What was it like growing up in the 50’s/60’s?

[WhyBeDennyDifferent]

I’m feeling a bit nostalgic about my mum and have been pondering what her childhood was like growing up in the 50s/60s in Northern Ireland.
Would anyone care to share their experiences? Even just daft things like what sort of dinners you had, how far you had to walk to school etc. What was expected of you as a child? How did your parents bring you up?

I’m aware everyone’s experiences will vary, I was just looking for a general idea.

Thank you

I was born in 1956 and yes to everything said so far. I was smacked as a child as all my friends were. Can’t remember being played with at all, maybe a game of cards after tea on Saturday.
Only had a hair wash once a week, only one set of “leisure” clothes apart from school clothes.
Coming home from school for cooked dinner at 12, dad would cycle home at 12.30. Same meals and hot pudding on a weekly rota! Absolutely nothing to eat in between.
Just one small present for birthday and Christmas.
Classes off 40 in infants and juniors, I can remember sitting in rows by first year of juniors.
No TV til the 1966 World Cup, no car until then either.
Mum seemed to be constantly miserable and doing housework or laundry in the single tub. I don’t think she liked being a mother.
The saga of booking the annual holiday went like this... parents would decide on a seaside town, dad would write to the town hall to request a brochure, then they would peruse the brochure. Next they would choose a few guest houses to write to for availability and prices. When all the replies had arrived, they would choose one and write again to ask for the required rooms. Then the reply would come back giving details of deposit required. Finally dad would sent a cheque for the deposit.
No telephone
Having to go shopping everyday for food ( no fridge)
Buying a bowl of ice cream as a treat for pudding from the I ecream van and wrapping it in newspaper outside to keep cold until after dinner.
No pudding unless you ate every scrap of dinner.
No tantrums , hard smack on legs if you even considered having one.
Children only to be seen but not heard.

That all sounds so ghastly, it is not as if we were dead poor either, my dad had a good job in the railway offices.
I wouldn’t want to go back, I have memories of a mother who definitely shouldn’t have had children and being cold all the time in the winter.

Admittedly I wasn't born til the 70s, but I'm from the Southern Hemisphere, so struggle to figure out how anyone could want to go back to a time when there was no heating!

Born 1952. Small town in NE England
The war had been over for 7 years. Lots of talk about it and lots of films about it.
So I still felt very fearful about it when I was able to understand.
Most of the rationing was over although there was still a few things in short supply.

People were nice and slim then and smart. Even though I was brought up on a council house estate. We had indoor bathrooms . The house was two years old when we began to rent it. In fact the oldest inhabitant, my friends mum and next door neighbour passed away last year aged 96 and she had her house from new.

Everyone was working class.
My town had a massive building programme of council housing after the war and during the 50s and 60s. Huge estates were built and well built at that.

Schools, post offices, shops and community centres were also built and a good road and bus network.
Dad didn’t want mam to work so she left her job as an office worker in Binns department store when she got married ( she had gone to the grammar school) and I was born a year later.
I was their only child, much wanted and much loved...but never spoiled...far from it. I was a good, polite little girl who would’ve loved a sister.

My aunt and uncle, lived in the next street ( private house) and had no children and was definitely spoiled by them and by my nana.
When the chemical factories opened my dad got a job there and ended up as a supervisor. Mum didn’t go back to work till I was 18
I got her a job in the betting shop but later she went to work in local government.

It was a lovely childhood. I worked hard at school, passed the 11 plus and went to grammar school and did well.

We were the first to have a car in our street and took two holidays a year. In May it was a seaside holiday . Usually somewhere on the south coast where we stayed in a guest house and September it was to s Wales. To stay with relatives. Loved those times.

Life was simple. There was no sense of lack in my hoome. Dad worked and did odd jobs around the home and mum kept house. They bought that house when I was 17 and I inherited it 18 months ago along with my aunts house.

Meals were simple. Mum cooked and baked but my auntie baked more 👍 her cakes were legendary.

Queen of the Andals, I'm with you! I had chilblains every year as a child, and they are agonising, completely unheard of now. In winter I wore beige knee length socks and wellies if it was wet or snowy, I can still remember the painful welt at the back of my knees where the wellies rubbed. No tights, we had woollen gloves and hats that needed to be hung on the Rayburn in the kitchen to dry. Gaberdine school macs that soaked up the rain and didn't stop the cold. We wore vests, but I'd take central heating and a warm coat over a vest any time.

Our bathroom was unheated , we had a tall paraffin stove that was only lit for Sunday night baths and hair wash. No other heating upstairs at all. I can remember frozen pipes, a frozen loo, frost on the window. And we were a quite well off middle class family, with a car, a TV and a phone. But no heating!

We didn’t get a black and white tv until I was 5 and a phone when I was 17 and that was on a shared landline.

Dad taught me cribbage, black duck, we played Ludo, he taught me chess...he was very, very competitive and liked to win. So do I.

