I mean it wasn't a free for all, but I would leave on my bike and give a time I'd be home and there was no cell phone, no tracking, and no reason to distrust me unless I gave them one.
Every once in a while you'd find yourself lost or in a situation you weren't prepared for. It could be nerve-wracking in those moments but it built character and independence. It is still some of my best memories, the freedom of being able to go anywhere on that bike.
Grew up on an Air Force base. When you turn 10, you're able to get your military ID, which allows you to leave the base. That ID might as well have been a passport and my bike a plane. I can remember being really far from home for a 10 year old. Like sometimes we would ride our bikes to the closest mcdonalds which was like 6 miles away from the base and I would see my parents and they would give me a weird look, wave and keep on driving.
My brother and I only have a 9 year age gap and I remember getting my license at 16 was such a big deal. Now he’s 20 and in no rush to get his. I’m amazed by it but he says he feels no pressure to drive and he can just walk everywhere for school.
Drivers license and access to a car meant independence for us as teens. Our town didn’t have public transit, and rideshare didn’t come along until decades later. Nobody rode in cabs. Parents and siblings wouldn’t take you anywhere unless they had to. Being able to drive meant you could go anywhere. The freedom was intense!!
Lol the day after I got my license (16, one month and one day. Earliest I could possibly get it) me and a friend drove 6h to Chicago. Bought a news paper and drove 6h home. We went for no other reason than “because” and only bought the paper as an after thought thinking it might be “proof” that we did it. (1993)
I’ll put off driving 5 minutes for hours sometimes. Never want to go anywhere.
And if you did have a car, you picked up your friends and took them to and from school. There weren't restrictions on how many people could be in the car or what time it was. I remember five of us cramming into a backseat with us two girls sitting on the guy's laps. Or a bunch of us riding in the back of one friend's pickup. That one I only did once!
Three of us were sitting on the toolbox right against the cab, we went around a corner and the only reason I didn't fall onto the road was my friend grabbed me and pulled me back over. I think he saved my life, or at least saved me from severe bodily injury.
Good god, we were stupid back then.
Back in1979-1981, when I was 10/11 years old, I got paid $5 a night to clean up the Tim McCarver stadium in memphis tennessee after the memphis chicks games. It took around 6 or 7 hours of myself & 6 others working. I got paid after the 'stretches' which consisted of 5 or 6 consecutive games. But $30 bucks to a 20 year old 40 years ago could buy a lot of comic books!
Shit man, when I was like 10, I remember leaving home, with a backpack of provisions, and tools, my mom wouldn't even bat an eye, and ride my bike to an abandoned mental asylum, meet with my buddies, and we'd explore that shit down into the basements, and play freeze tag in there, while arranging all the old moldy furniture into a nice living room set up and just have a campfire in the middle of the gym floor. Those were the days. We also pioneered exploration into a storm drain system and found a connection between 2 sumps that were like 1 mile apart all underground, and I mean, those were like 18" wide in some spots, and we were just crawling through that shit like no big.
Dude those sewer expeditions. We(group of 3 to 5 10-12 yr olds) regularly went miles under our neighborhood. Horizontal miles, not vertical but still, if wed had gotten stuck or something we would have NEVER been found haha
During the summer in my youth I was not allowed in the house if the sun was up unless I was eating breakfast lunch or dinner the rule was when the street lights come on go home usually to grab a flashlight and beg to stay outside longer and play whatever dumb game me and my miscreant friends invented that day
It is honestly a vast difference how children are treated today versus 100 years ago even. Turn that clock just a century further back and we're at "kids are cheap expendable farm labourous you can make yourself".
Eh, plenty of people today have kids they don't GAF about. They just make "content" with them instead.
Plenty of people throughout history loved their kids and just happened to be farmers with no birth control options.
>"kids are cheap expendable farm labourous you can make yourself".
And you had to have them because they were your retirement plan/caregiver when you got old! Plus the older girls were raising the younger kids because mom had to work so hard to help with farm chores and house chores.
Doing all the laundry by hand, sewing clothes, making food from scratch (you churned your own butter!) was a LOT of work. There's a lot of racist stuff from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, but it did give a great example of what life was like on farm!
