How much of this was normal? 70s-90s

[Cokeandapacketofcrisps]

I had a bit of a difficult childhood at times, nothing like some of the stories I see on here but it wasn't great. I've generally made peace with it but there are some things that I can't help but wonder as I've got older - and I'm curious what was, if not 'normal' at the time, not unusual? I'm aware how easy it is to apply modern values/parenting standards. I don't have anyone IRL I can speak to and would appreciate any views from Mumsnetters.

My mum left school (early 60s) at 14 and started working full time. Married at 19 and had a son. I'm not sure exactly when, but maybe early 70s they split up? I didn't know about this relationship or my half brother until I was in my teens. She told me the ex was abusive, that he and his mother conspired to keep custody of the child and that she had no power to challenge them as she had no money, couldn't raise him on her own without a house, and they promised him everything and labelled her as crazy.
She had no contact with him growing up at all as far as I know, despite him living less than ten minutes walk from us (I found out when half brother came to the house threatening her) She told us she was blocked from seeing him.

My parents got together late 70s, divorced mid eighties when I was a toddler. Dad apparently applied for custody but withdrew as my mum made threats to kill herself and implied us as well (this I believe to be true as have heard this from another party who is neutral). Mum and kids allowed to stay in the house with a legal arrangement that it would be sold once the last of us left education. She had very little money (worked part time in low paid jobs eg retail and bar work) so the mortgage must have been covered by the court ordered CMS.
Dad always went through the courts as situation very acrimonious - mum extremely bitter and angry, for the rest of her life really. Dad was only ever awarded 8hrs a week contact (Saturday daytime) despite having his own house, remarried, stable job and no abuse as far as I'm aware.

Mum got a new partner not long after the divorce. He was always mum's boyfriend, not a stepparent, despite him moving in and living with us until he was no longer able - when the house was sold when we turned 18. He drank a lot, had a good job in the trades but always paid in cash and spent most of that in the pub. He paid for a few big ticket items like Xmas presents and holidays but not the day to day - he didnt see that as his role. Don't think my mum saw it either, that was my dad's responsibility in her eyes. He would always talk about my mum being a 'looker' but that if he won the lottery he'd buy her a boob job. Always copies of the sun/star at home with the page 3 girls etc.

My mum never socialised with us children as a choice, and everything was around the local pub. We spent a lot of time sat in pub gardens with a diet coke and packet of crisps to share, while mum and step dad were in the pub. Big events - mums birthdays, new years eve etc - were always adults only, we'd be sent to grandparents.

Mum was so angry that my dad left that we weren't allowed to call him dad in her presence. She wouldn't allow us to speak about his wife at all (who was lovely to us). We weren't allowed to go to the wedding when they got married. My dad kept up the contact but never seemed to try any harder. He once told me as an adult that there was no advice or support back then about what to do.

Two of us struggled with really bad coughs and colds all the way through childhood. I remember being sent out of lessons to sit in the school nurses office because I'd have a rattly smokers-type cough and I'd disrupt the class. Never got taken to the doctors for this - my mum didn't like being told off about smoking and was scared of the doctor. Found out in my thirties that I've got moderate asthma and likely always did.

A few other things, like my parents never going to any parents evenings or really having any contact with school. Going to the dentist by myself. Being left with an older brother to babysit except he'd go out with friends so we didn't eat as didn't know how to cook. Going without lunch at school as no money and teachers knowing about it but no one saying anything. Getting detentions for not having uniform/kit that my mum said we couldn't afford. Being allowed to stay out until whatever time I wanted because mum would go to bed (drunk) by 9pm and not know if I was home or not. Telling me at 13 that I should sleep around if I wanted to be popular and that I'd be weird if I didn't (I know that last part isn't normal!)

.... Sorry that was long! I know some of it was of it's time, but I would be interested in any views. I only had my mum's version growing up and as I distanced myself I realised how bitter her worldview was (not just about my dad, the world in general). I know co parenting and blended families wasn't really a thing back then but I still question her version of events that I grew up with.

