Was childhood it better back in the day or was it insanely dangerous?

[FleetFootedJanet]

I grew up in the 80s. My group of friends were the boys and girls who lived on our street and surrounding street. We went out for hours, with those friends with no adult supervision, and played in the streets or gardens. We also, when slightly older, went further afield.

I distinctly remember one occasion when we played on a building site close to our house, when they were building an extension to the estate where we lived. We also used to “sail” on the old canal using whatever we could find, and played on a bit of disused land next to an old car park.

I don’t know, but I sense that kids don’t do stuff like that now. DD is quite young but the idea she’d play in the canal or on a building site seems mad, even though I did it and have fond memories of exploring and doing all that stuff. I’m still friends with a good proportion of those kids who I played with back then.

So was it better? Or was it insanely dangerous, and I’m lucky to have made it to adulthood? Did it give us something kids now don’t have - are they missing out? Or am I just getting old and nostalgic?

I think the world is more geared for children these days. There's definitely a lot more in the way of clubs and things aimed at kids now than in the 80s/90s.
I did things between the ages of 9 and 12 that'd I could never imagine my kids doing.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and we certainly had a lot more freedom then! It was normal to walk to school alone or with friends from age 7, we played out in the woods and around a little lake near my house (and went on the lake when it was frozen despite warnings from parents not to!)

When my children were growing up in the late 90s/early 2000s I worried more about traffic than stranger danger - the number of child abductions has remained the same for decades but I think our perception of danger has increased. I'm glad my children largely grew up before the advent of social media - that's a tough one for parents to navigate these days.

This!

I do remember how normal it was for kids to be wearing casts, and having them signed. Not sure there are quite so many broken bones now. I think in many ways it is much safer now, but the payoff is loss of resilience, independent thought, problem solving skills, and a strong increase in anxiety and immaturity. But I think if you're considering a choice of your kid potentially having anxiety and poor common sense, or potentially being abducted or killed, you'd probably think the former is the lesser evil. I do see lots more kids playing out now than a few years ago so I think things are maybe moving back to centre.

I think to describe it as "insanely dangerous" is probably wrong.

Back in the day there was a lot more freedom. Kids had the opportunity for independent learning, with the obvious consequence that this could lead to them undertaking dangerous activities without supervision.

Nowadays this is frowned and clamped down on, under the argument they need to be protected from themselves and people around them.

I suppose there are two real questions i) do more kids actually die/suffer injuries nowadays or not as a result of the restrictions imposed on them and ii) are the restrictions justified in terms of the deaths/injuries they prevent ?

i) is probably pretty easy to answer by searching for stats. ii) probably a lot more difficult.

I'm only talking about MY childhood experience! It was what it was - no rose-coloured specs involved.

You seem very embittered about your own experience but when we're children our own experience is pretty much all we're aware of, so of course people on here will have had different experiences. No-one's pretending it was the Garden of Eden - but my experience was of freedom and (almost) adventure with my friends in the countryside.

We weren't well-off and I didn't go abroad till I was 20. My parents never went away even for one night because they were dairy farmers so we just had days out, but that didn't bother me in the slightest. Everyone was less affluent in those days so the snobbery about holidays you get now didn't impact me.

I don't like the implication that people are painting a perfect picture! I simply commented on a) the sort of things we did unsupervised then, with little or no parental concern and b) one of the ways in which it's more difficult to commit crimes against children now.

@Thepeopleversuswork

Just to correct my last post - sorry, Thepeople - think I meant to reply to BoredZelda there. Please accept an apology - I quoted wrongly.

It was better in the 80s but definitely far safer now (despite what social media and the news would have you believe!)

Apology accepted!

I tend to agree with @BoredZelda though and I think its unfair to accuse her of being "embittered": people seem not to be able to tell the difference between "being bitter" and "having a different opinion".

I think there were definitely good points to that sort of free range childhood (the lack of social media jumps to mind) but I also think its become very fashionable at the moment to talk about it as some halcyon generation and say that parenting today is awful. You see endless threads on here about helicopter parenting etc and harking back to the 80s. I think there's a lot of rose-tinted spectacle wearing going on and the picture is much more complex than most people will admit.

I have fond memories of summers in childhood in the 90’s with a gang of us kids out in the fields playing. When harvest happened the farmer giving in and giving us a free hay bale to do “hay jumps” that involved jumping off a height into hay. In and out of each others gardens, making up various games to play in the street or using roller skates and bikes “round the block” to race each other. Can’t do that now as the streets are rammed full of parked cars and the fields are all new build housing estates! I do think it’s sad that kids of today don’t get to do that self regulated, no adults involved type of play. I totally get why though.

I agree that in some ways they were better and in some ways they were worse. I think too much involvement is expected of (UK) parents nowdays, and we expect too little of children. Whilst some health & safety stuff now feels over the top, it was far too lax if you were allowed to play on building sites as a child. I still remember a boy in 4th class who didn't seem cared for at home. No one seemed to care where he was or what he did. He and his younger brother played on a building site one day, his younger brother tried to climb a partially built wall which collapsed on top of him and killed him. You and your friends were lucky.

