Were you brought up in the 1970s? Has it influenced you?

[Maninadirndl]

I saw a Channel 4 programme recently called "Never Did Me Any Harm" about a Dad who gets no respect from his kids who takes them all back in time to the 1970s. It struck parallels with my own life then, and has influenced me now.

When I am dressing my kids and one of them says "I don't want that pair of trousers" I go nuts when I remember how little colour coordination or fashion meant in those days. You put on a pair of pants and that was it. In summer a pair of shorts to play in and oif they got mud on another pair etc. No thought as to what designer label it was or whatever. Now we dress them quite nicely in fashionalble stuff but which comes from the spring and autumn kids flea markets which are put on by the local churches here in Bavaria. I blame the 80s era for the obssession with designer rubbish.

Elsewhere on MN I saw some debate about whether "good" parents did crafts all day with their kids. My parents were too tired to do anything like that with me, I just got on with doing stuff like model trains or farm or whatever. In summer I'd play in the trees or build dens. I remember a huge amount of freedom to roam in sometimes quite dangerous places looking back. We lived near the sea and there was a railway at the back of our garden. Sometimes kids died as a result of accidents in trees or hit by cars. Is life safer now? Or is it "too" safe? There seems to be a fixation with child perverts in Britain which you don't get in the rest of Europe.

TV was actually quite a good influence. Blue Peter was a good programme then as was "Why don't You?" in the summer holidays making you go out and do stuff for yourself. Now that there are millions of distractions like mobiles and computers how many kids can do anything for themselves?

But on the other hand was it that safe? I remember Bonfire Night being exciting but looking back pretty dangerous. We used to have our own family bonfire with the neighbours bringing along potatoes and treacle toffee. I have wonderful memories but around me there were stories of kids letting off bangers in school and getting badly burned.

So here I ask, was life better in the 70s or worse?

I remember really caring about clothes when I was growing up, and hating all the hand me downs. I really wanted brown leather jesus sandals from mothercare like my best friend but my mother thought shoes from anywhere but clarks or start-rite were 'common'

I don't remember my childhood as an oasis of good times, and I certainly don't think my kids have it worse. I remember never knowing what was going on, being smacked until bruised, seeing a man wanking and not being able to tell anybody.

And don't get me started about the food!

I can remember walking past the book makers and there was a plastic curtain the ones you had to wlk through to get in - all the smoke would be flooding out and pushchairs lined up outside as no kids were allowed in the bookies.

I was sent to the shop up the road from about 5 to get the bread and to another shop at the other end of the road to get a quarter of ham.

There were only a few cars parked in the street and one day there was a crash outside our house and the lady holding the baby in the front seat was hurt, so was the baby it had cuts all across the back of its head where it bad smashed the windscreen - they were all ok though at hospital.

My dd has played outside in the street for the last three years - I live between two main towns and it is almost village like in the area, she enjoys having some freedom. TBH I would rather she was ouside playuing than watching tv so I rarely say no to a request.

One differenc is I will go with her for a bike ride - whereas by the age of 11 I was out on my bike going all over the town having great fun! So I try to cycle with dd instead of using the car - which she loves and encourages me more.

Divorce was rare as Bill Wilson had only jsut brought in the changes in the 60's for the labour goverment. I had one friend who's parents were divorced and they had step parents. Now about half the class have step parents or their parents are divorced or seperated in someway but for others a much better life apart.

We seemed to have lots of street parties in the 70's - bunting was always being strung up for something or other. And the kids were always putting on badly rehearsed shows for the parents.
Sleeping in the garden in tents, going on mega long bike rides without a map, water, cycling helmet, pump, mobile phone, money for the phone box or - of course - any adult supervision.
The parents were all really young - when I was 7 my parents were 25, they were probably youngest but all of the parents near me were v young, so mums were universally pretty and slim and dads were so immature they still practically played out! Lots of dads playing cricket/football in concrete alleyways on our estate.
Lots of dares - jumping off ludicrously high walls to get into 'gangs', climbing onto rotting garage roofs, climbing into those electricity sub stations etc.
I gave a boy on our estate a 'tattoo' on his wrist which he still has to this day (a blue smudge , meant to be a G for that great 70's name Glenn)
Knock door run, a little light shop lifting of penny sweets etc
Funny Feet and FAB ice lollies
Being given a 2 litre ice cream tubs to go and fill with petrol fume soaked blackberries from the side of the road was considered good hands on parenting
Spent lots of time watching my dad play sunday league footie, have the odd fight (my dad this is, not me) and then go to the 'club' to play in the cloakroom with all the other kids while the parents got boozed up for a couple of hours
Hard concrete floors in parks for maximum damage when you fell off
Yes lots more freedom, lots more potential for things to go awry, still lots my parents don't know about and never will!
It sounds terrible when I re-read it but my parents were and are wonderful, and I had a great time, it was normal to let your kids get on with it in those days wasn't it?

