To think the younger MN generation would be shocked at things we did decades ago...

[Allonthesametrain]

It was such a different time, before the days of hand gel, smartphones, ordering online, house cctv, awareness etc.

This is from a background of a good home with values, DF worked hard, DM did everything for us 3 DC and also worked early before we got up and during school hours when we of that age.

Things we would do...

All 3 have a bath together every night when young, also go into after bath DF or DM.

Most clothes were hand me downs/passed on from friends and neighbours and anything new was for a special occasion.

If we wanted anything special we had to wait until Christmas or birthdays and were delighted and grateful

Lucky to have a house phone, it was in the hall way so no privacy and a shout how long are you going to be on there if you rang out

Bedrooms were sparse, we put colour on our walls with posters we got from magazines

Fun time meeting your friends, on foot or bikes, roller boots, usually at the school you've been at all day because it was known and had no big fences around it.

We collected tapes, later CDs, which we listened to over again and had to rewind, also recorded from friends on a double deck

Recorded our favourite songs from the radio, had to pause before next one to not include the DJ's blitherings

Young teens, oldest looking member of group bought a couple of 2L cheapest cider, we all drank from

Pubs, rarely enough loo roll, we never thought to bring our own, wipe by hand or drip dry

Need a wee, you went anywhere

You walked to meet your friends then walked/staggered back, split up on way to walk on your own as girls

You didn't dare argue with a teacher, even when it was unfair as a good student

If you went to university it was a shared bathroom and kitchen between 12, one tine fridge, old pans. Then when you moved out to house share the furniture was from the 1940s, mattresses had springs sticking out, slugs were a normal practice to put outside.

You qualify, get your own first flat, most basic furnished, the slug relatives are there, you still have to go to the laundrette as no washing machine. Single glazing, you put your own film up to help.

This was if lucky, friends from less privileged areas and backgrounds were left to roam, hungry, sniffed glue, caused chaos, were always dirty, same clothes every day. When 'naughty' they were beaten by their parents and disrespected, often hit by teachers.

Things have progressed so much but there are still many living this life within their homes.

So, with the observation of MN posts about things like should I be upset about DC not being offered his favourite food at lunch time just seems so trivial compared to the reality of us as older parents.

Are younger parents picking arguments about what could be deemed as insignificant just because they can now on SM?

Yeah, I know, I will seem as a dinosaur, but Im not. Basic values need to come from home, which we as gen X experienced growing up. When you're a young child and all you know is instant gratification from screens then this is their norm, then going forward their DC. Not saying all parents do this, of course not, but sadly many do.

My point? Oh yes, growing up in harsher times, which wasn't ideal at all but it was what it was and now we appreciate the positives of now, but without knowing what it was like before is it difficult to appreciate and not succumb to a lazier way of parenting?

Then I apologise. MN is very middle class and a lot of responses smack of “Oh look at all these poor people moaning about how hard they had it”.

I'm fascinated by my mum's childhood, and her siblings'. She was born in the early 50s in Lapland, they lived on an island on a lake so had to cross the lake to get to school. At certain times of the year they could cross by ferry, or in the case of her older brother, by rowing boat (he almost drowned one time), in winter crossing over the ice on skis, but at other times of the year they had to live at the school during the week. Then they built the dyke and the suspension bridge to connect the island to the mainland and mum and her siblings would climb on the bridge and graded themselves according to how daring they were at climbing. They had a farm and looked after the cows. They ate things like blood pancakes. They once had an ice cream cake for a celebration but it was a hot day and it melted before they got a chance to eat it. Her little brother was born ten years after her and it was her job to put him to bed and help him fall asleep. One sister was born prematurely, in the sauna, and only lived for a few hours. It was about 35km to the nearest hospital, my mum was born in a taxi on the way there.

My childhood made me a minimilist and big on cleaness clean freak.

I was born late 80s and lived in the countryside for years - a lot of your OP sounds like my childhood to. I was at uni before Facebook caught on. There was no corporal punishment at school but we were certainly getting smacked at home in my family (less common in others by then).