Unfortunately, the adults were the problem. Safeguarding had not been invented, teachers were legally able to hit/ruler/cane children throughout my primary school years, and frequently did, and the CSA I experienced would be extremely unlikely to happen now, because the organisation which facilitated it would have safeguarding rules, and would never have sent children unaccompanied into the situation in which it happened. And when I told an adult, that adult did not even contemplate that a crime had been committed, or call the police, or indeed do anything, because letting a sex crime committed on a ten year old girl go unpunished was better than 'making a fuss' or challenging authority.

Obviously there were great things about a 70s and 80s childhood, too.

It is an order of magnitude safer now, but it was never tremendously dangerous.

At its peak (1979) about 1/1,000 children were killed or seriously injured and now it has gone down to 1/10,000.

But the cost is (probably) more psychological harm and less fun.

Rescued by the lifeboat service twice??! That's quite an achievement 😄

I remember exploring the cinema at the end of the road that was a bomb site.
At 12 I used to travel into the West End on my own to meet my sister for lunch.
My own DC used to walk to and from school on their own from when they were 9 and 6. The school wasn’t worried about anyone meeting them. They always travelled to secondary school on their own from when- bus, tube and a walk. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve done the school run for the GC. And the hours I’ve spent sitting in the car waiting for them!

With all due respect that is very patronising and you don’t get to tell someone else what they mean. I’m very sorry your childhood wasn’t great but the fact remains that for some of us there WERE good aspects of our childhood. It’s not looking through rose tinted glasses at all as pretty much everyone has acknowledged the dangerous and bad aspects. I am personally fully aware of the difference between fear and respect and I still think there was more respect back then for adults. Everyone is entitled to view their childhood as they see fit.

I was a child in the 60's. We used to climb trees, take picnics across the fields, build dens in the woods etc. I lived in the countryside, so no bomb sites (there were quite a few still in the city) or building sites to mess around on. I knew a couple of boys who broke their arms falling off bikes but other than that, nothing horrific. Although I did once see a flasher but I was 14 at that point. I'd be interested to know the comparable statistics for childhood accidents, abductions etc for then versus now.

Most of the serious harm that was happening to kids then and is happening to kids now is unfortunately within the home or within organized activities and institutions. I think risk assessment and health and safety is a force for good, but compensation culture has been overall harmful.

I grew up in the 90s too and had similar experiences to you, I cringe so much looking back (especially the drunken antics).

As a teenager in the 00s I would stay with random friends for days at a time and my parents barely questioned where I was.

I parent very differently!

I think when we were younger more kids had more street and traffic smarts, but there was also more dangerous driving. People would still drink and drive and I think it was much more common to see dangerous speeds on suburban roads than now.

It was healthier, both physically and psychologically, that kids were allowed more independence.

Stranger danger was always a tiny problem, but also much harder to get away with child abduction now with greater awareness and CCTV. On the other hand, that has been replaced by Internet grooming. Most risk comes from people known to the child and again, that's now reduced because we are much more likely to believe kids. Not like when I was a kid and it would have been 'Don't tell horrible lies about the vicar' or whatever. We may hear about it more because it's no longer taboo, but I suspect more education on it has made it harder.

I was born in 1971 and tbh my childhood wasn't very different from my children's (they are 17 and 20 now). I played out with friends around my village, so did they. I didn't do dangerous stuff, neither did they. By far the biggest difference between my childhood and theirs is the internet and mobile phones.

There was a 90% reduction in child pedestrian deaths between 1979 and 2013 636-48. Some things really have got better

I grew up in the 60s. At age 8 I used to get the train every morning (with some other girls of my age) from Whitley Bay to Gosforth, and then walk over a mile to school. Same in reverse on the way home. All the children in our road played out together, and I used to take our dog for long walks (we got him when I was 8, so I was 8,9,10 doing this) for miles along the sandy beach and up into the dunes. My friend and I met a strange man once, but she told him we lived very nearby, and he went away. The main danger was probably the rock pools we played in and around, and the unpredictable waves from the North Sea - I remember getting drenched by a wave breaking over my head when I was trying to run between sets of steps on Whitley Bay beach! My mate and I used to cook her parents' home-grown veg in an ancient saucepan over a bonfire at the bottom of the garden. We'd sit up in her tree (not a small one!) to watch it cook. Good times, and we all survived!

It was different. My grandma told me how she used to walk across fields at the age of 3 on her own (more than a 15 min walk) to take lunch to her dad working for a farmer.
I’m a similar age to you and I also walked across a village to relatives on my own to visit.
Both unimaginable by today’s standards.
(I also have no idea how I didn’t get lost on that 5-10 minute walk like I do now even when I use google maps. 😁)

I think 'we stopped if a policeman told us to' is a pretty low bar for behaviour!