To think the past is being misrepresented on here?

[ChilliLips]

Not all the time obviously but didn’t want a waffly title.

I feel like lately I’m seeing a lot of posts describing a past I don’t recognise. Apparently schools used to be relaxed, have no rules, fewer demands. Whereas I’m sure I remember uniform inspections, SATS, end of year tests, mocks, weekly spelling tests at primary, Saturday detentions, and don’t forget the worst punishment of all - the CHAIR!

I have also seen a few posts saying conditions now are much worse resulting in poorer mental/physical health, hence a spike in disability. But again - can this be true? The world wars wounded, no antenatal tests, jobs like coal mining, loads of smoking/drinking, polio and measles… I’m sure there were a lot of people disabled with conditions they wouldn’t have now.

And finally that everyone was wealthy and lived in massive houses. Nobody I know who grew up in the 50s/60s have tales of luxury, I’ve heard all sorts of horrors including ice on the inside of windows, smog in the air, kids sleeping 4 to a room.

Particularly interested in answers from those alive then! I’m mid 30s.

I don't think yabu at all

There are some things I would say are harder now
Home buying
The cost of essentials, petrol, car, mortgage, rent etc
Life stability - council homes and NHS provisions have significantly worsened over the last 20 years (I'm 33)

Most other things, no i don't think things are harder now than they were, and we're quite lucky really.

Yes cost of living in many ways for sure is harder.

My kids' childhood is pretty similar to my own, although I think their school is a bit nicer. I didn't walk home alone until about age 10. My mum took me to activities, dropped me places and generally knew where I was. We definitely had tests, SATs etc.

My parents had a fairly different childhood to me. My mum walked to school alone from 5 and had stories of no heating so chilblains etc. My dad grew up in a slightly wealthier family than my mum, so less of these stories. They still both did O Levels and A Levels. My aunt sat the grammar school test but it had been scrapped by the time my mum was old enough.

Growing up, I was unusual at my school because my parents owned their house. Of the other children, about half lived on a council estate and half lived in old terraced houses with no bathrooms and toilets in the yard.
We had no central heating, so in winter there was ice on the inside of the windows in the morning.
Most families didn't have a car and I didn't know any family that had two.
In nearby towns the main occupation was coal mining. The sound of men coughing from the coal dust is something you never forget. Also most people seemed to smoke and smoking was acceptable anywhere (except church).
My primary school was a very good one, children did well. I remember there were 46 children in my class. The teachers had no problem keeping discipline. I travelled to school by bus on my own from age 7. From age 5 I walked to Sunday School alone every week. Everyone did.
I was born early 60s in a fairly affluent northern town.

I'm in my mid-60s.

I recall living in a coldwater flat with an inside toilet and one Belfast sink in the scullery. I shared a bedroom with my parents. Dad boarded up the fireplace in the bedroom because we couldn't afford two coal fires.

I had one pair of shoes which had to last until I grew out of them.

Dad was a coalminer and any time he was late home for work, I was in terror that he'd had an accident. (We had no phone.) No car either.

We had a garden, but the distant view wasn't of hills but of a pit bing/slagheap. (Think of the heap that caused the disaster at Aberfan.)

We finally got a house with a bathroom when I was 12. That was also when we got our first fridge. We got our phone when I was 17.

Dad had an accident down the pit. Luckily, it wasn't fatal but left him with problems. My great uncle had pneumoconiosis from mining. My great-grandfather was killed in a mining disaster.

My mother and her sisters were put into service to let their brothers get apprenticeships in the dockyard. One died of asbestosis in his 50s. (1971.) The other also had asbestosis, but made it to 70. His compensation claim died with him. That would have been about 1985.

The one big advantage that I had was that I was able to attend university and I had a grant. I recall being told that I wouldn't have been able to go if I'd had siblings.

Yeah, I agree in general OP. To some extent it's mixed of course but I do tend to feel people's descriptions are inaccurate.

