adult, and also dislike sunbathing, so now I always wear a wide brimmed hat in the sun, stay in the shade, or wear long sleeves. As a child my mother was fastidious about hats too.

I was born in 77 and remember burning a lot as a child. The feeling of burnt skin sticking to a nylon sleeping bag while sleeping on an airbed will never leave me!

DM did put cream on me as I remember her rough, sandy hands but I'm a bit ginger and burn easily.

Sun burn was a pretty regular part of my childhood in the seventies . People used to put oil on to basically fry themselves and children might have had the odd smear of Ambre Solaire but that was about it.

Burnt and peeled. Sadly why skin cancer is common in my elderly patients.

We had to wear hats in the summer, and Tshirts with sleeves so our shoulders didn't burn. In the height of the day we were called in to wash our hands for lunch and a few chores like set the table, so missed 12.00-13.30ish peak sun.

We went on holiday to the UK mostly, and not all holidays were beach ones, we didn't sit all day on the beach in the sun, but if we did, we sat in the shade of a windbreak/umbrella/side with shade of the car or a picnic spot was chosen under a tree or similar for eating lunch. We were encouraged to sit quietly in the shade till 2.30ish and read (we had a box of holiday books, secondhand in the car to pick from), never got sunburn

There were always kids that looked burnt when I was a child in the 80s but I don't remember getting burnt. I do recall wearing hats and seeking shade if I was hot. Have photos of me in Morocco as a kid and I am very brown but do remember we'd always go in out of the midday sun.

We never went abroad when I was a child so it was just a case of playing outside for much of the year and gradually getting used to it. I remember being very brown, but as a child, never burnt.

As teens we all used the Ambre Solaire oil - no SPF! - to fry ourselves. That would have been in the 60s. I still don’t remember ever burning - just dying for brown legs. I didn’t experience hot ‘foreign’ sun until I was 21.

I was born in the 1960s and have memories of the sheer joy of me and my siblings peeling our own and one another's sunburnt skin. Good times.

Holidays overseas were rare-to-nonexistant, though, so it was only the pallid UK sun that we had to contend with.

I remember a Brownie pack holiday in about 1975/76. We spent a day at the beach and literally everyone but me and one friend had sunburn. We changed the words of a campfire song to include a refrain about calamine lotion because there was so much of it for the rest of the holiday.

Always worth remembering that children often wore more clothes in the past. No way my mum would have been outdoors without a top in the 1940s/50s. I think those of us from the 1960s/70s had a bit of the hippy letting it all hang out before realising the need to cover our pale and pasty shoulders.

I don't really recognise this - born late 60s, suncream was always thoroughly applied as a child and I don't remember getting burnt until I was a dumb teenager. Family of redheads though who burn at a touch of sun, so maybe my parents were more cautious than most.

Funnily enough, that 1940s manual of child safety The Famous Five mentions sun cream, although it extols far more “getting a really good suntan”.

Just the decade that came up when I googled what year it became popular, many posters who were children before the seventies are saying they never used it I guess it was out there but not popular like it is now. Apparently the SPF was a lot lower than. I wasn't born until the 2000s so not an expert though just what I saw on Google

Are you sure it was suncream and not just cream or calamine , it was only invented in the late 1920s and in the fifties would have been very expensive and not easy to get . Even in 1977 factor 15 was the highest and that was Piz Buin, SPF as a concept was invented in 1974 before that sun cream was focused on tanning rather than preventing damage .

I did burn as a child in the 60s and 70s. As an adult I use factor 50 when on holiday and don’t care if I tan or not.

Well the sun hasn't changed. If fair-skinned people don't put suncream on and spend too long in the sun, they burn. This was the same in the 70's (and before that). We are lucky to live in an age of sun cream!

We used to go to Spain back then and I remember we wore white t shirts for the first few days before we got a bit of a tan. Also avoided the sun in the middle of the day (we played lots of Monopoly). We always wore hats too. But occasionally we did get burnt.

I remember getting burnt as a child in the 70s/80s, mostly after a trip to the beach. We had suncream, but I only remember using it at the beach and never anywhere else. We got burnt anyway, probably it wasn't as good as it is now, but also I don't think my mum applied it often enough. I remember lying in bed at night not being able to sleep because my skin was too hot.
In the mid/late 80s, as teenagers, we used to lie in the sun a lot without suncream on as people liked getting a tan. I used to get burnt then too and thought nothing of it. The thought of doing that now is awful.

I remember having sun cream put on me as a kid in the 60s.
Family of gingers.

Yes, also I grew up in the 90's and we only had it when on holiday in the very height of summer. I burned a lot.

It's probably also a bit of a class thing and also to do with where you live (we were very rural). I imagine middle class southern/ urban folk might have been using it a little earlier.