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 do find that quite a sad attitude: I don't think the money I spent on rent rather than living with my parents in my 20s was 'wasted' because it was so integral to my life experience

Same but my rent was much cheaper vs today.

Yes a couple of lovely Victorian guesthouses where I used to live, one is now an HMO, the other has been divided up into the most compact of flats, glorified studios really just with a partition to call them 1-bed. Rental only (none for sale). I guess the guesthouses just couldn't compete with Airb'n'b and Premier Inn. This is in addition to three-bed houses being turned into 6/7-bed HMOs.

The biggest difference then was the abundance of jobs & how you didn’t actually need qualifications or experience.

She grew up in Ireland where school leaving age was 15 in the 80s.

It was easy to get a job in the music industry in the 80s. I wrote to a few record companies as a project for a gcse I was doing and got offered a job at Virgin records. I didn't take it up as the thought of moving 240 miles at 16 was daunting but I guess lots of people did it.

There wasn't the same ID requirements back then. If you could pay you way and looked decent you'd be given a chance.

@treeowl agree and also got paid in cash, so you didn't need a bank account or to prove your identity, age etc. You just turned up and got paid at the end of the week, in an envelope. Equally, you paid rent as cash too. It was easier to game the system if you needed to and pretend to be 16 when you were actually 15!

A bit of both. It was definitely much easier to work and become independent then, as multiple posters have pointed out: pre housing boom so rent was far cheaper, jobs were more plentiful and lots of people left school at 16. You could live and work in very transient circumstances and earn enough to just about support yourself, which supported young people in finding their way.

But I think we sometimes gloss over the downsides as well. I lived in a lot of incredibly shabby flat shares in the mid to late 1990s with a lot of transient and sometimes fairly dubious people. I never squatted but I knew a lot of people who did. Looking back I'm surprised I didn't get into any dangerous situations. I survived, but honestly I wouldn't be thrilled if my DD was living in situations like this.

The school leaving age was raised to 16 in 1972 in the UK. So MF would have had to have been 16, unless she wasn't at school in the UK.

So she went Norway to Ireland to England? Oh well that makes more sense Think Irish leaving age was 15 in the 70s

She was in Ireland where it was 15

Yes. If you were a summer birthday like me, you left school at 15 and started work.

30 years later (early 00s) you could still leave at 15. In fact I think this was the case until compulsory 16-18 education.

Technically you were 16 by the end of the school year. But once your exams were done in May/June you'd be working at 15 if your birthday was after that.

I have a summer birthday, so could have legally left school at 15.

I rented between 2002 and 2015, so not a million years ago, though I guess longer ago than it seems to me!

People need to do what they need to do, but I just think there is a massive non-monetary cost to living at home into your 30s that people don't factor in. We all only get one go-around on this planet...

I was chucked out at 15 or more accurately, didn't get on with my Dad so left.
Sofa surfed and then my Mum who was quite high up in a house builder's business, let me live in one of the empty houses that wasn't a show home.
At 15 I did odd jobs and then at 16 worked in restaurants and bars etc but didn't need much £.

I also think if you move out and pay rent today it's very hard to also save thousands upon thousands of pounds required to buy somewhere.

If the option is staying at home longer and then buying house OR renting forever, I'll happily let my daughter stay at home longer.

I went to look at a "flat" in Shoreditch back in the 1980's which was a single large room which was the living room and bedroom and then a door through to the kitchen and bathroom.
The kitchen and bathroom were a single room, tiled floor to ceiling with a fridge in one corner, a cooker in the opposite corner a shower and sink in the other corner and a toilet in the other corner. You could literally put dinner on then have a poo whilst you watched it...

I think the point is that it restricts their life experiences.

Honestly if everything turned to shit of a sudden who would cope better. The youngest era who had been independent, lived in dodgy conditions and worked their way up or the coasted youngster that lives at home with a nice clean office job in a nice area???

Similar here, I left home at just 18 and within less than two weeks my room had been redecorated and another of my six sibling had moved in. There was no going back unless it was the sofa and, given that there were still several small children in the house, I wanted my independence. I had a bedsit that cost me £6 a week and I loved it. Even though it was small, it was mine and I could shut myself in there and be cosy and private.

I think there was an official school leaving date set for mid June when I left in early 90s so summer babies would be 15.
A girl in my class had dropped out Easter time and was working ft in a factory. That was seen as a good thing for a none academic girl like her I can remember form teacher saying so, no chasing if kids did opt to leave school a bit early.
It was literally a handful of us that went to sixth form, everyone else was working or YTS. Office juniors were very common roles. They would run errands, make tea, cover reception at lunch. If suitable they’d go to night school to learn typing/secretarial skills. I can remember one new office junior asking me who office perve to avoid was and it turned out to be her mum’s boyfriend. This was early 2000s!

This is true. I do know youngsters who lived in squats but there were lots of creepy landlords, sexism and groping (i.e. sexual assaults) were rife. I remember a couple of girls who were murdered in west London and no one was ever caught. Many men seemed to think that the pill meant that all young women were 'game'. Very dangerous times

Just because someone lives at home doesn't mean they're not working their way up or have an office job or live in a nice area.

Would you really make your child move out of you knew that meant it was much more likely they'd never be a home owner and would be spending maybe twice as much to rent a property than they would be if they had a mortgage?

What do you mean by 'if everything turned to shit'?

Oh yeah, my first boss and landlord never checked my age.

It was cash in hand for work, rent paid cash too. No contracts for anything. No one cared.

I had a bank account but I didn’t actually use it for a couple of years, there was just no need.

Well what if the parents house was suddenly no longer available to them and they had no money? Or lost job or ended up in abusive marriage with kids and no support They'd have far less skills to cope than someone who had been independent since mid teens.

And it's generally fairly well off families who can afford to keep adult offspring at home for free. Most working class families can't afford to keep another adult

I haven't made any of mine move out. But I wasn't paying for them as adults either. Dd1 moved out to get space as she was sharing room with her sister. Dd2 in with boyfriend and DS ( who has zero interest in owning a house ) to travel/ girlfriend etc.

My MIL left her Welsh village and moved to Manchester age 17. Ballsy young kids!

My son is the same. 🤣