Children of the 40's and 50's

[Mouzafphaerre]

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First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a
pick-up on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died
from this.
We ate cupcakes and bread and butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, ! X-boxes - no video games at all. No 99 channels on cable TV, no v ideo tape movies, no surround-sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no internet or internet chat rooms..........Instead, WE HADFRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live in us forever.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Little league had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have bee an explosion of inno! vation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

Partly applicable to us late 70s'/80s' kids, at least in some parts of the world.
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[Hosakawa Tito]

It's called.....

[LittleGrizzly]

pretty much applys to my 80s/90s childhood except i had a megadrive and im not sure about medicene never remember nowing where it was...

[Kaiser of Arabia]

it's not that we don't have friends, it's just that we're too paranoid to trust them enough.

[Kongamato]

You have to change with the times, and more importantly, parent according to them. I've no doubt that that generation got a lot of physical exercise and had fewer overweight children in their time. However, things more fun than playing outside(for many) have been invented, and children have recieved the same amount of food. That is something that has to change. My parents were children of the 50s, and as a kid, I was taught to EATEATEATEATEATEAT at the table, clean my plate etc or else I would not get dessert. I wanted dessert. Now, I'm always the first one done at any meal. I can eat more than anybody I know... I'm like a machine sometimes. This is not beneficial when you stay inside looking at the computer all day. I don't really enjoy reading these sort of nostalgic remarks when the exact same methods used are resulting in some of the present problems with today's youth.

[Beirut]

I've read that before. It's fantastic.

I was born in '63 and distinctly remember going to the park every Saturday morning to see who was there. Maybe bring along some GI Joes or comic books. You found your friends and then you played all day. I was great at playing!

I feel sorry for the kids today. We have a huge backyard, a house with computers, video games, TV, VCR, DVD, boxes of toys, all sorts of things and the kids will hang off the doorknobs staring at the ceiling saying "I'm bored."

Kids these days just don't know how to play.

[Togakure]

Yeah. What ever happened to the Fall, Winter and Spring weekend mudball (American football) games, when 20+ kids would congregate in the park and go for it? Back in my day (same as Beirut's) it was so common; now you hardly ever see it. We'd play tackle, not touch or flag, shrugging off the bumps and bruises (and our parents didn't have a problem with it; "it's good for him--toughens him up," my father would say). The ultimate was challenging the "gang" from another park (but the same school) and have a real row. We'd do it again and again, and our fathers would get quite a kick coming out to watch, even though we didn't invite them. Afterwards we'd hang out in the park and pal around with the girls who came to watch.

Does anyone remember the machines that aereate soil, punching little holes in it and creating the little dirt clods? This was a favorite time of year for us because it signaled the commencement of Dirt Clod Wars! We'd go out and tag on each other for hours on end. You could always tell the bold from the woosies by how they'd engage. The craven would watch from their windows; the timid would hide along the sidelines and perhaps occasionally manage a surprise attack when an opponent's back was turned. But we the fearless, the audacious, the lovers of pain and glory, would run like madmen, scooping up a fistful to cradle in our upturned shirt fronts, throwing again and again as we ran and dodged full speed. To come home, sweat-soaked and panting with brown and red-skinned spots all over to earn the raised eybrow and head-shakes of our mothers was the the ultimate. It was just so much fun.

Remember German dodgeball? Making giant forts out of whatever happened to be lying around and making equally absurd costumes in which to role play? And of course, the hours and hours of creating with Legos ... .

Play today indeed seems very different. Virtually effortless eye and mind candy and the wiggling of fingers, mostly. Seems a bit boring to me.

[discovery1]

You make me feel guilty for being such a lazy bum although I like to think I'm less sheltered than average. On a vagely related note, people overreact to things like germs. YOu need the single celled ones to build up the immune system. Imagine the headlines....

2050, the USA is being crippled by chicken pox with millions ou of the workforce for a month or more. Medical experts state that the disease was never a major threat in the past because people were exposed while young thus building up immunity. But the massive sterization campaigns of the 2030s ensured that children had little exposure to diseases. We are now paying the price in the billions of dollars.

Ok unlikely but still. You are right to think that kids are far too protected these days. I wonder what happened to cause this likely flase view.

[Kaiser of Arabia]

if you knew me you would not say that todays youth is afraid of dirt.

