Parents who had kids in the 70s/80s, can you answer this for me?

[LittleSnakes]

There’s always loads of comments on threads about how in the 80s or whenever, kids had much more freedom. Eg walking to school younger, playing out all day or suchlike. And now parents are too worried to let their kids do that and they do independent things much older than before. Back then, did you genuinely not feel the same worry as I would now, for example. Did you think that a 6 year old would be fine playing out all day and not think about bad things? I am so far away from that in my thinking that I can’t imagine what it would be like to be so relaxed about safety! So I’m curious about it. Was there less anxiety in general back then? Tell me more!

I walked home from school from age 7 in 1978. I didn't live that near the school. One time I got home and my mum wasn't there. A neighbour spotted me on the doorstep so took me in.

Perception has also changed. There were an elderly couple in my street and the man often sat in their front porch during the day. He was like the community’s grandpa, we often sat on the steps on his porch and talked with him about everything and nothing. To this date I am still in contact with his grandchildren who lived away and only spent time with him on the holidays.

Imagine that happening these days! It won’t take long for someone to claim the old man who children like to visit is a paedophile.

@timewillhealabrokenheart

....oh and I walked to school on my own age 5, but would never contemplate allowing mine to do that at the same age, 20 odd years later!

Really were you not walking with other kids?

All through primary I walked without an adult but there was always at least 3 of us. But often there were more from the street walking together.

I had my children in the eighties and they were not allowed to play in the street or unsupervised all day, and didn't walk to school alone until about 10 and then in a group and on a safe route. It was similar in other households in the area.

It depended on the area you grew up in, then as now.

You need to go in gransnet

I'm born early 70s. My mum is mid 70 so she won't be in here. But I can ask her and report back.

@GrandmasCat surely it would be 60+ not 80+?

I would say my children's childhood (they are now teens) was actually quite similar to mine, but they were probably able to do things a year or 2 later than I was

e.g. I walked to school from 8; they walked from 9
I played out from 7; they played out from 9
I used to walk 15 minutes to catch a school bus aged 9; I wouldn't expect my DC to do similar until 11

I've never worried about "bad things" per se - just that I thought my DC were old enough to cope with normal eventualities

My parents let us out all day. Despite having had a family member raped and murdered. As this was by someone the family knew it possibly made them feel no different about risk outside the home. Just as now those things are so incredibly rare they said they felt that child's freedom was more important than the risk. I still hold to this and try and let them out

I grew up in the 70s, my parents are 80. My partner is the same age and if his parents were still alive they would be 80 and 90.

I don’t know many people of my parents generation that had kids in their teens or early 20s but I suppose that it wasn’t uncommon for people to become parents younger back then.

My son was born in 1978. No I dont think we did worry as much. DS was allowed to go up to the local playground at 6, it was within site of the house though.

We lived on a small estate when he was that age and I think I was more worried about the road than anything else. He wasn't allowed to cross it, the playground was our side of it

I think he was about 7 when he went to the local shop. I did the first time watch him from the front door, walk all the way down the road till he went in and then back again.

He never walked home from school on his own, but that was because I was a TA at his school so there was no need, although most of his friends did from about 7. There was a lollypop lady to cross the main road, then they were straight onto the estate.

This was a small southern Market Town.

The OP is herself a child of the 80s, so other children of the 80s aren’t going to provide any startling insights that she doesn’t already have.

Yeah you're not gonna get many answers from parents from that era, they'll be in their 80s but I was a child in the 70s and 80s, we were warned not to talk to or go off with strangers and the same as other posters we had to be in before dark.
No one checked on you, they wouldn't have been able to find you!
I wasn't allowed out all day at 6 yrs old tho.
We'd be off after breakfast on our bikes, if someone didn't have a bike they'd be given a croggy, we'd go to the park, make dens etc but we weren't allowed out of the local area.
You couldn't get up to any mischief as another parent would knock and tell your mum then you'd be in for it when you got home. There was no fear of an argument for other parents to knock on your door as an adult would be believed over a child, there was none of "my little Jimmy wouldn't do that" little Jimmy would be in trouble.
The thing is there was no Internet, no mobiles, 3 channels on the one telly that the whole family watched so there was nothing to do at home, all the kids in the area played out, there were safety in numbers.
If your mum wanted you she'd stand on the doorstep and screech your name until you heard her.
Grooming, kidnapping, sexual assault was practically unheard of unless it made the evening news.

Not all of us who had children in the 70s and 80s are in their 80s!

I'm in my 60s, and most of my child's contemporaries parents were about the same age as me. Having a child in your late teens/ early 20s was quite normal then.

I was born in the late 60s and I rememeber my mum walked me to school on my first day, but then I went there and back on my own. It was about 15 minutes each way but only one very quiet road to cross. When I moved up to the middle school at age 9/10 (?) I used to walk home at lunch time as it was only just down the road, and make myself lunch and then walk back in time for afternoon school.

I also remember that I used to go with my mum to the markets on Saturday mornings and she would leave me at the cafe with a bottle of coke (with a straw! such decadence!) while she went round the meat bit as I didn't like it. I would have been under 10.

I can't get over how stressed today's parents are about things like letting children eat grapes, or the fuss that was made about the advert where the kids were hanging upside down and eating cheese triangles.

I think some of it was about where you lived as well. I'm a 70s/80s child.

My first primary school my mum walked me to the school bus and collected me from the stop.

When we moved I was about 6 or 7, we moved to a new housing estate that had a tarmacked path to the primary school and beyond, the school gate was locked overnight and at weekends but you could still use it to get to the old village.