I don't think it was always class thing rather than a wealth or 'financial choices' thing. I had a pretty middle class upbringing (was considered posh by some friends in rural England) but money wasn't wasted. The house was full of books, my parents had university educations and middle class jobs but I never had new clothes (except if I asked for them for my one Christmas present). We had a black and white portable TV when I was a kid (rare by the 90s) and we used to have 2 pairs of shoes - one for school/church and one for 'scruffies'. There was less 'keeping up with the Jones' before social media I think. Having fancy stuff in the countryside was considered flash. The posher someone was, the more likely they were to have shit cars - the only newer cars you saw were in poorer areas (presumably on finance which was rare for the middle class families to use then). Many farmers had big houses but they were filled with antique furniture that had been there for generations

I remember my late MIL saying to me "I never dreamed I would be as comfortable as this"

She was born in 1929 into a very poor family. She lived very rurally in a house with no electricity, water from a pump in the yard, no bathroom and an outside toilet. Her father was a miner and they all took it in turns to have a bath in the same bathwater in a tin bath in the kitchen one after the other. She was one of 6 children.

By the time she died she was living in a comfortable bungalow with running water, electricity, a bathroom and central heating - all things we take for granted these days.

And yet those that grew up that way are the ones who you perceived to mollycoddle.

My mum was beaten black and blue with a belt growing up, I was left to roam and sniff glue and my daughter is a top student who would be described as privileged.

It takes generations to break a cycle.

And fwiw, I struggle daily not to pass my trauma of growing up with a parent who couldn't cope because I massively empathise with my mum for he upbringing and the damage she absorbed.

My goal is to do minimal damage and hope that my child can give her own children a trauma-free childhood amd break the cycle.

If that means not letter her get sexually assaulted while off her face on cheap booze bought by someone's older brother and his friends because I'm too overprotective cimpared to the free roaming childhood i had then so be it.

I'll be the first to say I enjoyed my childhood- at the time. It wasn't until adulthood Iooked back and saw it was neglectful and explotative. Teem me had a blast. Adult me is processing the damage.

My point is you give one minimal paragraph to the "less privileged" kids but still include this your thread of reminiscence when you haven't lived it. It was fine until the. Please don't include throwaway paragraphs about lives like mine to compliment our resilience like its a badge of honour and not an albatross around the neck.

Most of the responses you’re talking about are quoting a very famous comedy sketch called The Four Yorkshiremen first performed on At Last the 1948 Show and later made famous by the cast of Monty Python. It takes the piss out of people who try to boast about how hard they had it growing up, with each Yorkshireman coming up with an even more outrageous story than the last until finally someone claims their father murdered them in their beds.

And you tell the young folk that today, they don’t believe you…

@IrisPallida I'm not actually saying my daughters have it better and easier than previous generations. I'm pretty terrified at what they've got coming up, to be honest. However I also feel there's a danger in only recognising the things we think are good about the past and failing to appreciate that the reason the world has changed so dramatically is largely because people wanted to improve their lives. A lot of the original post seems to be confusing different eras to me but also mashing up experiences of different classes or income levels. We would all like to take the best parts of the past and mix them with the best parts of today to create an idealised childhood for our own children but that's simply not possible and I think it's important to understand why.

For what it's worth, my pre-teen children have always had hand me downs and were bathed together! However we do live in a country that seems a few years behind the UK in terms of children having mobile phones, iPads at school, social media pressure etc. but I can see it coming here too. When I see the girls at the international schools here doing pouting selfies into their mobiles aged 8 or 9 I want to cry and am so glad mine aren't doing that!

Yeah, thing is in Britain or any large country there was always division between better off and poorer. There’s also divisions between north and south, as at an extreme example, London had far better markets with different exotics available than what you’d find in an inland small town in the north. Port cities everywhere would see different things.

On Mumsnet you quite often get people from poor 70s backgrounds yelling at the modern middle class’s luxury because they were worse off in the 70s, and the middle class of the 70s telling the poor now that they too had hardships growing up because it was less globalised then, or the 70s middle class Londoners telling poorer northerners that it wasn’t like that, they did have civilization thank you very much. And then you get boomers who are on a quest to remind everyone they grew up with less because of the very real and provable intergenerational inequality, which they resent having pointed out and don’t want taken off them.

increasingly now it turns into things like ‘you’re talking rubbish you liar’. My goodness, in a country even of 50 million, with individuals have different experiences! Imagine!

The ‘poverty’ of the 70s is still very much with us and growing worse. Personally I am increasingly worried about the poverty of mind too, that seems to think both any household economy is evil and that disparate experiences don’t exist.