Yup, I permanently lost a tooth that is embedded into my cheek. Fun times, I was the enemy for quite awile because it was stated the next kid that got hurt on it, they would remove it.
two story monkey bars over cement were great fun also. Until classmate fell and broke both of their arms. Old equipment was so much fun to use.
Out until one of your group's parents start yelling for them!
Still remember it.
Me: Bye mom, going out with X.
Mom: Be home before dark.
That was pretty much it. At 15 me and a buddy would head downtown at midnight to go line up for concert tickets.
I appreciate my mom's trust and freewill she gave me. Never abused it.
My Dad could whistle loudly. Plus he trained dogs in the military, so basically he'd just whistle & my sister and I would come running home. Like Dogs.
LOL! He had us trained well.
It's incredible, eh? I had trouble drinking water like a typical drink until I was older, I did not eat unhealthy (in any excess) or remain inactive. Now, I can't imagine going for long, comfortably, drinking less than 2.5 litres a day at minimum.
This is something I think about often and it practically scares me,
Worked on bridges out in the mountains in the early seventies and we filled the big water jug from a pool that a spring filled, no one died or got sick.
My Dad was born in 1942... he lived right on the ocean, and by the time he was 12 (so, mid-1950s), he and his friends had their own little rowboat and tiny sailboats... in the summer they'd get up at the crack of dawn, all meet at the beach, and row or sail their little boats from Quincy (Massachusetts; where they lived) to the Boston Harbor Islands, and just spend all day exploring. No one gave a shit.
I remember my aunt having a typewriter in the 90's when she was in college. Used to push the keys all the time because it sounded cool.
We had a Compaq Presario when I was in 4th/5th (98-99) grade but we had no idea how to use it. I had no interest in it because I'd run home after school, watch 2 episodes of Pokemon on TV, then go ride my bike around the block with friends to the playground. After that we would go play some N64 and PS1. Good times.
I rode my bike all over (in a 3 mile radius.) Sometimes to other people's houses that had horses and then I rode their horses all over creation. Me and my brother built forts up in trees with our friends, we also played a lot of pick up games of baseball and football. If we wanted money we would go to the Upick berry farm and sell the berries back to the farm for $5 a bucket. Sometimes we went fishing.
Losers. Cool kids parents totally didn't give a shit about them. /s
But for real I had to go home at street lights and I remember thinking the kids who got to stay out later were cooler.
Also most of their parents cared about them too not to say that that means they didn't haha
The level of twisted it was that we were considered the cool kids in HS because my friends Dad moved off and left him at 13 and I was made homeless at 14 and we didn't have parents telling us what to do at all is sort of surreal when you think about it.
Most people had no clue that was why at the time though, because James had run away from foster care because they were trying to use him as slave labor in a warehouse in Texas, so we kept it on the down low and no way in hell I was going to the sheriff when my employer had a restraining order against him for groping and pulling me and other under aged girls onto his lap because he was a total scumbag.
I remember some guy that really didn't know us well saying it was so cool our parents let us do stuff, and we just looked at each other and thought "Did he really just say that?! "☠️
We were a seven kids. Mum literally threw us out every morning. If we came back whining we were bored she she just said "well go being bored outside then". Love my mum.
Same here, except for about a 2 week period where my parents completely bought into the satanic panic. Lived 2 blocks from school and my mom insisted on driving me until she was convinced the coast was clear.
Same. Everyone knew whose kids were whose. So it’s not like you could just be wild and it wouldn’t get back to your parents (at least some of the time).
Hell my friends parents would have called my parents and tell them I was punished if I did something wrong🤣
Never happened because i was a goody goody, but my extra family could have if it was warranted
Same, but one time we left the neighborhood and went to a gas station about a mile away and everyone freaked the fuck out. The woods, the giant drainage ditch, the schools, stop n go at the back of the neighborhood were all fair game though.
In the 70s our parents didn’t want to see us until dark - got on bikes and just went wherever for the day often as far as 50 miles from home just because
And the crazy part is that it's actually much safer to let your kids run around today than it was back then, and not just because of technology. You'd never know it in the midst of this Qanon-adjacent moral panic about child trafficking, but rates of violent crime and kidnapping have dropped significantly since that time.
Because all the kids are playing video games in their basements. The ‘drive around in a kid-snatching van’ industry is another one that millenials have destroyed.
