How did people leave home at 15…

[Holdinguphalfthesky]

… move to London and start working as a music PR? Just reading an interview with Mariella Frostrup and it says that’s what she did. Even back in the 70s, how would someone have done that? I seem to remember in Caitlin Moran’s book How to be a Woman, she also walked into a job in music journalism at a very young age.

Is it unreasonable of me to ask how they did it? What’s being glossed over in the retelling?

I think we've lost something

I probably heard the expression "extended adolescence" about 25 years ago. It was worrying then. But I never dreamed we'd end up in a situation like the one we're in now - with 18-year-olds not being considered adults. (I know it's not all of them).

but as well as the economics of the situation, we are in very strange territory.

of course teenagers were targets and we all had to be careful - but we were having this conversation in the pub the other night - about a 16-year-old is like now compared to what we were like.

It's like another planet. I think everyone in that chat was late 40s, except one guy in his mid 50s with a teenage daughter. He was very quiet. I think he prefers the way things are now.

I wasn't living in a flat share at 16. 18 yes, the property was in a right state. The landlord was.... interesting. His heart was in the right place. He actually raised concerns about one person's heavy drinking. I suppose we just thought she was free to do it. She did wind up in hospital. But maybe she wasn't going to learn any other way?

I caused absolute chaos by saying we needed a TV licence 😂

It was like this well into the '90s, my husband's 1st job he got my walking into the office. I had multiple jobs like this, you were paid out of the till at the end of the day. My first job that needed bank details was in '93 until then all cash in hand.

A lot of my friends in the 80s would go to London for the summer even if they were at uni . Pub jobs came with accomodation . Or go off to France picking grapes and very trendy to end up in a kibbutz in Israel .

All this accomplished with no phones or sat nav or online info . I think more was expected of young people and we rose to the expectations.

Parental connections, very much played down like unpaid internships were 10/15 yrs ago. Kids from wealthy families could afford to work for free in certain sectors which were closed to others from marginalised backgrounds. So those industries became full of identikit rich kids and not very diverse; very much a closed shop.

Now internships have to be paid but before they were only accessible to rich kids whose parents could afford to fund them.

My first job in the 90s was a receptionist in a plc. “Office angels” the employment agency said “we sent you because you’re pretty” 😭

Not so sure about this, my mum was a teen in the 60s and she went through loads of jobs because she couldn't stick at them and knew she could walk from one to the other. And like all the other working class girls her age, her only goal was to find a husband who could look after her, so she could stay at home and raise children. Appreciate that wasn't much of a choice because at the time she wouldn't have been allowed to stay in work after marriage, but she was most annoyed when the goalposts moved and she had to go back to work PT when we were a bit older!

3 things changed which had the same impact as the Industrial Revolution.

Firstly the war had devastated the work force. People got used to women working in the previous 6 years and to an extent this carried on. People were encouraged to immigrate here as we were so short of men. Mostly these were unskilled men and women working on the railways, NHS and in factories.

Secondly, The young people leaving school and University in the 60s were better educated than previous generations. They could easily fit into the new technology age, using phones, computers, accounting machines and the like. There was a huge demand for young people. Youth unemployment was mostly u heard off.

The last thing was the birth control pill. Employers were much more willing to recruit married women. The previous generation to mine, meant women automatically left work as soon as they were married.

People were very willing to living substandard accommodation. No inside bathrooms or running hot water. Lots of people sharing houses and rooms

Me too! I'm going to be considered a bad lady before I hit 50 😂

And I'm the generation that had to be super smartly dressed at work! But I cannot get my head around spending money on this stuff.

@Octavia64 my mum taught me to type when I was 15 I think. So useful! Proper touch typing. Good speed and accuracy got me all the temp jobs I needed.

I also can't really imagine a 17-year-old now going into an office to do cover for a secretary who's off sick and just answering the phone and it could be anybody! That seems to freak people out. I do know a couple of people who are getting their kids to work in family businesses at that age, which is great.

The government (both Labour and Tory) have encouraged more education for teens and young adults.

in general the belief is that as a country we need a better educated workforce than in the 1970s.

so for example my mum went to a vocational school at 11 and learnt typing and shorthand. She learnt reading writing and maths at primary but has literally never studied any science, never learnt a foreign language etc.

this isn’t allowed now. The government view is that as a country we need people who have learnt some basic science, history, about the world we live in and once that minimum is achieved then they can do vocational learning.

no writing people off at age 11 with the 11+.

