Things that happened 20/30 years ago that wouldn't today

[Putrid46]

As a child I recall aunties, uncles and grandparents smoking around me all the time with no ventilation. I'd stay at my grandparents for the weekend and go home with a cough, it was seen as normal.

Parents driving me to school hungover from the night before possibly still slightly drunk.

As an A level pupil in the early 2000s I recall staying until around 7pm one evening with 2 teachers to finish coursework due in the next day, the teachers practically did it for me and then one of them dropped me off home in her car, nobody batted an eyelid.

We had a French language assistant, who was actually French and she invited us to her home one Sunday to do coursework and eat croissants, again it was all above board, she was a lovely Mrs Doubtfire type lady and it was all fine but looking back, that'd never happen now!

Interested to hear from anyone else

Smoking on planes .

I started teaching in the late 90s and remember being on playground duty on the last day of term before we broke up for Christmas. A child came up to me saying she’d been given a cup of tea for me from one of the teachers in the staff room. It was full to the brim with mulled wine 😂. I thought nothing of it. Unimaginable now.

I remember in the 90s being happy to be picked up from primary school for lunch with parents as a treat. I was taken to the pub over the road and was shocked to see lots of the teachers in there at the bar. It was also very smokey in there but i was a bit of a regular and was always given a pen and some paper to sit and write stories.

I think that a lot of the references to smoking are more than 30 years ago, it would be 1996 and by then many places had restricted or banned smoking, people were very aware of the dangers.
Similarly the lack of seat belts in the back seat or children travelling in the boot. Ours would sleep in the luggage part of the estate car when we were making long journeys but that was in the early 1980s.

Not in 1996 or later.

I recall problems like that in the late '60s. early '70s, we had a car in which the handbrake was pulled out from the dashboard and once OH pulled on the handbrake and the whole mechanism came out! We certainly had cars with holes in the floor, we spent a fortune of Plastic Padding used with old newspaper to fill holes.

HNRTFT but I definitely think that my childhood was brilliant 40 years ago .
obviously not perfect but happy and uncomplicated.

Some maybe, but I was born in 1991 and was really annoyed when I was 15 as they'd just made it illegal to stop smoking in pubs in the UK 😅 .... they upped the age limit around then too as my sister used to be able to buy cigs in her school uniform in year 11 but I wasn't able to when I was in year 11 2 years later

We used to go to a toby carvery style place with our parents and they'd sit in the smoking area inside

This picture sums up the problem quite well.

30 years ago I was 15 and had a 19 year old bf. I was telling DD15 about this a couple of days ago (in the context of a wider story!) and she was literally horrified. That would be completely unacceptable within her peers these days, but back then it wasn’t really seen as weird, even my parents were fine with me going out with him.

Just as my parents were fine with me and my friends going underage clubbing, we’d get dropped off to the club by a parent! We’d do this regularly from year 10. I can’t imagine dropping DD off at a club to get blind drunk and leched on by older men, and I’m pretty laid back as parents go.

Cramming 10 children into the back seats and boot of a Saab

Teens able to look after themselves and make decisions without parents driving things or without constant input or oversight. For example my parents had no input into my university choice or subject choice and didn’t come with me to open days. Nor did they have any input into the part time jobs I took. All done off my own back. They were pretty helicopter parents for the time as well but by that time had brought me up to make my own decisions and to just keep them informed!

The ban on smoking indoor public places and work places came in 2007 so bearly 20 years ago.
a lot of these smoking stories are from much more than 20 or 30 years ago.

The ban on smoking indoor public places and work places came in 2007 so bearly 20 years ago.
a lot of these smoking stories are from much more than 20 or 30 years ago.

Shoplifters would get prosecuted.

Was this the one where they went into the back of an unlit stationary maintenance vehicle? I am still haunted by seeing this as a child on the news and regularly think about it when I see those yellow trucks with the arrows to say a lane is closed.

Agree. My eldest is 30 and no-one was allowed to smoke near them or in the house. 50 years ago, yes, but 30? Not in my world. We all knew about second hand smoke. My youngest is 20 and we knew about third hand smoke then too. We did know better. Maybe some allowed it but it wasn't considered good parenting even in the early 90s.

Home dinners - children who would actually leave school and go home for lunch and come back.

Babysitting the neighbours kids for a fiver at 13/14. Enjoyed this a they also left good biscuits and had a better TV.

Parents going to dinner/dance do, leaving you alone because you were 9/10 and knew how to behave yourself.

I'm over 60 and drink driving was always a thing and never acceptable. However, seat belts were optional. On the way back from the beach, my brother and I would lie flat top and tail on the the sofa style back seat, the odd time my Dad had to break, my brother would fly off the seat on to the car floor.

This was probably a good 4O years ago but random dogs roaming the neighbourhood as their owners had let them out 'to do their business'

When I was pregnant with DD in late 1991, there was a smoking room in the hospital where pregnant mums could go for a cigarette. It was dirty and pretty grim in the hope it would stop you from going there. You could also drink Guinness on the ward as it was thought to be full of iron and good for you and the baby. It's now been disproven and Guinness doesn't contain much iron at all!

Yes, but that’s 40 years ago, not 20. And public sector buildings were banning smoking inside in the mid 1990s. About 10 years before it became legal requirement.

And on planes!

I'm 50 and 35 years ago some girls in my year were going clubbing at 14/15- this was 1989. So a bit more than 30 years ago but not much more.

Things have changed massively on how inappropriate sexual behavior is seen since the Me Too movement, and that was only in the 2010s.

Actual 30 years ago, mid 1990s in my sixth form there was still a no smoking common room and a smoking one. Guess which room everyone was in?

Stopping at the corner shop on the way home from school for a quarter of pick and mix and no one worried about our sugar consumption.

If it was a special occasion, my dad would pick us up from school and give us a bag of cockles in vinegar. 🤢

Sitting in McDonald’s with my grandparents while grandad had a fag. I loved the little McDonald’s ash trays 😂

I am a bit older so .my memories are earlier, but similar. My dad's first 'car' was a Ford Thames van, he was a plumber. Weekends and holidays, he would empty the van and put a bench seat in the back, it was a bit wobbly, so I don't think it was bolted in, and off the family would go. 3 kids in the back. None of us smoked, which was unusual in those days, but smoking was everywhere. First job, in London, I had the catch the early bus to work, and I remember getting onto a bus full of smoke. My DH dad was a heavy smoker and started suffering from ill health in his 50s, he had 35 miserable years getting worse, lots of operations. DH has always been very anti smoking, but in his 60s started to get breathing problems, which we think is related ti him spending the first 18 years of his life living in a smoke filled room. Now in our 70s we have 2 close friends who are seriously ill, from the effects of smoking in their earlier life. One with fibrosis in his lungs, and one with vascular dementia. When the smoking ban came in, it was strongly opposed, the effects of passive smoking poo pooed. One of the best bits of legislation in recent years. We are going through a similar thing with electric cars, I bet in 30 years we are talking about how we used to walk round in cities full of petrol fumes.