We had a coal fire and the coal house was outside in the garden .We got a gasfire when I would be in early teens. Magic.
We got central heating when I was 20...even better magic.

He was determined I would pass the 11 plus. I had to do intelligence tests every night leading up to it.
It worked!

I was going through some stuff from my mums and came across a box with medals in belong to both my grandads who were both involved in the army in the First World War.

No one ever mentioned it to me. They would only have been young 17 or 19 year old boys 😒

Born in the 1950s. Primary schools very strict, teachers slapped children all the time at our school, for things like getting a sum wrong. Doctors and dentists brusque and snappy with children, very little kindness. My sister was in hospital having her tonsils out, and she was crying at visiting time because our parents weren't there. A nurse shouted at her and pushed her under the covers. She was seven. They were certainly not the good old days.

Yes, chilblains in bed made your toes itch terribly.

Another ailment I remember which I have not come across since is boils. A poultice of very hot kaolin from a little tin was put on the boil followed by a piece of something that seemed a bit like polythene, then a plaster on top of that held it down. The next day it would be removes and a huge lump of pus would come with it. Why, I wonder were there boils then but not now?

I grew up in the sixties. We didn't have a car, a telephone, a clock, a dishwasher, central heating and for several years no tv, washing machine or fridge either. I remember my mum leaving jelly to set under the shade of the lilac tree on hot days and butter turning rancid in a couple of days in the summer. My mum used to pile the washing on the pram and we'd walk to the laundrette, holding her hand as the pram was so full of laundry.
I remember collecting pop bottles. All soft drinks came in glass bottles that you returned to Victoria Wine and got a deposit for. That's how children earned pocket money - collecting used bottles and taking them to the wine shop.
In my teens we had so much more freedom. I had a job from age 12 and was working nights in restaurants by age 15 (lied about my age) and a day job on the market on Saturdays. We walked everywhere. We walked miles every day - to school and back, home for lunch and back, then to see friends. No mobiles to work out who was where so we'd go round everyone;s houses, knocking on doors to find each other, and then roam the streets for hours, which we loved.

Too Many Miles I'd forgotten chilblains.
I remember ice on the windows inside the bedroom.

I was born in 1968 in NI. The troubles started a year later so my childhood was filled with bombs and bullets and armed soldiers and police on the street.
Food was basic home cooked food. Meat and potatoes and home cooked chips. Occasionally we had a chippy tea and on special occasions a wimpy! We didn't really eat out much and on picnics took a Primus stove which we heated up cooked potatoes and tinned meat which we ate at the side of the road.
Holidays were spent in Portrush ( where I now live! ) it was a magical place with sandy beaches, donkey rides and Barrys amusements.
We respected adults and teachers and were not rude or cheeky.
All in all it was a great childhood as we had much more freedom, despite the troubles, and played out all day only going home when we were hungry or a bomb went off to make sure our house was still standing!

I grew up in the Sixties. We had a car, but didn’t get a telephone until I was 10years old. The phone number was only four digits, I can still remember it. I remember going into a public phone box on a school trip and calling the operator to make a reversed charges call home to let my parents know that our coach had broken down and we’d be late - I hadn’t any money on me.

I walked to and from school from my first year at infants school, sometimes with friends and sometimes alone. I didn’t stay for school dinners until we moved house when I was seven. The food was usually meat and two veg, often with a stodgy pudding like jam roll poly or spotted dick. The worst pudding was tapioca, which we called frogspawn. We were expected to clear our plates, and always said grace before eating. Every school day began with a religious assembly in the school hall and ended with a prayer in the classroom before we put our chairs on our desks at home time. It wasn’t a church school.
Naughty pupils were hit, either a smack on the bottom or hand, or, in exceptional cases, caned by the headmaster. Teachers also threw blackboard rubbers and chalk at pupils who were inattentive. Parents never complained about this, and were likely to smack their child for getting into trouble at school. Teachers were respected.

I hated having to go upstairs on the bus because the cigarette smoke was so dense it used to make my eyes sting. There was a conductor on the bus who came round to issue tickets, and who rang the bell when you wanted to get off. He/she also used to help elderly/pregnant passengers and those with pushchair - pushchairs had to be folded up before getting on the bus.

The fog in winter used to leave black marks on your face because of the pollution from coal fires and factory chimneys, but that improved when the Clean Air Act was introduced. We had to change to smokeless fuel, and my mother always complained that it wasn’t as good as coal. We always had ice inside the windows on winter mornings because we had storage heaters which were too expensive to keep on all night. I had a small fan heater which I switched on whilst I was getting dressed, but getting out of bed was hard. I always slept with a hot water bottle, and still have a scar on my leg from a nasty burn caused by sleeping with my leg directly on the rubber top.

*for children whose lives are blighted by the internet and social media.