I used to walk 'on my own' but you would meet up with other children you knew from school, or who lived next door and the odd mum who was walking younger children.

Almost all the children from the estate went to the same primary and middle schools so you were never travelling truly alone.

Almost all the mums were SAHP and always seemed to have 'coffee mornings' so in the summer you would be out of the house all day but you would go to where the mums were if there was a problem and no one batted an eye lid if Mrs Smith from no 2 put a plaster on little Tommy who lived at no 6 or if anyone made juice for the 6 kids who just wanted a drink.

I have no idea if it still happens but it wouldn't surprise me.

When we moved again I was 9 and the girl next door didn't go to a local school and the other neighbours were older, I had a lot less freedom.

There also seemed to be quite a lot of 'tagging along' so if your friend went to her grandma's every Saturday you might be invited along, just because.

Yeah you're not gonna get many answers from parents from that era, they'll be in their 80s

What? My brother was born in the 70s and I was born in the 80s. My Dad is 66. Mum would be 66 too, but she isn't here anymore.

80s is nearer my grandparents age.

Yeah you're not gonna get many answers from parents from that era, they'll be in their 80s
I was born in 1982 and my mum is 63.

We lived on a pretty busy road so didn't play out in the road that much - we did visit each others houses a lot and would play in gardens unsupervised for hours. I remember one school friend had a massive pond. You wouldn't let a load of children play round a pond unsupervised now.

I have often wondered this too! I was born in Belfast in the late 1960s and can't believe my parents were relaxed enough to let us play out all day and, when we were about 12/13, let us get the bus into town, with all the added worry of bomb alerts, incendiary devices etc. I was walking to school from the age of 5. The very idea! My kids are still young (13 and 9 - I had them late!) and I honestly can't get my head around it. My mum now has Alzheimer's, but before it took hold, she was completely with me on keeping my children safe and not letting them play out etc. Even though she was happy for us to do so. I can only conclude that there's a heightened perception of danger now, real or imagined. There are also far more cars on the road now than when I was small, so that's a consideration too, especially when living in a city.

I think all those public information films during Tiswas about not going off with strangers, or playing near railway lines, or swimming in quarries, suggest parents did worry - well, a bit - about what their kids might be getting up to while they were off playing unsupervised in the woods/by the railway sidings. And the chip pan fire warning ad. And the one about stopping in the box junction. Life was full of badly animated disaster back then.

Agree that parents would be 60s+.

My mum was very safety conscious and focused a lot on stranger danger type stuff but did they did let me go in and out of neighbours houses (grandparent age) and knock/play with other children on the road aged from 5/6. I walked to school (with older children) from around 7 and roamed the wider area streets and parks from around 8-9. Caught the bus into the next town alone with a friend from around 10 and the next city from about 12. Mum would drop me clubbing on a Friday night from about 14/15.

@GrandmasCat

Main difference is that back then there were far more SAHMs and more community involvement on keeping an eye on the children as mums would keep an eye on other kids as they checked on their own and any adult could tell a child off if putting themselves in danger without the parents going ballistic about it.

Now with most people at work and everybody keeping to themselves, it is not as safe to provide kids with the same level of freedom.

I think this has a lot to do with it.

There also wasn’t as much traffic on the roads, you went to the local school so your friends were all very local, I also think there wasn’t as much news reporting and information available as there is now, so there wasn’t the fear of “paedophile on every corner” like there is now.

My parents grew up in the 1940s and say they had a lot more freedom than they could give us…I had more than my kids (now 24 and 19), and I see a difference between their childhoods and what youngsters have now.

@HipHipPuree

I think all those public information films during Tiswas about not going off with strangers, or playing near railway lines, or swimming in quarries, suggest parents did worry - well, a bit - about what their kids might be getting up to while they were off playing unsupervised in the woods/by the railway sidings. And the chip pan fire warning ad. And the one about stopping in the box junction. Life was full of badly animated disaster back then.

I'm still slightly afraid of sparklers after all the videos of people's shell suits catching fire while holding them.

I've not worn a shell suit since the 1990s but these things stick with you.

I was a parent in the 80’s and no I didn’t let my kids out to play unsupervised when they were as young as 6 and neither did anyone else, they got to go round to friends or the park(no roads to cross) when they were about 9ish.
I was a child in the sixties and I wasn’t allowed out on my own at a young age either. Even as an older child my mother knew where I was and I certainly wasn’t allowed to go out all day and wander wherever I wanted to.

I had my children in the 70s and 80s and I'm on here all the time! (I don't tell my adult children though and I'm not in my 80s )

Of course I worried about them playing out and kept a close eye on them, even though they will not have noticed it.

We lived in a cul de sac with lots of other young families and it would have been cruel not to let them play outside where all their friends were. They only played out when other children were there and had to tell me where they were playing, especially if they were going into a friend's house. I often kept an eye on them from the window and they were only allowed to play on the pavement. There wasn't a lot of traffic on our street during the day.

They didn't play out all the time, I made sure I took them out every day (for my own sanity!)

I was there to keep an eye on them as I worked evenings/weekends when they were small, then part time weekdays once they were at school.

I'm a child of the 80s and played out. We lived in a quiet cul-de-sac and I wasn't allowed to cross the road but could knock for my friends and play hopscotch on the path. We all had back gardens with slides/swings ect in and could play in each others gardens. Wasn't allowed to go over the field to the back of the houses until about 9/10. I'd let my dc do the same if it was the same set up. My dm gardened a lot so was out in the front garden most afternoon/evenings, all the neighbours were friendly with each other and the mix was elderly people and families. It felt safe.