I was born in 1980 and that list all applies, except the pub toilet paper 🤢. We had progressed to swirly multi coloured 70s carpet for the slugs though by the time I went to uni.

Also, as the smallest friend, I always sat in the footwell of the car without seatbelts when we overloaded it. Or the back of my friend’s dad’s pick up truck.

Yes, and as one of the people who quoted it, I can confirm I’m from an extremely poor WC background where food quality and amount declined sharply towards Thursday, my Dad’s payday, we only had an outdoor loo, all clothes were handmedowns, and my parents struggled to feed and clothe far more children than they should ever have had. It was an utterly miserable way to grow up, and didn’t promote any kind of wholesome values.

It's competitive hardship. It's reverse agism. Look at the current delicate little flowers who have never known real hardship like me.

We could go back a few decades further and talk about the experiences of our grandparents - of all classes - which would make the experiences of those on this thread look petty too. Thing about buying meat and refrigeration. Think about transportation and water. Just infrastructure generally. Even if you were middle class you didn't have heating. WW1 is generally the cut off for domestic servants for the middle classes. So you have a gap before central heating etc becomes common even for them. It wasn't until the mid 1930s that two thirds of homes were connected to the national grid.

What we don't do is talk about the hardships and challenges for this generation in a way that reflects reality. We have a loss of skills which means we have to continue to maintain a level of lifestyle otherwise civilisation collapses. It's actually incredibly fragile. So these kids have to have way more skills and ability to survive just in different environments which many of us would have folded at the prospect of as young people. That's a scary prospect to me. You have to keep the plates spinning.

This idea of how hard we had it, doesn't really reflect things now.

It's a lot more competitive today than it was decades ago.

DH is extremely bright but dicked about in class. He got away with it because his results were always pretty much the best in his class and the schools wanted the results. He is very aware that this 'freedom' simply isn't an option for DS. His behaviour would have got him kicked out and probably not even permitted to sit exams. DS has to conform and has to behave. DH doesn't have an ADHD diagnosis. DS does. So there's struggles right there from the word go.

Etc etc.

I don't think it helps to reflect on these pasts with reflection on technology change and how it almost traps people into a lifestyle.

My cousins are a similar age to me. Their parents decided to raise them without a TV. The impact that has had on them has been massive. Their cultural reference points mean they lack ability to socially connect in the same way as their peers. They lack the ability to detach fantasy and reality. I remember one getting very distressed at Tom and Jerry when she was about 12 because of the conflict in it which she'd never been exposed to.

It's impacted on their whole lives and life decisions. They moved away from 'society' and live lives away from the modern world even now. They are lovely people by they are disconnected and isolated in many ways because their upbringing almost is back in time.

If you flip that to today and kids growing up now - it shows up the complexity of the social structures, the technology dependency (and skills needed) and the need to conform to institutional structures to even 'get by' and how this leaves behind a lot of people and how some people really face challenges in that environment because their brains literally don't work in a way that enables that.

And they are mocked for not being able to cope with conditions of the past - the reality is many would have done better in that time and space than today - if they'd grown up in it. It's a really unfair accusation for that reason.

The kids who could have left school at 14 and gone into careers with long term employment prospects, just don't have that luxury anymore. They need GCSE Maths and English to fart. Otherwise they almost are permanently written off as 'useless'.

That's a harsh reality that we shouldn't dismiss.

Good post, @RedToothBrush.

And they are mocked for not being able to cope with conditions of the past - the reality is many would have done better in that time and space than today - if they'd grown up in it. It's a really unfair accusation for that reason.
The kids who could have left school at 14 and gone into careers with long term employment prospects, just don't have that luxury anymore. They need GCSE Maths and English to fart. Otherwise they almost are permanently written off as 'useless'.
That's a harsh reality that we shouldn't dismiss.

Very true. The environment of the society you live in, and the economic choices that are actually open to you therefore, actually MATTERS. There seems to be either a vested interest or just a bloody-mindedness, probably both, that seeks to avoid that.

Oh I thought this was going to be about our completely debauched young adulthood 😂. I can barely remember the 90's and have no idea how I'm still alive, my teens drink water and go on hikes. Totally different world.

Their parents decided to raise them without a TV. The impact that has had on them has been massive. Their cultural reference points mean they lack ability to socially connect in the same way as their peers.