You'd probably find that their lives were blighted in other ways back then. Look at the stuff Jimmy Savile and Co got away with. Not saying it doesn't happen today, but I think it as prolific in the past. It just wasn't talked about as much.*

There was a post here a couple of days ago by a mother whose 12 year old dd has been groomed by an online predator...

I was born in 64 in the South Wales valleys.

I remember the clothes we wore. I always had lots of layers: a vest and a slip under my normal clothes. There was definitely the concept of catching a cold from being cold and I was a sickly child so my mum always had me well wrapped up for fear of a chest infection and a bout of asthma (not that bothered about my dad smoking a packet a day in our house though).

My mum was quite smart and fashionable; always in heels, I don't think she owned a pat of flat shoes. Around the house she always had a "Mrs Overall" type housecoat on though. My mum was very bright and capable. She didn't work and channelled her energies into being a sort of superhousewife; our house was spotless and she was always cooking or baking or sewing. She used to scrub her section of the pavement outside our house every week, as did the other women in our street. She's much more laid back nowadays.

I remember so much of this.

I met Jimmy Savile when I was 14. Nothing happened. Not that that means that nothing ever happened.

I think the internet is one of the greatest things to happen in world history. I would choose to be born, if I had the choice, into a world with the internet.

1960
Balaclavas and nylon anoraks
Brown Clarks sandals
Knitted cardigan
Liberty bodices
Dress patterns and sewing machines
Cigarette machines
Grown ups dressing up to go put sheets being laundered and delivered back in stripes packages
Cranky thing to start the car
Wood labelled vaults
GP home visits
Galloway cough mixture
Smoking - ashtrays and table lighters
Pies
Sunday roasts
Records
Listen with Mother
Spinsters
Mo ey back on bottles
Gloves
Itchy fabrics
Huge newspapers and they were ironed

Oh yes! The cold! I wore Liberty bodices to help keep warm.

Primary school was strict, some of our teachers had done a teacher training conversion course of six months after serving in the army. They were keen on children standing up straight and running on the spot, but didn't teach us much. One used the Encyclopaedia Britannica a lot, and had a nasty cruel streak.

But on the bright side, the Library van came every week, with shelves filled with Biggles, Lorna Doone, Ballet Shoes, Black Beauty, Swiss Family Robinson, Children of the New Forest, Heidi....to whisk you away to a magical world.

What Ada said, reading did bring a magical world. It was also the time when beautiful children's paperbacks began to be produced.

I can remember my Grandad, in his sixties, catching the bus to work the night shift in the colliery with his "snap" (packed lunch) in a tin and a bottle of cold tea to drink.

Our relatives, who lived next door didn't have a bathroom until about 1970. They had a big tin bath in the kitchen and an outside loo.

There was not the choice of food there is now, no olive oil for example.

There was olive oil, but it was sold in small bottles from the chemist and you put it in your ear when you had earache!

We also had a 'po' under the bed for going to the toilet in the night at my granny's house as she didn't have an inside toilet until my Granda built her one in the wardrobe!

There was a post here a couple of days ago by a mother whose 12 year old dd has been groomed by an online predator...

And your point is? It happens today and happened as much in the past, it's just that the methods they use for grooming have changed.

We ate potatoes pretty much every day: no rice or pasta. Boiled, mashed, chipped or roasted. We had chips cooked in lard or dripping. Bloody lovely.

And yes to the Sunday tea thing; tinned fruit with evaporated milk, bread and butter cut very thin, salad and cheese and cold meat. Homemade cake or something baked. I loved Sunday tea.

Born 1950, lived abroad until 1961 when I was sent to boarding school in England. I wanted to go, having imbibed all the Mallory Towers boarding school books. But it was definitely Not Fun.
And so bloody cold! I got cold after cold after cold -- no immunity I suppose. Heavy blankets and eiderdown on the beds and we would scrape ice off the inside of the windows in the mornings.

Lived for the the holidays when I would fly back to join parents.
I used to envy the day girls who went home to their parents after school and a normal family life.
We were only allowed out on Saturday mornings, to go into town to shop but only allowed into three shops, Boots the Chemist, WH Smiths and a sweetshop. Woolworths was most definitely 'out of bounds.' On Sundays we were allowed out for a walk in the afternoon, after compulsory church attendance in the morning.
We loved pirate radio when it started up in the early to mid-60s and listened to Radio Caroline and Radio London on our transistor radios. (everyone had one.)
Before that the only pop music available on the radio was Pick of the Pops on the light programme once a week on Sunday afternoons, or Radio Luxembourg , which was only on the air in the evenings and reception was often shite.
School food was dire. At home we ate very well, my Dad was a good cook and made lots of (then) exotic foods, curries, chilli con carne, chow mein, kedgeree. And we also had a cook. an ayah and a houseboy. So I had a strange, quasi-colonial upbringing in one way and a traditionally English MC one too.