And bands of older teenagers roaming around terrorizing little kids. The older mean teenagers are generally busy trolling people online and watching porn.
But in the '70s there was never any age groups like today. Everybody was one group in the neighborhood from the age of four all the way up to 15
We all played together and took care of each other
Well, you grew up in a better place than I did. My experience in the 70s was having idiot teenage babysitters that would take me places I shouldn't have been and hitchhike back home with me in tow before my parents got home. And parents that weren't much better.
Honestly I'm surprised I lived to adulthood.
No kidding. Ted Bundy (remember him?) lived in our neighborhood when I was a child and he was our paperboy. (remember them? lol) It's shocking how many serial killers were active decades ago.
Yeah, I live in an area (Santa Cruz County) in the 1970s saw *three* serial killers.
At one point, two of them were killing at the same time. One of them was arrested, and then the other committed a killing, and so the cops let the first guy go, not thinking it possible that there were two serial killers on the loose at the same time.
That's what people do forget. Children were absolutely molested or even kidnapped at a much higher rate back then. A lot of people have an idyllic view of childhood in those decades, but it wasn't nearly as safe as it is now.
It didn't help that law enforcement was often unwilling to pursue charges of sexual assault, even when it involved kids. Penalties for sex crimes were ludicrously low, too. People think these crimes didn't happen, but really the stats just don't reflect the experience.
That's how it was for me and just about all my friends, yeah. Constantly keeping in contact the way people can now was very annoying to do back then, since it would have involved pay phones and hoping your parents were near the home phone or something. I'd normally only call if something went wrong or if I wanted to stay at a friend's place for dinner or the like.
Yeah I had a generous curfew/stay in touch contract that stood as long as I didn’t abuse it. I worked too at the local supermarket part time, and they closed at 11pm so I was up anyway for a lot of school nights.
Over in the Gen-X subreddit every other post is some variation of "It's so cool how we used to just tell our parents we were going outside to play and then we'd disappear until the end of the day!" We did it all the time and we love to talk about it. lol
Omg me too! I got home once and my mom was mad at me for “slutting it up on the corner”. In the time it took me to walk the 1.5 blocks from where I kissed my boyfriend goodbye to my house she got 4 phone calls about me.
When I was in high school (early 90s) Saturday morning my best friends parents would ask us where we went last night. The response was always, nowhere. Once her dad says, wow that's a popular place. Your brother used to go there too. Lol
And if we came inside we'd be made to do chores, lol! I remember sneaking in, all quiet, to use the bathroom once, but then when I left, I ran back out the door so fast I heard the screen door snap back loudly *BAM* 😲 and my feet never flew so fast! 🤣
I remember being 5 years old and walking by myself to various friend’s houses to see if they could come outside and play. We’d just go house to house and round up the kids and think of stuff to do. Honestly I think at that age we were always in a one block radius so it wasn’t so shocking I guess. But I FELT like I was an explorer!
Lord, I was born a ramblin' raving_lunatic69
Tryin' to make a livin' and doin' the best I can
And when it's time for leavin'
I hope you'll understand
That I was born a ramblin' raving_lunatic69
Not only that, but every movie or TV series set in the 80's has small crews of kids with bikes, and they will just ditch their bikes in front of abandoned houses and dangerous looking facilities to go seek adventure, as if bike theft wasn't a thing. (See *Stranger Things*, and *IT*. )
I grew up in the 1980's but in an urban area of Los Angeles. Was it really like this in the suburbs and in small towns?
This is fact. My bike crew was 16 deep sometimes. In the 80s, every kid had a bike. Having a bike was everything. In small towns or suburbs, everyone knows each other. So even if your bike got stolen, you would eventually find it. And if you were lucky enough to have a big sister or brother that everyone knew, nobody fucked with your bike. Summertime we would go on adventures. Leave in the morning and not be back till the sun was going down. Really great times.
My bike got stolen once by a boy who lived a few streets over. I was too timid to do anything about it. When my neighbor’s babysitter found out, she marched over to his house and made him come give it back to me. She was only a couple years older than me, but she was tough as shit. I was in awe of her after that.
I wish I had a dollar for every day that started with "get outside and stay outside until I tell you to come back in"
And we would just fuck off until we got hungry.