Sorry but 😂😂😂
My dcs have also grown up with no TV. Gosh they even didn’t have any PlayStation or Xbox until late primary.
Theyve never had any issue socially. Incl dc2 who is on the spectrum.
Theyre now young adults, found their first jobs, happy and balanced.

The decision of your cousins to live a different life is likely down to many other factors than not watching TV. And tbh you have enough critical sense @RedToothBrush to know that. I mean to not be able to make the difference between reality and a cartoon, you need more than not watching Tv. You need to never have been in contact with reality. No books, articles, news, discussions around the dinning table etc… nothing that could be deemed upsetting. And an extremely privileged life that protected them from everything.

I'm here to point out that we all shared baths because combi boilers had not been invented in the 70s and 80s. In the 70s lots of people didn't even have central heating.

You had one copper tank which was heated for a small time, so only one tank of hot water.
You did have a back up source 'immersion heater' which heated the tank via prongs I side it, but this cost an absolute fortune and we were NOT allowed to use it.

I was born oop north in 1965 with older parents who both fought in WW2 and had lived with rationing. Wasting food was not an option! Dad (ex RAF) probably had PTSD although that wasn’t diagnosed back then.

We still had an outside loo until I was 15yrs old and mum had saved enough to get central heating and an indoor loo (with no spiders watching you pee). That was pure luxury to me.

I don't know. There was a girl in my 6th form English Lit. A level class who grew up without a TV and who really struggled to understand a lot of the reference points everyone else made. We were studying Shakespeare for example and she would get left behind. Her parents eschewed TV in favour of what they thought was a more intellectual lifestyle but it actually made it much harder for her because her education then lacked the breadth and scope that the rest of us benefitted from.

I grew up in the 80s and many of these things are still true for my 5 yo.

Shared baths and DH or I often get in afterwards. Also mostly hand-me-down clothes (most people I know do this?). Just good for the pocket and the environment isn't it.

Still wait until Christmas for stuff.

Slugs still find their way somehow in to the house!

Obviously tech is different. But I certainly never wiped with my hand, eeww, or hang around swigging cider or sniffing glue!

How does studying Shakespeare of all things demonstrate how lack of a TV causes you issues? 🤔

My personal feeling is that there’s a lot I don’t want to socially connect with now, starting with this attitude that being socially connected on a minute-to-minute basis is more important than actually having competence in skills or thought. And that if the worse thing you can complain about is limited social connection, you’re doing well.

The uni accommodation situation is still the same for poorer students lol. We had one bathroom between 12 but luckily 4 dropped out so I considered that lucky. Kitchen was always fucking mining but I did meet some great people (but also had a flatmate from hell who got sectioned in the end).

But your children HAVE had consoles in late primary...

Imagine being a teen with NO technology.

shrugs

How does studying Shakespeare of all things demonstrate how lack of a TV causes you issues? 🤔

Yep, I know, seems odd. In particular I remember our teacher using examples of things we'd all seen in The Young Ones to illustrate and explain certain points we were studying. Other programmes too - she was a very good teacher, actually. She knew how to help us connect to archaic material by using modern references in that way. She also used Spitting Image as a reference at one point when we had to do Chaucer.

I am a similar age.
One fire to heat the whole house.
Bath once a week on a Sunday for school.
Washed hair in fairy liquid when there was no shampoo.
Used loo roll when the sanitary pads ran out.
And both my parents worked.
My mum retrained and got a better job so in my late teens we got central heating, a second hand car, foreign holidays.
In primary school I had more than most of my friends and we didn’t have much. I can remember in my teens in the 80’s houses without phones and even fridges. Mums would still use the old larder under the stairs to keep things cool.
I went to a ‘posh’ school via the 11 plus and for the first time met middle class girls who went pony riding and had tennis lessons. One even had her own bathroom and I was entranced by it.
It had a plush carpet - carpets in bathrooms!
I used to get picked money off my nan on a Sunday and my mum would bottle it from me to pay for my school lunches.
Being a teenager I appeared as an angel - worked hard. Used to stay with my new friend a lot and my parents were delighted as she was quite posh. We used to climb out the back of her house to go to gigs, the pub, even a nightclub. At 14. Then we’d climb back in at 2 in the morning and never got caught.
I had an absolute ball.