It sounds very familiar to some of my school friends childhoods. It wasn’t like mine, that had different kinds of traumas and was more about recreational drugs than drink.

there are still children who grow up in similar homes. I’ve recently met a new friend who had a childhood very like yours and her relationship with the surviving parent is very strained. Sadly her kids have a more modern version of the same childhood without the paternal involvement (not my friends choice).

id suggest maybe speaking with a counsellor about your experiences because you have a lot to process and it’s hard when you reach adulthood with your own family and realise your upbringing wasn’t the norm.

@Gronkle I'm glad it worked out better for your parents. What you describe sounds a lot more like my grandparents experience, albeit a generation earlier (and a war getting in the way) ❤

I had a family member, mid 80’s, got pregnant by a lad and then married him. They then had a second child. He was very controlling but she was under his spell.
Eventually they split, and the ex and his mother took the first child and left her with the other. I don’t know the legalities of it, but she left their marital home too.
She really was controlled and abused, but there wasn’t the help and knowledge back then.

Thanks @GCautist I did have some counselling when I was younger over some of the more extreme issues, which I havent gone into detail here (there was a lot of domestic abuse, alcoholism etc). Its easier to see the more extreme issues as unusual.

It is the more mundane things like custody and relationship dynamics and the health issue that I've started thinking about recently, especially as time has passed and I've supported friends through divorce and seen how different things are.

I still don't think I've ever met anyone whose divorce was as acrimonious as my mum responded to theirs. My dad was a bit useless but not abusive, so it wasn't because she was scared of him or anything. But he and his wife were matter of factly referred to as 'that bastard' and 'that bitch' in our house. She wouldn't communicate with him at all, he turned up and dropped off at the set times. I don't recall her ever speaking to him on the phone to confirm arrangements for example. We weren't allowed to give him birthday or Christmas cards. Years after I left home she told me she'd seen him and his wife walking down the street of her town and that she'd run and hidden behind a hedge so she didn't have to face them. She revelled in the drama of telling that story. It all seems so incredibly childish now! I can't imagine holding that much anger against anyone as an adult.

A friend of mine in school had a very similar upbringing, there are huge parallels in what you describe. As well as things like not having money to buy lunch (all lunches were paid for in cash on the day back then unless you had free school meals), incorrect/incomplete uniform, hardly any food in the house, despite there being enough money in the household for mum/stepdad to enjoy (in their case) high end clothes and hair products and the like. I remember being there once and there was only one thing in the house that friend could feed the dogs with, and that was Heinz tomato soup. I have no idea where thru mum was. Friend’s mum was in her third divorce. No wider family support. The eldest sibling was the mother figure in the home from her mid teens.

Friend moved in with her boyfriend and his family when she was 15yo.

There was zero involvement from any social worker or anything along those lines. It was all just accepted. This was late 80s/early 90s.

@WellTidy it's interesting, I think the standard back then really was only if you were getting beaten up at home for people to intervene. My mum was definitely on a tight budget - she would go to multiple shops to get the cheapest food, clothes and furniture were all second hand - but there should have been enough money for food. The years that there wasn't enough was definitely when the drinking escalated and the abuse from the boyfriend was worse.

@KangarooKenny that's really sad for your family member. My mum was always someone scared of authority figures/processes and I can imagine there's no way she would have coped with a court process or the threat of it. I have no idea about any rights over the marital home but I could well imagine her being pushed out and not realising that she could challenge or not having the confidence to.

Tbh hearing that it is feasible she could have been pushed out of her first sons life has helped. Once I knew about him I always felt uncomfortable about whether she lied and that she had abandoned him. I won't ever know the truth, but hearing that it isn't implausible has made me feel a little kinder to her memory.

I have a picture of me as a baby in hospital with the doctor speaking to my dad at the bed and both are smoking. Times were different, no doubt about it

The times you're talking about were so different it could be a different world.

Yes, kids and pubs very common.

Staying out very late...aka roaming the streets .. depends how strict the parents were.

Men didn't really have many rights then, regarding children, and remember there was no internet to look anything up.

Your Mothers comments to you..NO not normal.

I remember my friends having locks on their kitchen cupboards.
Other friends, aged 12, cooking and looking after younger siblings.
Other friends had a Mum, Dad and "Uncle" that lived together.