I’d sort of been aware of that, but my dad didn’t move out (as far as I know) until he moved in with my mum. Or maybe he did but just didn’t talk about it. He left school after O levels and started work the following Monday. He grew up in a council house but maybe because his older sister joined the army, there was a bit more at home? My mother went to uni and my parents got married before she finished., and moved in together when they were 20, 21.

So anyway, the people I knew of that generation hadn’t moved out until they got married, went to uni, or moved in with someone. And I can only imagine my mother’s horror if I had mentioned doing something like that! I was born in the 1970s but she would have pissed all over my chips if I had talked about leaving home at 16 and living in London to find a job. (Even though she had married before she was 22 and liked to talk about how independent and capable she had been while young. Maybe she just had a low opinion of me!)

One time, I went clubbing with my sister and had an interview next morning in a (rubbish) design studio in Covent Garden. Decided there was no point getting a few hours sleep so sat in Bar Italia and went straight to the interview. He offered me the job and I started there and then! I did the one day but the toilet was so gross I decided not to go back, got another job just after. I feel exhausted just thinking about that now, in my late 50s.
Incidentally, my sister was at ballet school and lived at YWCA opposite British Museum. Quite grim. I used to sleep on her floor.

I left home at 17 in 1991. My first job paid £300 a month until I was 18. Then it was £500 once I was 18. Bought a flat with my fiancé. Found another job that gave me a bit more. Life was much easier then. Moved abroad at 22 and have a much better salary than I would ever have had in the UK but I’m 51 now and deemed too old for my team.

Also very location dependant- my Hs friends and family were in the paper trade (newspapers) lived in Kent and commuted to docklands. If a dad or uncle worked there they got you in.very much the same in the city of London- and I’m not talking elites, I’m talking working class school leavers who would join as admin and work their way up. Technology has taken many of those jobs.

People didn’t move around the country for jobs- if you were lucky enough to live near a high employment area that was that.

Nowadays you'd need a degree and work experience. I know a former Saatchi&Saatchi creative director started working there as a tea boy in the 60s/70s and worked his way up.

Even not that long ago you could do this. I moved out before I went to university, because I wanted the independence. I took a year out and worked at a hotel that had staff digs - I lived in a dingy old farmhouse with a load of travelling Aussies and Kiwis. It had 70s wallpaper, single-glazed windows and an ancient Aga for cooking on. That was in 2001 / 2002.

I left home at 17. I’d been working alongside school for about four years and then full time at 16. A friend of mine at secondary school worked in a club at 16, and got a job as a backing singer for a band and moved to London. She had a brief career as a punk singer in her own right and then I lost touch with her.

My mum “popped in” to Saatchi & Saatchi to tell them I was a “very good young designer” 🥴 bless her.

I Ieft home at 16 (early 1980s) and rented a flat in London with a slightly older friend, while doing A level education in the evening and working part time (but probably about 30 hours a week). This was slightly unusual but not all that rare in the 70s/80s. We had a blast.

Of course people moved around, lots of people went to where the work was, whole communities of them in some cases.

My dad went to London and jobbed around getting backstage work in theatres, working his way up.

I would have loved to have moved to London at 15. I was mature for my age and desperate to grow up and live my own life. As it happens I didn’t move home until I was 19 (to university) and didn’t move to London until I was 23. This was in the 2010s.

I remember Julie Burchill on Desert Island Discs talking about being desperate to grow up and be part of the ‘adult world’. I can definitely relate to that.

I would say we have gone too far with ‘child safeguarding’ and infantilising teenagers, particularly those who are 16+.

No that's adults resilience Came from non resilient privileged tenns

The print was so well paid!

I’m not saying no one moved obviously 🙄 but if you lived in London for example there was a clear route into good employment. People were far less upwardly mobile and their life outcomes were heavily influenced by the location they were born in.

My parents were young and quite naive, even though we lived in London. That meant we had more freedom as it wasn’t that they didn’t care, they just weren’t aware of all the dangers!

No mobilty peaked in the post war era. Much harder to suceed from a disadvantaged background now