There’s a new surge of posts going around Twitter running down young people, and the latest one, retweeted by different users, tells us how great it all was in the presumably 60s/70s, and how kids then weren’t like the kids of today. As I was a kid and teen in the 60s and 70s I believe those writing or retweeting are seeing those times through very rose-coloured glasses.
I’m not sure the original tweet was really written by a Brit, because although it says, ‘I grew up on a council estate’, it references very much an American way of life in general, as far as I can tell. Of course, everyone’s childhood will have been different, so I can only speak for myself and people I knew, but here goes.
For some reason it mentions ‘never once questioning parents’ income’. Well, that’s true. It was indeed never a discussion, but then again, is it really today? Do children or teenagers really say anything to their parents about their income, or complain about not being well off? I certainly remember asking for various items for birthdays or Christmas and being told ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’ and so on, and I assume that sort of thing goes on today. You might want stuff, but the idea that you’re going to complain to your mum or dad that you didn’t get it seems unlikely.
Next up is ‘we didn’t eat fast food’ and instead ate homemade meals - meat and veg. Yes, we generally ate meat and veg, and yes, we were expected to clear our plates. Fast food, though, wasn’t available as it is today. Fish and chips was the fast food we went for, but oh, crisps (chips to Americans) and sweets and chocolate, that was a different story. I effectively lived for sweets. My life revolved around sweets (sadly, I’m not joking). I spent all my pocket money on sweets. So yes, not as much fast food, but still plenty of unhealthy eating went on, for some of us at least. No one I know actually lives on fast food, young or old, but then maybe that’s just my circle. All the same, I’m not sure what the charge is - young people live on fast food? It’s expensive, so I can’t see many parents being able to afford it that often, any more than my parents allowed us to have fish and chips more than once a week or less.
Apparently, when I was a kid I mowed lawns, pulled weeds, babysat and helped neighbours with chores. This is the part that sounds most American. All except the babysitting doesn’t fit with the UK experience. The rest I’ve seen on US films and TV shows. The one thing I did as a kid to get a bit of extra money - a threepenny bit, in this case - was go down to the local shop for a neighbour to get her Woodbines (cigarettes). My siblings and I would vie for the opportunity, which did come quite often. We would never have thought about mowing or any kind of gardening for neighbours, nor can I imagine our parents wanting us to. Each of us did a paper round in our teens though, as it paid more than pocket money.
We did play outside a lot, but I liked reading so I also spent a lot of time inside. In my teens, my dad would get fed up with us hanging around the house and paid us 2p per hour instead of normal pocket money if we went out. My siblings had no problem, but I often ended up with no money, so used to take a book with me into the fields for a couple of hours to earn some.
Yes, we did save some glass bottles and take them to a shop to get a few pence, but these were specific ones that were meant to be returned. My siblings and I used to roam around the local area looking for these bottles that people had dumped as a way to supplement our pocket money.
Here’s another unlikely one: ‘after school, we came home and did homework and chores’. Hmm, well, maybe you did if you were a saint. I had a friend who did indeed do her homework when she got home, but in my case it was sometime, maybe, never, catch up with essays in school breaks. I’m sure the teachers thought I was deprived at home because I was a good student yet forever late with work, but no, I was just lazy (but hey, we virtuous kids weren’t lazy in those days, eh?!). As for chores, that’s another very American-sounding thing, at least for the time being referenced. We had one chore; between us we had to wash the dishes after tea (evening meal). One of us would wash, another dry, another put away. That was the limit of our chores. I don’t recall any of my friends talking about doing any chores at all.
There’s a lot of stuff about parents, about how you never disrespected them, and what they said was law, and how you told them where you were going and who with. Once again, it’s partly true but exaggerated. In the UK, we never say ‘yes sir’, or ‘yes ma’am’ to our parents. I don’t know if this is really true of the US either because it implies a very formal relationship in which maybe all the above could have applied. I always thought my own parents were strict, but they weren’t that strict. We didn’t treat them with disrespect but we certainly were naughty! It’s strange how that word seems to be used a lot less now. We didn’t obey our parents in everything. They might tell us not to do something but we’d still do it. That’s normal behaviour for children. Why it’s being made out to be somehow a fault of modern kids is beyond me.
The tweet ends by saying ‘we’ were never ever, ever, bored. Um, okayyy. I wish I had known these cherubic kids, I really do. Of course we were sometimes bored.
I don’t like the way this tweet implies that we were angelic in those far-off rosy-hued days, unlike today’s kids and teens. We were not. The world was not a paradise of lovely young people compared with today. There were gangs of youths roaming around in the 50s, 60s and 70s that seem to have been forgotten about. There were the ‘teddy boys’ of the 50s and 60s, who, the linked article reports, ‘made the whole of Britain fear teens through the 50s’. There were the ‘mods and rockers’ of mainly the sixties, and in the 70s it was primarily skinheads we used to fear. Please note, there is no such thing today. No such thing. No gangs of rampaging youths scrapping on bank holidays or scaring the population. And yet kids today, eh?
On the going outside to play front, there was also ample opportunity to encounter bullies and opportunists during all those hours away from home. I think we did have a better childhood than today’s children, simply because we had our freedom. However, it came with a price. I was groomed by a middle-aged white man who kept horses and other pets that drew children like a magnet. He promised my friend and I that we could have our own horses. No one thought there was anything odd about this - they were very innocent times in that way. Luckily for me, the morning he took his chance and assaulted me in the horse barn - by touching - my friend turned up before it went any further. I never went to his field again, but he was brazen and came to our door, pointing a stick at me and saying in an aggressive tone that I should return because my friend was still going. She told me he’d promised never to do it again. I didn’t believe that. She couldn’t bear to be away from the horses, so she forgave him. We stopped being friends. No one, not me, not my parents, not any of the group of other kids I told, thought it was the sort of thing to report to the police. It was just a different world then.
So yes, we enjoyed more freedom and maybe we had better childhoods, but surely that’s the point? Why are young people today being criticised so relentlessly when their lives are actually more curtailed, and when they don’t go on rampages as youths did back in the ‘golden age’ 50s-70s?
I was born in 1946 and grew up in the 50s, becoming a young adult in the 60s in the United States. I can see where your Twitter person might have been coming from. Mostly in the 'burbs, we spent a lot of time outdoors and away from adult supervision. But we were White and Middle Class, and the world was our oyster. Privilege and personal freedom are delightful, but at some point reality will set in, as it did for us in the 60s and 70s. Our Garden of Eden was an illusion.
In difficult time it's tempting to go running to the days of our formation, which in memory can seem sweet and precious. But we're meant to grow and live beyond our formation.