My best friend and her brother were taken from their mother by their father (who was backed by his wealthy parents) early 70's.
He wasn't a bad bloke except a panache for young Thai ladies who basically rinsed him until he died.
She was allowed to see her mum irregularly (odd weekend and holiday) it has definitely caused them both emotional issues.

Other than her ideas on you sleeping around your childhood sounds like many other children at that time. Many were latch key kids. Divorce was rare, My sister divorced in 74 and left her child behind, she has never told the other children she went on to have. Women did not have the rights they have now. Maybe your mum wasn't the worlds best but by the sound of it she didn't have any support around her. The world back then was a very different place.

I remember I had a cousin who was bought up by my uncle and the mum was never mentioned. I was told that she was unfit to look after him when I asked about her.

Later on I also heard that he was violent and she left him and couldn't take her son with her.
I'm inclined to believe the latter story now I'm afraid I think it happened a lot. the police would consider abuse as "just a domestic" and ignore it back then.

Child of the 70’s here too and a lot here rings true with my own childhood. I know that if my experiences happened now, social services would be very involved.

My heart goes to you, you’re a text book case of childhood neglect.

Sounds like neglect, exacerbated by alcoholism of your mum's boyfriend (and maybe your mum too) and your mum being kind of personality disordered.

It probably is still normal for dysfunctional parents. None of what you describe is particularly effected by what decade it happens in. Yes your mum was more 'officially' able to leave school that young maybe, but still there are people with little education (which doesn't necessarily, in and of itself, make them a bad parent.) What do you know about your mum's parents? (Not that anything could make how she acted ok.)

I was born in the late 70s and while my childhood had its own issues, it didn't have these particular ones.

Not good at all. Hugs @Cokeandapacketofcrisps xx

The stuff about her previous son, your dad having such limited contact etc and so on, that is not 'normal.'

Oh and @Cokeandapacketofcrisps I was diagnosed with asthma at the age of about 2 or 3 and treated with inhalers from that age. My mum and dad would've noticed and made sure of that, although they weren't so good at emotional support. Some people don't fully develop it or get diagnosed until they're older though. It sounds like your actual asthma attacks (if you had attacks) as a child were quite mild. If they were of any severity I think you would've been diagnosed or be dead as they don't usually resolve themselves without treatment. Well, I think most of us with asthma would've died in childhood without inhalers. But everyone's different. The smoking at home definitely wouldn'tve helped your cough of course. I think your asthma must've got more noticeable with age, for some people it does do that.

It's quite treatable in most cases with occasionally having to change or trying different inhalers maybe. I can do any level of exercise my fitness can handle and my asthma isn't usually an impediment to that at all now as it's well controlled. I use my reliever sometimes in life, but that's no big deal and probably more a habit than anything. I take my preventative inhaler religiously or I do feel worse and not have as much exercise tolerance. They'll get on top of your asthma soon I'm sure, if they haven't already.

I had a very similar upbringing. I was born ,third child and by then my Mum was divorcing my Dad. 70s baby. I didn't see my Dad again until I was 10. By that time I ha three stepdads, my Mum was a man pleaser, she put having a partner/ husband before her kids. We grew up with parties, smoke filled houses, strangers babysitting, allowed out till all hours, it was always an adult centred house. No homework supervised, no regular mealtimes, no parent evenings. No expectations. We just basically lived by our wits.
Fast forward now; I have no realtinship with my Dad. It's a real sense of pain for me. I'm a fifty one year old and still miss the realtinship I should have had with my Dad
Thankfully, I realized what I missed and I have managed to have a happy marriage and bring two girls up with care and a bit too much over parenting but that's because of my lack of it. I definitely think the 70s early 80s had a peculiar take on childrearing

@PeacefulPottering Could you forge more of a relationship with your dad now, if you want? Or is he an unpleasant person? My dad mellowed with age but then he met my stepmum in his 60s, who brings out the worst in him and has also effected his relationships with everyone else in his life.

@OldFan
Can you tell me why you've said the contact and the situation with the earlier son wasn't normal? Normal perhaps isn't the right word, I don't mean to ask if it was happening to everyone, more as to whether it was unusual/exceptional. Other posters have suggested that there was a scrutiny of women's financial ability to raise a child back then, which would fit with what my mum told me.