I find especially some of the lifestyle stuff odd. Sometimes I think it's people who are actually pretty young, who don't realize the significant gap between consumer and lifestyle goods between them and now, which is pretty massive. It is absolutely true that housing in particular is a problem now, but even there, people don't seem to realize how common it used to be for single people to live in rooming houses, or at home, or really awful places that wouldn't be acceptable today.

The idea that life is so much harder and therefore mental and physical health is the result seems nuts to me. More people have far more supports and coddling than they have ever had and there have been really huge social issues in the past century, existential fears, war, economic downturns.

School is a little more mixed IMO, in some ways I think the problem there is some parts - the wrong parts - have become much more serious and stressful, while having a lot of laxity in areas that should be more strict.

I was in primary school in the 80s and it was definitely more chilled then it is now. No pressure of times tables tests, SATs etc. Maybe it was just my school. I don't remember much of the work from primary, just lots of singing and country dancing.

My state secondary in the 90s was not strict like our local one now. Children would smoke on the school grounds and teachers turned a blind eye, loads of truancy that wasn't dealt with, lapse school uniform rules (everyone tucked their ties in their shirts, most wore trainers etc).

Housing costs have gone up hugely in relation to salaries so it's likely that fewer people are living in very large homes, or that if they are it's because both parents work full time whereas it was more common in the past to have a parent at home or working part-time.

I can only compare my DC's secondary school to mine but I think my DC have it tougher. I think the biggest difference is the curriculum. So dry, so dependant on rote learning and often overly complicated. Eg, for English Literature GCSE I took copies of the text liberally annotated into the exam with me. Now kids have to memorise huge quantities of quotes. Children are learning things in maths in Year 5 or 6 that I didn't learn until Year 8 or 9. There is more pressure to achieve high exam grades than there used to be. Not to mention the ridiculous rules - detention for not taking your coat off before you walk into the building or having the wrong colour pen. As for primary school, I think I did little more than make junk models for 7 years whereas there is almost no time for fun in today's primary curriculum.

I'm not surprised young people find it harder than I did, especially coupled with a generally poorer outlook.

I was born in the 70s, at school in the 80s and 90s and things were definitely easier for kids then than in my parents' childhoods in the 1950s.

Tbh the old adage about the past being a foreign country (they do things differently there) holds true.

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,"

Notwithstanding the fact that "the past" could mean many different decades - even the past of many Mumsnetters will be different decades - when their childhoods were; people's experiences of "the past" is not just some homogeneous history that everyone had.

Some things are better now. Medicine for example is so much more advanced now. But, conversely, the NHS is even more stretched than it was 20, 30, 40, 50 etc years ago.

Children definitely played out more at a much younger age, without parental supervision. But often children were not believed if a stranger or relative harmed them.

Swings and roundabouts maybe.

Snap!

I'll add this: when my mother was expecting me, my dad got word that his mother was dying. He couldn't sleep from worry.

A workmate told him to go see the doctor to ask for sleeping tablets.

The doctor told him to start smoking instead.

I was a child in the 70s. We lived in a council house, no central heating, yes ice on the inside of the single glazed metal framed windows. We didn't have a car, I walked 3 miles to school, it was the only Catholic so that's where we went. The teachers thought nothing of hitting us, that was considered perfectly normal. We didn't have a fridge until I was 11 years old. Most of my clothes were second hand. We did have a holiday each year to visit our grandparents in Ireland. Life was hard in many ways, but I think there's more pressure on kids these days, and I actually think social mobility is harder to achieve now.

I do think people were maybe happier? I know I'm biased but I think the 80s/90s/early 00s were quite a good era to grow up in. I think the balance was better. We were more centrist I think.

Before then it was a bit extreme right wing. After then (now) it's perhaps a bit far left.

Parents were a lot less involved in education in the 1980s when I was at secondary school. My parents' parents were even less involved.

I think a lot of things changed when the national curriculum and school league tables. Published school results. This was not a thing when I was at school. Then with the expansion of higher education and then fees for universities parents are now coming to open days with their kids to check out the value of the courses. Especially as parents often have to pay, help with fees and rent etc.