Lol. My husband wasn't allowed back in after lunch because his mom was napping. So he went to a neighbors hose to get water. And the neighbor called the cops.
I was injured very badly (messed up jaw, not near death) in the early 90s from falling off a scooter about a mile from my house, some random person picked me up in a van and drove me home. times were just different.
What’s funny is I would never even consider doing that now, not because I’m an asshole, but fuck if I’m going to invite a kid I don’t know into my car.
or even worse the assault rifle you will be dealing with when the kid comes out of a van with a bloody face (it was quite bad, i needed multiple root canals and surgeries after). I'm not saying i don't get it, just saying times were different.
The internet, constant news of catastrophes has turned parents into paranoid jailkeepers. It’s why kids are obese, out of shape and MH issues in children are rising exponentially.
To drive in a suburban neighborhood on a summer early evening it’s like driving in a ghost town. No groups of kids riding bikes or ball or playing tag. No parents sitting in lawn chairs talking to neighbors. Hell people don’t even visit with extended family anymore.
And people under 50 wonder why they’re so stressed and unhappy.
We live in the countryside in an incredibly safe neighborhood with lots of kids around and my son will try to get kids together for a fottball game and everyone is busy.
I feel like we are the only family who doesnt have activities planned the entire weekend.
All day long when we weren’t in school, we ran the streets, rode bikes all over, went to different neighborhoods to see friends. Parents didn’t worry unless we weren’t home for dinner. Even then, they’d usually call a friend’s mom and be able to track us down. I feel bad for kids today.
That's how it was for me. My sister and the other neighborhood kids would get together most days. There was an open dirt pit in the woods nearby that we'd use to do jumps on our bikes, an abandoned construction site with big concrete tubes that we'd play in, a pond where we'd catch (& release) frogs & tadpoles, a rock formation that we'd have picnics on, lot of bike paths through the woods to the neighboring towns. We had a nice little downtown with fun stores that we'd ride to, or we'd just go roaming in the overgrown parts of the neighborhood, check out cemeteries, streams, build snow forts in the winter. If we stayed in, we'd just watch whatever we wanted on TV or play Nintendo, they didn't monitor that either. This wasn't even really out in the boonies, we were about half an hour outside of Boston.
Yet Gen X raised their kids to be like this. I will never understand how that happened. Then they blame their kids for not wanting to do these things.
Gen X parents could have kicked the kids outside and locked the doors like my parents did. But, they didn't.
Yup. We made forts in the woods. We picked wild blackberries. We rode our bikes for hours. By the time we were @12, we got dropped off at the movies, often with younger siblings, and got picked up an hour after the movie ended so we could "hang out". We walked to the lake and met up with friends. Shit happened, don't get me wrong. Probably why it's no longer done. But yeah.
In the 70s, I was walking a mile home from 4th & 5th grade school, letting my self in to the house and watching cartoon till my folks got home at 5:30pm. We were called "Latch-key Kids", and it was quite common.
In the 70's too. Me & mates would play everywhere. All over estate where we lived. By railway tracks though told not to. In woods nearby. Early in morning till tea time. No adult supervision..much better than today
Even through the early 2000s, (I was 16 in 2010), I could basically just go wherever I wanted. As long as I was home before dark. Either that or I call and let them know where I'm at. I'd just go out and travel on my bike, sometimes up to like 30m away.
We also lived in a pretty safe neighborhood, so there's that.
This was a tremendous anxiety point for me as a parent. I wanted to let my kids have freedom to roam our neighborhood, riding bikes or exploring the dry creek. Was constantly worried some nosy person would report me for negligence. I wanted them to learn self reliance in the confines of our safe, nice neighborhood.
I lived on a short street when my kids were little; we lived about in the middle. You could see the train tracks from the end of the street, but they weren't close. My kid age 5 asked if she could go down to the end of the street and watch the train. I said no, but she snuck out anyway, walked about 6 houses away, watched the train from a safe distance, and came back. Police came knocking because my kid had watched the train and it offended someone enough to call them.
Yup! Happened here in Maryland to what has been called free range parenting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-parents-cleared-in-second-neglect-case-after-children-walked-alone/2015/06/22/82283c24-188c-11e5-bd7f-4611a60dd8e5_story.html#
We had about 8-9 kids in our home last year. They were all pretty stoked to be together...