Re the asthma I find it a bit offensive that you've belittled my comments on it, fwiw the person who diagnosed it and took my history felt it was likely to be something I had throughout so I'm not sure why you feel more qualified to tell me?
I was ill throughout my childhood. If I got a cold or cough it would hang around for months, with a hacking cough that would cause me to be physically sick (what I meant when I referred to a 'smokers cough') I didn't stay over at sleepovers because I'd cough a lot at night (ordinarily, not when ill) and I was embarrassed about it. My parents told me I had 'bad lungs' due to having whooping cough as a baby (I think they believed that themselves and it helped them excuse not doing anything else). If I exerted myself I would get headaches and my vision would go and I would wait to recover, I thought that was normal, as was feeling pressure on my sternum most of the time. As an adult I thought I was just unfit and rubbish at sport. The first time I saw the asthma nurse she didn't ask me to do a peak flow test because she didn't think I was capable of doing it (told me on the next appointment), once I'd started on an inhaler and was feeling better my best peak flow was 280. With treatment the highest it has been is 340. That's well below where it should be for my age. I do a lot of exercise now but it limits what I can do significantly.

@PeacefulPottering I'm sorry you had a similar experience. I'm glad you've been able to turn it around for your own family

I remember my DSIS. ( four years older) babysat us two younger ones from when she was 13 and we were 9 and 6. That was like putting the fix in charge of the chickens as she was a nasty bitch who wouldn't have cared if we broke our necks. This carried on for about a year until one day just before they were about to go out DSIS chucked a large plastic ice cream tub on the open fire which exploded up the chimney and set it on fire. She threatened us to keep quiet and we were too scared to say anything. Luckily, parents came into the front room just in time to see a pile of burning ash fall right into the fireplace and realised what was happening. Fire was put out and night out aborted.

To be fair they never left her in charge again and in fact didn't have another night out until I was 13 and old enough to watch younger DB. DSIS by this point out drinking every night so kept out of our way.

Fox, not fix

Oof @OnGoldenPond !
My brother wasn't quite so bad, but a) he didn't want to know us (was far too cool for that) and b) my mum and step dad didn't give him anything for being left in charge so he was annoyed at the expectation. Twice we set the grill on fire trying to cook. The first time it got replaced, the second time it was left and we just lived without a grill for as long as we stayed in that house!!

By that point my mum was back doing bar work so was out in the evenings and it didn't change anything. I don't recall if she made any provision for us, I used to eat a lot of bread and butter or cheese sandwiches.

Also if oldfan is on the thread, sorry if my last response was a bit snippy. Got covid at the moment so feeling a bit sorry for myself!

It's crap isn't it OP? DSIS has only got worse over the years but luckily now lives on the other side of the world and with a bit of luck I won't have to see her again.

Okay, so some of this seems relatable, but an awful lot of it isn't!

My mum left school (early 60s) at 14 and started working full time

Pretty normal.

Married at 19 and had a son. I'm not sure exactly when, but maybe early 70s they split up? I didn't know about this relationship or my half brother until I was in my teens

Not the norm, but I think babies were taken away a lot in these circs, you can see that from Long Lost Family.

Dad apparently applied for custody but withdrew as my mum made threats to kill herself and implied us as well (this I believe to be true as have heard this from another party who is neutral)

I'm surprised SS didn't get involved at this point!

He drank a lot, had a good job in the trades but always paid in cash and spent most of that in the pub

Pretty normal with my parents.

He would always talk about my mum being a 'looker' but that if he won the lottery he'd buy her a boob job

I find this very odd, as no one I know had boob jobs back then!

We spent a lot of time sat in pub gardens with a diet coke and packet of crisps to share, while mum and step dad were in the pub

Normal in a lot of families back then.

Two of us struggled with really bad coughs and colds all the way through childhood. I remember being sent out of lessons to sit in the school nurses office because I'd have a rattly smokers-type cough and I'd disrupt the class. Never got taken to the doctors for this - my mum didn't like being told off about smoking and was scared of the doctor

Not normal in my view, we were always taken to the doctors if needed.

Being left with an older brother to babysit except he'd go out with friends so we didn't eat as didn't know how to cook

Not normal. This is neglect.

Going without lunch at school as no money and teachers knowing about it but no one saying anything

Absolutely not normal.