at mobile phone in the 70's!

i was born in 1963 so the 70s and early 80s were my time i used to wander miles from home in lonely woods etc , i did care about clothes but there was an awful lot of Brown around i had the highest shoes in school(chuffed) music was brilliant and the summers were definately warmer none of my beloved relations were dead!!!! i would transport back in a minute

I was born in 1962. I would go out and come back before dark. There were areas we weren't supposed to play in and of course they were our favourites: the abandoned quarry, the wooded lane. Great places for dens. And later, for snogging.

Later, quite a lot of telly.

Parents didn't play with me or 'did crafts' and never thought anything of it - none of my friends parents played with them either. We were fed, watered and put to bed and we grew - that was it.

I do regret the lack of freedom dd will have but hope she will benefit in other ways.

And yes - the simple bday parties. A few kids, some fairy cakes and pass the parcel.

Oh yes, the silver jubilee. The street parties were great!
That was good, like Edam and Dwayne are saying about community life.
The corner shop would just give me what I went in for and my mum would settle up at the end of the week. Same when the elderly lady down the road used to ask me to pop shop for her.

re the seatbelts.......we used to ride in the back of an estate

I think one tube (yes tube) of suncream lasted about 3 years
and one camera film seemed to last about the same.

Aaah yes, thanks Paisley, the Silver Jubilee that's what we were celebrating. Wasn't is an absolutely scorching day? I have a slightly upsetting memory of a green rabbit mould jelly melting into a puddle before my eyes before I could get anyone to dish up pudding - oh the trauma...

Good effort on the peeing front Dwayne, sounds like impeccable timing to me!

I didn't watch much telly but Why Don't You did feature, can still remember the theme tune....

Why Don't You, Why Don't you...switch off the television set and go out and do something less boring instead...

OK - over to you lot, who can do the next line?

Random stuff: Didn't have that many clothes. Can remember having to wear a seat-belt in the front of the car for the first time and the effort it took to turn a car around pre power steering. Had one friend whose parents were divorced, otherwise all married. The evening news was all parliament, foriegn policy and trade unions. Moving from sheets to duvets. Children's television programmes on only midmorning (Bod, Fingermouse,Mr Benn) and the BBC scheduled some quite adult films in the afternoon - can remember being wide-eyed at Blue Lagoon! Twin-tubs, candles in the kitchen cupboard jic, baths twice a week.

I grew up in the troubles in the north of Ireland in the 70's and had such a lovely life despite that chaos. It was a great place to be a child in the 70's and sometimes this sounds bad exciting. We had to come home immediately if there was bomb! Remember the pips on a payphone? An earlier thread made me think how parents never played with kids and it was irrelevant as there was millions of us outside using our imagination I am a massive fan of benign neglect as I am quite idle but also nostalgic for being parented in that way.

....Pontin's holiday camps.

I recall being taken back to the chalet at 8pm (I was 8 or younger) after a Panda Pop and a pack of Wotsits with my Dad.

I would then be left. Alone. Until some time later Dad would come and tuck me in, smelling strongly of cheap bitter.

Can smell it now. It's the smell of a parent's love, to me.

....sometimes, they would bring chips. I would be allowed to get up and eat some.

It sounds dreadfully neglectful by current standards.

It was not, though. It was simply the cultural norm for a decent working class family in the (early. Ahem) 70s....

I also didn't like the hand me downs. Children didn't tend to have hair styles as they do now - hair was long or short! No-one bothered with sun cream until the 80's and even then it was really expensive and we all wore factor 2. Loads of us had scrapes and accidents but we didn't go to A and E unless we were seriously hurt - broken bones etc. Teachers were scary and smoked in the playground!

....being left outside pubs in the Vauxhall Viva. For some hours. It was possible on hot days to actually stick to the vinyl seats.

