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!

@gingerhills

OP, a friend of mine posted photos on FB of the streets where we grew up. There were no cars. Like, about six in the entire street. People didn't have cars. The roads were far less busy. That meant that the likelihood of an accident was massively reduced, and the likelihood of a stranger whizzing you miles away in seconds was also far less likely. And everyone played out. So there were networks of gangs of roaming children who knew each other and had seen each other about and kept an eye on each other.

Well I'm nearly 70 and both my grandfathers had cars, both working class men who left school at 14. People did have cars in the 70s and 80s without a doubt but more likely to be one family car rather than two which seems common now.

I was born in the 50s, had my DDs in 1989 and 1990.
As a child in the 50s and 60s, I walked alone to school from age 4, ditto went alone to the local shops at 4. Played out all day - in the gardens of friends initially, then off to the woods, park, fields, from about 7.
Was a latchkey child from 7, as mother went back to full time work then.
It was no safer or more dangerous than nowadays - I remember grabbing a younger child friend when I was 9, and running home with her as a dodgy bloke opened a car door and tried to lure her in.
Another young friend was hit by a car trying to cross the road on her scooter, but luckily at low speed and was ok. A classmate was run over by a milk float and ruptured his kidney, while working for the milkman at the age of 10.
Not only were there no mobile phones, we didn’t even have a landline until I was 20!
Kids were much more resourceful and independent, through necessity- I used to cook my own lunch on a gas stove at 9, alone in the house.
I allowed my own DDs to play out unsupervised from quite young, in the 90s. There was a stream and barley fields behind our house, and they would disappear for hours, coming back soaked and muddy. Or they would walk to the other end of the village to play ball games on the primary school grit pitch at weekends, coming home for meals.
I think modern kids seem to have much less freedom - I don’t see the crowds of kids on bikes or making dens in our local woods and fields that used to be normal back in the day.

We had two cars in the 70s, both working, small children, a car each as had most of our friends.
Had my first baby in 1971 aged 21 and have no intention of dying yet. (And my teenage granddaughters are seriously impressed by the fact that I can still do the splits 😂).

I think the two cars thing was probably more common in some areas than others. Depending on public transport, and aflunacy in the 70s and 80s.

In the 80s I can remember a couple of tradesmen getting dropped of by works vans at the end of the street.

The numbers of people with cars and multi car families has grown.

Wow i don't think people had 2 cars in our area (middle class above average salary but not wealthy.) People Getting A Car was still a big thing!

Many people definitely had two cars in the area where I grew up in the 80s. Usually one bog standard Ford or Vauxhall hatchback, and a dilapidated mini or Polo as the second car (usually used by the mum!) I must have spent half my 80s childhood being ferried about by friends’ mums in their clanking Minis with sheepskin on the seats to hide the baby vomit and those funny orange immobilisers that you fixed onto the gear lever to stop the car being stolen. Good times…

It depends on area/part of the country, too - in fact it was more common to have two cars in the (very middle middle class suburban) area where I grew up than it is where I live now, which is a very “cargo bike, cycling and organic muesli” area where people normally commute by rail to central London, and frown at you on climate grounds if you own any car at all!

Yes we had a massive old Volvo estate car for ferrying kids and long journeys, plus 2CV for fun