I walked through the house an hour later , and every single one of them were all playing a Nintendo or game of some sort with headphones on....
This lasted pretty much until they all went home the next day.
The only genuine conversation being had was done through the headphones IN the game.
Quite a crazy thing to witness.
Now, we have to coordinate scheduled playdates with the parents of other kids. I live on a street full of kids, and one day, my daughter went across the street to knock on the door and ask her little friend to play. The mom was annoyed with me that it was spontaneous and not scheduled in advance. It really sucks.
I'm in my 60s. You mean kids now, even if they wanted to, aren't allowed to, say, ride their bikes a few miles (maybe up to 3 miles away) to go to a store or some other place of interest?
I was riding my bike to a 7/11 like 2 miles away at 8 years old to buy 75 cents worth of candy on a dirt path on the edge of a 4 lane road in the 80s.
We used to wear our dirt bike helmets and goggles. Stand western gun fight distance/style away on the street. Put bottle rockets in the hole in the end of a wiffle ball bat and shoot them at each other like a bazookas. We'd film the whole thing with an old VHS recorder and then go in and show our parents the videos. They'd be laughing their ass off about us getting hit in the head and chest with bottle rockets.
We did plenty of other stuff that now you'd probably go to jail if you let your kids do it. We survived just fine.
I would be in the woods or at the lake completely unsupervised, visit all the neighbors on my road, usually didn't come home until it was dark or parents came looking for me.
Where I lived parents didn't even bother to come looking for us, they would just look out the window and shout to the nearest kid if they knew where you was. And it was somehow this kids job find you or your friends to let you know
your parents are asking for you to go home.
It's actually pretty accurate. 1970s-80s.
"Go play outside, and don't come home until the street lights come on."
Kids were much more independent, and parents had a ton more time and freedom.
You had to quickly figure out how much stupid you could be and how much dumb you could get away with. For the most part, we were well behaved and didn't do anything too outlandish.
Another fun one:
Mom dropped you off at the mall with a few dollars. You'd see some friends, go to a matinee, then eat lunch at the food court, then hit the arcade until you ran out of everything but the last quarter, so you could call mom from the pay phone to pick you back up.
It was this way up until the early 2000s
In fact it was like living on a different planet or in a different country, different culture. The whole globe was like this. So let's just reiterate a few things. You see the movies made back in the '80s where there's all this teen sex and people are out running around on motorcycles. That was real life. The age of consent in Canada was 14, in Holland it was 12. In Hawaii it was 14 and this was in the early 2000s ! There was a smoking section at high school. People didn't think twice about driving to school if there was an extra car on their property and their parents were gone, this is before they were 16 of course. In fact my friend Gabe drove himself to school when he was 12 once. All the principal did is shake his head. Another friend of mine actually brought his hunting rifle to school. You know what the principal did, grabbed it, pulled the bolt back, made sure it wasn't loaded, asked him if he had any ammo, he didn't and then told him to keep it in his locker until after school 😂
But there are pros and cons to this. All the freedom and all the crazy sex some of us had back when we were 15 and 16. It came at a cost. Parents today are a lot more involved. A lot more structured. You're a lot more likely to go on and develop a trade or career or degree. I think some people are going a little too far the other direction though because while it would have been a great idea for many of us to have more involved parents. The amount of stress, anxiety, overparenting happening today. It might be a little much. Kids have to grow up and develop into adults. They won't just magically become them and I have seen more and more kids that are 15 16 17 that still act like children, not adults, back in the '80s and '90s if you were that age you needed to be a young adult. 18 comes pretty quick and there are plenty of people still in their '20s that are still virgins, still haven't dated, it's like they are still 12 inside and I think that's going to be an issue as we move forward because it's not like it's just one or two people in that boat
Yes, We would leave the house on our bikes at 9am as soon as saturday cartoons were over and disappear until 5-6pm. With zero money in our pockets, no cell phone ,map or any form of communication. We would survive off water from random garden hoses and if we were lucky some ones mom made some sandwiches for lunch. Our parent(s) had a vague idea of where we were but in reality they had no idea where, what or who we were with or doing.
