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?

I was born in 59 and don't live in the UK but many things were similar. I'm pretty sure bathwater was shared in our house (no shower), and I had handed down clothes from a close friend, mine used to go to a younger cousin. My Nana had a TV before we did, although we always had a phone. We weren't poor and I was an only child, and I agree about our parents not being wasteful - mine were kids during the depression years.

Breakfast was whatever you found licking the window.

@yetonebut child seats didn’t start to become a thing until the 80s & rear seat belts were not a requirement in cars until the 80s.

Yes I'm a similar age and recognise most of the OP. Many points are also true for my own primary aged children now. I think a lot of this is area specific - it's normal where I am for children to play out from 7 or 8.

I also can't imagine running separate baths for siblings, what a waste of water, I've always assumed everyone shared baths.

No you never . Why lie ? You literally never lived in a " hole in the road "

Car seats made from telephone directories wrapped in cloth: no fitted seat belts in back seat, but DIY “straps”.

We played blind man’s buff to entertain ourselves.

We wore plimsolls or trainers without socks in summer - none of this “invisible socks” nonsense.

I’m a Boomer and that sums up my childhood as well. 👍

It wasn’t all good, of course, but I’m glad I was young then, and not now.

Yes. Born in the mid 1960s and recognise a lot (not all) of that, and we were relatively middle class. It's not a competition though! Some things are better, some are worse. Some are just different.

It was rubbish too. My dad died when. I was 2 in the mid 60s. My mother was shunned by most of the married women in the road as they automatically assumed she would be after their (dull) husbands. She got a tiny widows pension, and had to work non stop..I had a lot of major surgeries in a hospital that treated children like mini adults, no all day visiting, ignored and left alone in a bed on a massive cold ward without being comforted, or allowed to cry with the pain without being told off.
Single parent families were very unusual and I was a total oddity- I didn't get to go on school trips or get big birthday presents (not that all two parent families did of course). I was the weird one in hospital all the time with no dad. My mother was eyed with suspicion as a full time working woman and denied opportunities that she should have had if she'd been a man. We had black and white tv until the early 80s and no car until I was about 10.
On the other hand, we lived where there were fields and woods at the back and me and my friend would wander around them for hours with no real worries.
On the whole through it was bloody awful

I will add that sharing baths ended when my little sister was 3 (I was 6 and our older sister was 8) because she had a bout of diarrhoea… Poor mum and dad had to clean diarrhoea and my older sister’s vomit out of the bath while I sat in the corner of our bedroom worrying that I might have ingested something unsavoury, and writing in my diary about how much I hated my family and wanted to live at the Dumping Ground. Ah, the good old days.

I was born late 1950's and have a DB born in the early 60's. I remember the weekly baby clinics held in the local church hall. My DM loved taking us every week for the baby to be weighed, chats with the local HV (who was an absolute gem and greatly loved by the whole community) and chats with all the other mums. There was a table where you could buy baby milk, orange juice and medicines. It was a lovely afternoon and I can remember running around the dusty church floor with all the other pre-schoolers.

My DM had a medicine shelf in the pantry which included kaolin & morphine (the bottle had to be shaken before you received a dose as the mixture always separated ~ one half was very chalky!)

I can remember the sawdust on the floor of the butchers shop and the wire cheese cutter in the grocery. Milk was delivered to your door every morning and milk checks were left in a little cup next to the milk bottle holder in the forecourt. There was a bread delivery as well and we loved Saturdays because they would often have "fancy cakes" in the back of the van and we were occasionally treated to an eclair or cream doughnut!

Bread & butter was the main part of tea-time each day. There was a choice of jam or marmite with the second slice. Sometimes we had bread & butter for breakfast too ~ I can remember occasionally having bread & dripping. Any stale bread was made into eggy bread or bread pudding which were far nicer than plain bread & butter so we were always happy when there was stale bread! I also remember thinly sliced bread & butter being served with fish & chips when we had a meal at a cafe at the seaside

A huge difference was the communication with family who lived in a different area. We never had a phone until the early 1970's and were the first ones in our little road to get one. The post was extremely quick then so, if there was major family news, a letter or postcard would be quickly written and posted and would be received the next day. I can remember vividly coming home from school for midday dinner and finding my distraught DM - she had just received a letter from my grandparents telling her that her sisters baby had died suddenly. Sometimes a family would contact the police and ask for a policeman to deliver bad news.

My father brought his wages home each Friday and my DP's would sit at the table with a savings tin which was divided into sections and would allocate money for gas, coal, electricity etc. We loved 'Divi Day' at the Co-op as we would get new shoes. We also loved sticking the Greenshield stamps into a book and would spend ages looking at the little catalogue, hoping that our DP's would choose certain items when we had enough stamps!