When I think back, it seems to me that people became more affluent through the 80s and into the 90s. Suddenly, a lot of kids seemed to be involved in more extra curricular activities, they had more toys and holidays, they stopped working at after school jobs like delivering papers. Kids had treats all the time, people ate out a lot more, there were a lot more clothes in closets. Many many more kids went to university, people had two or even three cars, people had VCRs, multiple tvs, teens had their own phone lines in their rooms.

IMO the world is so utterly different now than it was 30 or 40 years ago.

I'm in my late 40's., but truly awful food (cabbage stuffed with porridge oats and onions with an oxo cube mixed in, served with plain boiled potatoes) - not much temptation to put on weight - being absolutely freezing, no daily hot showers... a "two car family" was a Big Thing - nobody's parents had a car each! People didn't eat out (except for adult birthdays if you were fancy), takeaways and ready meals and premade sauces and throwing food out and sweets cakes crisps, bought drinks... these were all things I knew existed, but in the same way 8-year-olds know Antarctica exists. current events were on the 9 o'clock bbc news. I had a pen friend, ffs. People got annoyed if the second post was late.
There wasn't the constant barage of advertising. If it wasn't on the TV (3 channels, then 4), then you'd not really know about it, and the TV just wasn't interesting enough to watch constantly. We didn't have the same exposure to extreme views or the echo chambers of internet. But we weren't as well informed, obviously:
Far fewer people went to university.
Moving to where the jobs were was divisive. You'd think nothing of giving a neighbour a lift, doing shopping for the old dear round the corner, asking next door for something you'd run out of.
Massive social divisions (heavy industry being sacrificed to free up exchange rates to allow London money markets to flourish).
Disabilities were either "the mothers fault" or a"tragedy".

It was such an utterly different world. I dont think you can really compare.

Things are very different. I was born in the early 50s. I remember us getting a TV when I was four. We got a fridge when I was 12, a home in the house when I went to university at 18 so I could phone home. Parents never had a car. It was easier for my husband and I to buy a house than it is for people now and there were grants and no loans for students. There were 42 people in my class at primary school and no TA, just one teacher. It was very structured. We sat in order of our position in class from end of term tests. Not good for children with additional learning needs. We were hit with a ruler for making mistakes or talking. There was more sense of community and things for kids to do locally. We played out and had fun. On the other hand with the sense of community came judgment and nosiness. It was just very different. Easier in some ways but the adults had a lot of hard hysical work. The 60s/ early 70s were a fun time to be a teenager. The past is often misrepresented on here, yes. I don’t recall people being well off, more likely hard up but I grew up in a Lancashire cotton town and the industry was starting to decline.

I’m always interested when I read about apparent terrible behaviour, kids causing carnage at schools nowadays, yet the rules are so crazily strict compared to my high school days in the late 90s. We had limited rules and so much less pressure - and loads of totally ignored smoking round the bikes sheds. Can’t work out what’s gone wrong, or if it is the rose tinted specs.

Should say phone in the house

I was in Primary school in the 1970’s. One of my abiding memories is of the headteacher hitting a girl in my class on the head so hard her hair swung up in the air. I’m pretty sure she just didn’t know the answer to her question and it was in front of the whole class.
I work in Education and now it’s the adults that are getting thumped by the children!
But yeh I agree with PP it’s swings and roundabouts..some things better some things worse.

When I was at school we didn't have the ridiculously rigid uniform rules many schools have nowadays, nor did we have isolation rooms. Somehow we all came out with perfectly good qualifications and went into the world of work without difficulty.

I agree.

I'd add in all women were SAHM. My mother was at home in the day but she cleaned at 4am and had weekend jobs.

My MIL gutted fish in the morning and worked in the chipper in the evenings.

My granny's generation redded lines for the fishermen, worked in the smoke houses etc.
Again, they often did this around the children but they couldn't be described as not working.

It was easier to buy a house but it wasn't a house with a glass fronted kitchen extension with island. It was a two up two down with multiple kids per bedroom and a tiny galley kitchen.

No it's not, I remember high interest rates and inflation. Strikes, shops closing early, shortages of food.

We had a very rigid uniform and very strict rules!