Packet of crisps and a coke with a straw, before being driven home (unrestrained) in a weavy, wobbly, hazy, fashion....

Honestly. Circa 1973 this was standard stuff...

5 Good Reasons Why Life Today is better than the 70s:

1. strikes - the power cuts, the bimen's strike, the gravedigger's strike. Unbelievable.

2. information - it was very difficult to get the simplest piece of information. You couldn't even tell if the cinema was full unless you queued for half an hour and then got turned away.

3. food - we were weird because we ate spaghetti and yoghurts. But general fare was Findus Pancakes, Smash and the Vesta Curry. Yuck!

4. clothes - crimplene, nylon, polyester were worn on a daily basis in lurid colours. Men wore nylon shirts with frills down the front.

5. cars - no longer make you feel sick when you travel in them

God yes - I remember that retired goth!

.....it was always Golden Wonder crisps, as I recall.

Whatever happened to them, eh?

Yeah golden wonder crisps - and family packs at Xmas.

My 70's snapshots

Hanging about down the stream with other kids at a loose end in the summer hols, taking dares to run through the tunnels

mum reading Milly Molly Mandy by candlelight during the power cut

wearing crocheted "ponchos"

putting on plays for mum and dad

teachers that smack you for messing up your sums

my sister cut my hair till I was 12!

Ice cream vans selling little rectangular blocks of Walls ice cream, wrapped in greaseproof paper, in a cone with a matching rectangular hole in the top. And the "fun" of trying to unwrap the ice cream and get it in the cone without dropping it. I tried to tell my kids about those and they looked at me like I'd grown an extra head...

Cheesecloth shirts. Greengrocers with their wonderfully earthy smell. The glorious heatwave, annoying droughts and icky ladybird plague of '76.

And why did cars in the 70s make you puke? My kids have never been car-sick, but it was commonplace when I was a child.

One last thing - Spangles!

Salt and Vinegar crisps and a bottle of lemon and lime in the back of the car...and then the Carpenters or Helen Reddy being played on the cassette deck on the way home....
Brown and orange clothes. (quite often together)
I remember Findus crispy pancakes being invented....they were something very cosmopolitan....(and I still maintain better than today's equivalent, which is probably a KFC)
edam- that is very true- all our neighbours used to bollock us if our tennis balls went into their garden and there was none of this "I'm going to get my Dad down to sort you out" when they did.
Our Headmaster was always shouting at parents of naughty kids in the school corridors in front of everyone.
We used to take 2p to school every day for biscuit time, you could either get 2x 1p wafers or 5 chocolate fingers.

Here's something I recently thought about. Was our food organic in the 70s without any label or us realising? I was brought up in North Wales on the coast in a freezing old Victorian 4 story house. When we ate meat it came from the local butcher who most likely bought it from the meat markets in our county. Take lamb for example. Most likely the lamb he bought to sell us came from the windswept mountains of Snowdonia, free and healthy as can be. The chickens were almost certainly reared intensively but not as industrialised as now. The veg we bought may have come from as far away as perhaps East Anglia but it was still almost certainly all British and relatively chemical free.

Another is the freezing house I was raised in. We keep our bedroom at a cold temperature, always have done even when the kids were very small. I am almost never ill with colds or flu in winter - maybe for a day or somesuch. I am starting to wonder if the environment of my childhood had a lot to do with this.

ah, findus crispy pancakes... (not those cheesy ones though, oh no.)

we had about 5 or 6 kids wedged in the boot of our estate if we were going somewhere... we used to fight about who could go in the back as no-one wanted to actually sit on a seat...

...and we used to have 'sod fights' in the fields when the harvest was in - between us and the kids from 'the estate' lol (ooooooo)

...and build huge dens with the straw (much to the disgust of the farmer, i'm sure) but it only lasted a week or so before it was all baled.

...and we used to roam cross-country about two miles to the old ford, and dam it. then you could crayfish. it was fairly near a bridge which had a small 'overflow' tunnel for when the river was high, but that was fairly cool to crawl through. once my sister cracked her head open on the roof and we had to trawl back the two miles across the fields with her pouring blood everywhere.

...several times i got completely lost in the woods with a couple of the other kids.

and coke and crisps in the pub car park - the most popular end to the day, ever.

oh, and scrumping lol.