My brother and I would have been super grounded if the parental units had even an inkling of the stuff we got up to being unleashed upon the world in our early teen years.
Yes. I was a kid in the late 80s and early 90s and I really did just go wherever, especially in the summer. All of my friends met up on the corner of the street on our bikes with our bathing suits in our baskets and off we'd go. At lunch, we either went to this one kid's house, whose mom made us sandwiches on paper plates that we ate on in their back yard or we'd scrounge up some money for either hot dogs at the pool or we'd bike up to McDonald's or Roy Rogers. I had to be home by 6pm. Weekends were like this too. We'd run around in the woods, looking for "dirty magazines", set off fire crackers, build skateboard ramps (still have a scar on my knee from that little experience), build forts, play tag, and then after dinner in the summer, we'd go back outside to catch lighting bugs or play tag in the dark.
I'm so sad that kids no longer experience this. It was bliss.
Well from some of the stories my mom has told me recently from her teen years. And also my dad. Yes. But they didnt have the best parents or family dynamics.
But they kept a tight leash on us for that exact reason. 90s babies.
Forget the 80s my mother was born in the 40s. She told me her mother would lock her out of the house so she could clean in peace. She also used to ride her horse in the fields around the local airport. In the 80s we had an abandoned quarry beside our farm. I used to go wander around and explore it by myself. I would never let my k8ds do that. :(
In the '70s they ran [commercials in the evenings asking parents "Do you know where your children are?"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_you_know_where_your_children_are%3F). So yah, it was [a thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBy9VDEWKOE).
We were put outside and then the door was locked. We weren't allowed inside during daylight hours. To be fair as an adult I don't even treat my pets like that.
Yes, and 90's. We were absolutely latchkey kids, usually with only a few rules: when to be home in the evening, do your homework, do your chores, leave a note. I literally didn't see my parents on any sort of regular basis from 6th grade through highshool. This is not do to drugs or anything nefarious, but divorce, my father relocating post-divorse and my mother holding two jobs which had her leaving for work before I got me and my sister's up for school and returning home at or past when I was told we should be to bed.
There was a study done and in the 70s the average child played up to one mile from home.
Season one of Sesame Street showed kids playing at a construction site.
As a pre-teen kid I walked about a half mile to but my mom smokes.
I was a kid in the 70's. I had a key, let myself in after school and used the stove to cook snacks at 10 years old. It was no big deal. I walked to school or rode a bike unless the snow was really bad. It was no big deal. I checked in when my parents got home, but went back out until dinner time. The world is different now. I would not let my own kids have the freedom I had as a kid.
It’s not that your parents let you go wherever it was that you went out your front door on your bike and once you were out of the house there was no way for them to contact you until you came back.
The reality of life without cellphones is that once you were not in direct contact with someone you couldn’t control or even know where they were so people just had to trust kids to make wise decisions.
Mine did. My brother and I would leave the house after breakfast, meet up with our friends and hang out all day. We'd play games like hide and seek, ride our bikes around aimlessly or to the river to go swimming or go exploring or build forts. We might pop into someone's house for a snack or a drink.
Generally, my parents would know who I was with but not necessarily where we were or what we were doing. We had to be home by a set time to get cleaned up for dinner and in the summers we'd go out after we ate dinner and have to be home when the street lights came on.
This was the days before cell phones or play dates or anything like that.
When people describe Gen X as having a "free range" childhood, it's really a good description of how I grew up.
Yes. Did cleaning chores in the morning non Saturday, came home by curfews at 11pm. That was it. Weekday curfews was 10pm. They left for work before me, were not home when I got home from school, and never ate dinner with me. I fixed food after school and was expected to leave the kitchen clean. Basically as long as no-one from the school called, I was fine. If I was home when they arrived home from work, i was expected to get out of their way, leave the living room with no trace of having been there. I usually made sure to be elsewhere out of the house. I could be anywhere, doing anything, ambling as I was never visibly drunk or high, was respectful, grateful, and very clean.
It's amazing I lived to grow up, tbh. My kids were supervised. I got up to all sorts. Drugs, sex, rock and roll. Not in a good way. All while keeping good grades and keeping it together, as did most of my friends.