[Hetman_Koronny]

I am a child of 80s and I had a tear in my eye reading the text. Thanks for posting it

[English assassin]

Yes I recognised this and I feel sorry for my kids now. I was amazingly lucky because the town I lived in had all these old napoleonic fortifications which weren't built on or used for anything, and made a completely brilliant playground. (It was the medway towns and they were built to protect Chatham dockyard). I think its a tourist attraction now but then it was just empty. Mind you I feel a bit queasy now thinking about all the 40ft sheer sided ditches etc there were we could have fallen in. I know it never did me any harm but I'm still not sure I'd be totally happy with my kids doing it.

Of course some things have genuinely changed, when I was growing up I don't remember the traffic being nose to tail monster trucks being driven at 70 mph by psychopaths, and no one had guns and almost no one had knives.

Mind you some things have changed for the better. I notice that slides and swings now have a special soft surface under them. In the 70s they had rock hard concrete. More or less everyone had at least one trip to hospital from going head first onto that.

[Nelson]

I was born in 1954 and as a kid I lived the life this fellow described. My childhood was radically different from that of my two boys, now aged 21 and 18.

I was indeed FAR more active than my kids, at least regarding unstructured time (about which I have more to say later). Far handier too. My neighborhood was small but my friends and I were on our bikes constantly when we were not playing a pick up game of baseball or football. No soccer moms in my old neighborhood! I know I rode a bike for over a mile easily almost every day. More often several miles. Not to stay in shape but to let go the handlebars and feel the wind in our hair. If a chain popped off someone had an adjustable wrench handy to fix it. I’m talking 11 year olds here. We fixed our own flats too, an act that required burning a patch to vulcanize the rubber! None of this was exceptional or even noteworthy. Who else would take care of this stuff? At dinner if it came up at all dad would ask if I returned all the tools properly. That was it. End of story. Pass the potatoes.

I disappeared with my friends after school and all day long during the summertime. Eat breakfast and out the door I went. Back for dinner was the only rule. The entire neighborhood knew all of us on sight and no one ever worried about what might befall us at the hands of a stranger. I had many big dirtball fights too. They, like the tackle football games without pads, ended when too many kids were too sore to continue. Never anything more serious than a knot on the head.

My own sons had it very different. They enjoyed very little time without adult supervision. They were not total lay abouts since they did community swim team and belonged to an active well run Boy Scout troop, both very vigorous pursuits. However, all of this was supervised and monitored by adults. Stealing away for some privacy was a headache for them. I regret that now but this is what all of us parents were doing. For one kid to visit another meant a phone call to somebody’s parent to set up the logistics of such an enterprise. Each and every bit of social intercourse became a planned event. It was paint by numbers compared to the color how you like childhood I enjoyed.

Accelerated childhood has made a difference too. Toys are grade school only now. Turn 11 and it’s time for CDs and clothes. We all built plastic models. Planes, cars, whatever. So we had to use GLUE. The same glue that can make you high. No one thought about it. I assembled and painted many models and consequently today, despite being 50 years old, my fine motor skills exceed both of my son’s by a wide margin. Patience and a steady hand does not come instinctively. You must learn these things. My boys never have because these days model building is for dorks. A 12 year old boy wants current music to listen to, not some lame toy that isn’t even together. At least they got LEGOS to play with. One of the greatest toys of all time.

It’s not all worse for kids now to be sure. Today’s children are as technically comfortable with PCs as I was with a socket wrench. Of course, if I had had an XBox and DVD players I would have spent more time indoors too, no doubt. These machines are fun. And maybe I would have maintained more relationships with Instant Messenger instead of a bicycle. But I’m glad I didn’t.

[Mikeus Caesar]

I was born in 1991, and due to the area where i lived back then, you could say i was part of the last generation that actually went out playing, and didn't just stay inside doing nothing.

[Orda Khan]

At dinner if it came up at all dad would ask if I returned all the tools properly. That was it. End of story. Pass the potatoes.

I disappeared with my friends after school and all day long during the summertime. Eat breakfast and out the door I went. Back for dinner was the only rule. The entire neighborhood knew all of us on sight and no one ever worried about what might befall us at the hands of a stranger.

Yes, those were the days. But I think life was generally better, even for adults, 30 or 40 years ago. I certainly do not think there is much to shout about these days and I would go back tomorrow if I only could

......Orda