So many things that were a part of my childhood that are unrecognisable now ~ elastic garters to hold socks in place ~ paraffin heaters (I hated the smell!) darning everything to make it last as long as possible ~ frying everything in lard and using suet to make 'filling' food almost on a daily basis ~ being allowed to play out in the street and the DM's joining in with the skipping competitions ~ women scrubbing the doorsteps and sweeping the street in front of their houses every day ~ older people bringing a chair out and sitting in their forecourts chatting to passers by ~ seeing the effects of the war (bomb sites, missing railings which had been removed so the metal could be used for aircraft etc) ~ air raid sirens being tested every few months ~ taking shoes & boots to the cobblers to be repaired ~ seeing all the OAP's queuing otisde the post office on a Thursday to collect their pension money

I think there was a stronger community feel then. I go to a church which is 45 minutes away from my home and there are only a handful of people who worship there who live in the immediate vicinity. We have completely lost the community feel of the church I grew up in which was at the end of our street, all the congregation were local and we saw each other out & about during the week and popped in & out of each others homes. Everyone shopped locally, worked fairly locally and so you would know most people in your area. Our 'beat bobby' lived two roads away and would deal swiftly with any minor crime and have stern words with any youngsters who were deemed to be going off the rails. We had the same 4 GP's (family doctors) throughout my childhood so they knew each family really well.

I miss the community feel we had then. When I pop into my local Co-op or library I rarely meet anyone I know. If I have an emergency I couldn't ask for help from a neighbour. Those are the things I miss most

Luxury! All we had to live in was a cardboard box.

Born in the 60s and I recognise a lot of this. Hand-me-downs, one phone, clothes for Christmas, no shower, etc etc.

I do worry for my daughters and the pressures and expectations they are surrounded by.

But they also don't expect to put up with blatant sexism in the workplace, so that's a plus.

Then I think of my own parents growing up on wartime. My father remembers just not knowing if you would wake up the next morning, or if the war would ever end. Rationing.

Such a different experience growing up, for each geberation.

I can relate to most of your post,I use to go alone at 10/11 years old at 4am fishing all day at the local river,my mother wouldn’t have known where I was until I reappeared at tea time.At 12/13 my mate and I would go to watch our local team play an away match,we would just jump on a train and go ! we didn’t even tell our parents we were going.No phone,money from paper rounds and wild oat picking at the local farm(the farmer would put about 20 kids in the back of an old trailer attached to a tractor, and take us about 2 miles away into the middle of a field in the middle of summer without any sunscreen to pick out the wild oats)our parents wouldn’t have known where we were at all.How we survived I’m not sure lol.We used to get a inner tube from a tractor tyre and roll it down to the river and jump on and float off for miles on end or until it burst or some older teenagers with Air Guns shot it with us still on it ! And watched us flounder in the water 😂 And I came from the posh estate lol.The kids from the council estate were even worse ! They were the ones with flick knives and air guns and to be avoided at all costs(they would rob you for 10p and did) this would include girls and boys,I had a girl tell me she was going to knock me out and I laughed at her and she DID 😂.This was all in what is considered a very posh area in the south east.Happy Days.

I was born in 77 and we definitely shared baths! Until I was 10 and we got a proper bathroom. We shared a plastic bath tub before.
I recognise all of the above. I think it depends where and in which family you were born. It's not just a decade thing.

We had a trim phone and it was a party line that we shared with our next door neighbour, so sometimes I'd pick up to make a call and she would be on it 😁

Slightly older, but we used to do this on horseback. It was awesome. So many happy memories.

I was born later than you and I shared baths until I was about 7 or 8. After that I didn’t have to get a bath with my brothers, but I still had to share the bath water! And that was only twice a week. We had a strip wash most days.

We didn’t have a house phone until I was about 10 years old, and even then it was periodically cut off when DM couldn’t pay the bill. We’d often have neighbours knocking with 10p asking to use the phone, so evidently not everybody did have one.

Edited to add: We never even had a shower. We had a rubber hose attachment on the taps, but it would always pop off the cold and squirt you with scalding water so I mostly just used a plastic jug.

It was exactly my life in the 80s! I think some people just had very privileged upbringings and can’t countenance that others didn’t.

I can remember there being some sort of climbing frame in the school playground, this was infants school and a few children hanging upside down on it, not me I will add, I wasn't very good at that sort of thing, I'm sure it was just on the tarmac.

Also remember being sent out to play all day, sometimes with jam sandwiches, sometimes with my bike, we used to go to the woods and build a camp or down the park and play in the brook, I was at junior school so probably about 9-10

Your experience isn't universal. I am early forties and I had my own bathroom growing up!

I lived in a cardboard box in t'middle of t'motorway. Except it wasn't a motorway, it was a mud track with a horse and cart that only had three wheels.

Your are not from that age though, you are only are bit older than my DS who had a life more similar to today than mine in the 60s

Yes, hilarious to mock the working-class.

I wasn't. But carry on.