Getting detentions for not having uniform/kit that my mum said we couldn't afford

No - my Mum would always make sure we had what we needed, even when money was tight.

Being allowed to stay out until whatever time I wanted because mum would go to bed (drunk) by 9pm and not know if I was home or not

No way! I had an 11pm curfew when I was 16 and working full time!

Telling me at 13 that I should sleep around if I wanted to be popular and that I'd be weird if I didn't

Your Mum sounds unhinged here. My parents actually lied to me and said they didn't have sex until they were married.

I say all of this, as someone who is annoyed about parts of my childhood. My Dad was an alcoholic (still is), and regularly spoiled events, threatened my Mum with violence, embarrassed me in front of friends by being pissed. We didn't have seatbelts in the car and he regularly drove us around drunk. Parents had lots of parties. We had to stay upstairs out of the way. But we never went without and Christmasses were very indulgent.

In my experience, schools didn’t really involve themselves in child protection at all until at least the 2000s. That isn’t to claim that individual teachers were not caring and kind but there wasn’t the sort of coordinated effort that you see nowadays to try to ensure children are cared for.

Children would vanish - just stop turning up to school - for weeks at a time, turning up late, showing disturbed and disturbing behaviour - and were seen as ‘naughty’ children, from ‘broken’ homes. Even until the end of the 2010s, we didn’t see girls who were victims of sexual abuse in that light, they were seen as streetwise and as cocky, gobby, hard faced, with cheap makeup and large hooped earrings and scraped back hairstyles, not as vulnerable children.

When you consider this, or this, when you consider that Fred and Rose West’s many children attended school and yet were subjected to utterly hideous sexual, physical, and of course emotional abuse and their eldest managed to vanish completely with no one noticing for what - five, six years - we realise we have come a long, long way in our attitudes to young people, although it is far from perfect and Covid has really caused some ugly attitudes to rear their heads again.

I know that this looks like I’m taking the OP way off track but I do think that certainly with regard to schooling it was normal for the time.

But normal does not equal acceptable. It was normal to send tiny little boys up chimneys once, but it being normal didn’t mean they did not die. It would affect anybody.

I think acknowledging this rather than wondering how normal it was is what is important. I know my mum witnessed domestic violence, oh, must have been numerous times … she never smacked or hit to give her her due (unusual for the time and I’m SURE she wanted to many times!) but oh boy she could be vicious with her tongue. I’ve come to understand my mum was a victim too and made peace with that. Not sure if that makes sense.

@Tiredallofthetime yes I think using the word normal wasn't quite right, it's more about whether the explanations I had, or the standards assumed, were plausible, or unreasonable even for the time.

Eg I know it wasn't ok to be sent to school without any food, but part of me doubted whether id exaggerated it because there were adults at school who knew and didn't get involved. But then if it really wasn't the norm to get involved with that sort of thing - especially if it wasn't every day - then I can accept that it was just that things were different and now they've improved.

My mum was a victim too, it doesn't excuse how we were treated but I know she felt overwhelmed a lot of the and she did what she could. She didn't have the skills and she struggled to change.

I know the sleeping around comment has made a lot of people feel uncomfortable. Weirdly that was one of the few times that she took an interest and was in her way, trying to be caring. I wasn't popular at school but I also wasn't bothered about trying to be. She was genuinely concerned about that, she saw being popular as the most important thing, and she told me that going to parties and being 'fun' was really important in teens and that I might regret it if I didn't because it was hard to change it if I got singled out as being weird. Fortunately I was quite happy being the weird one (not that my peers were sleeping around at 13, the 90s was very different to the 60s, but I'm glad I wasn't concerned about my mum's advice!!) My mum lived on the outskirts of a major city as a child, and early teens for her was getting guys to give them lifts and follow bands and be 'groupies'. So I guess that's where the being part of a crowd and being 'popular' came from. Of course these days that would be viewed as exploitation.

@TortugaRumCakeQueen we didn't know anyone who had plastic surgery, it was more about it being acceptable to comment on women's bodies like that, and to uphold page 3 girls as people to aspire to. I honestly think mums boyfriend when making those comments felt he was showing how generous he'd be if his lotto ticket came good!!