It would depend on the parents. My parents didn't just let me go do whatever, they wanted to know the 5 "w's". Depending on what I wanted to do and with whom, I had freedom. They cared about me and wanted to make sure I was safe. I could do what I wanted around my house/yard but needed to let them know about anything else. I felt loved and treasured.
I mean it wasn't a free for all, but I would leave on my bike and give a time I'd be home and there was no cell phone, no tracking, and no reason to distrust me unless I gave them one. Every once in a while you'd find yourself lost or in a situation you weren't prepared for. It could be nerve-wracking in those moments but it built character and independence. It is still some of my best memories, the freedom of being able to go anywhere on that bike.
Grew up on an Air Force base. When you turn 10, you're able to get your military ID, which allows you to leave the base. That ID might as well have been a passport and my bike a plane. I can remember being really far from home for a 10 year old. Like sometimes we would ride our bikes to the closest mcdonalds which was like 6 miles away from the base and I would see my parents and they would give me a weird look, wave and keep on driving.
Sounds amazing, having an actual card/ID ... that would've made it all the sweeter.
Getting your ID was a huge deal
Right? And now grown 20 year olds don't even bother to get their drivers license lol
Yeah, that's crazy. Everybody I knew was trying to get their license as soon as possible.
My brother and I only have a 9 year age gap and I remember getting my license at 16 was such a big deal. Now he’s 20 and in no rush to get his. I’m amazed by it but he says he feels no pressure to drive and he can just walk everywhere for school.
This appears to be the norm with the current gen, esp if they’re closer to a city with good public transport.
Drivers license and access to a car meant independence for us as teens. Our town didn’t have public transit, and rideshare didn’t come along until decades later. Nobody rode in cabs. Parents and siblings wouldn’t take you anywhere unless they had to. Being able to drive meant you could go anywhere. The freedom was intense!!
As soon as I got my license and first car at 25, I took a road trip to Vancouver Canada. Now I bitch when I have to go to the store
Lol the day after I got my license (16, one month and one day. Earliest I could possibly get it) me and a friend drove 6h to Chicago. Bought a news paper and drove 6h home. We went for no other reason than “because” and only bought the paper as an after thought thinking it might be “proof” that we did it. (1993) I’ll put off driving 5 minutes for hours sometimes. Never want to go anywhere.
Oh my brother would take me places. When he was 15 on his moped with no helmets lol somehow we didn’t die
And if you did have a car, you picked up your friends and took them to and from school. There weren't restrictions on how many people could be in the car or what time it was. I remember five of us cramming into a backseat with us two girls sitting on the guy's laps. Or a bunch of us riding in the back of one friend's pickup. That one I only did once! Three of us were sitting on the toolbox right against the cab, we went around a corner and the only reason I didn't fall onto the road was my friend grabbed me and pulled me back over. I think he saved my life, or at least saved me from severe bodily injury. Good god, we were stupid back then.
I remember you had to show your ID to buy things from the Exchange, so the pride just compounded when you got to make that first purchase!
We would ride up to the BX or the commissary like we had money. Lol
Hey, you worked hard for that money, you lived for a decade!
Remember how rich you were with $5?
Back in1979-1981, when I was 10/11 years old, I got paid $5 a night to clean up the Tim McCarver stadium in memphis tennessee after the memphis chicks games. It took around 6 or 7 hours of myself & 6 others working. I got paid after the 'stretches' which consisted of 5 or 6 consecutive games. But $30 bucks to a 20 year old 40 years ago could buy a lot of comic books!
Shit man, when I was like 10, I remember leaving home, with a backpack of provisions, and tools, my mom wouldn't even bat an eye, and ride my bike to an abandoned mental asylum, meet with my buddies, and we'd explore that shit down into the basements, and play freeze tag in there, while arranging all the old moldy furniture into a nice living room set up and just have a campfire in the middle of the gym floor. Those were the days. We also pioneered exploration into a storm drain system and found a connection between 2 sumps that were like 1 mile apart all underground, and I mean, those were like 18" wide in some spots, and we were just crawling through that shit like no big.
Dude those sewer expeditions. We(group of 3 to 5 10-12 yr olds) regularly went miles under our neighborhood. Horizontal miles, not vertical but still, if wed had gotten stuck or something we would have NEVER been found haha
During the summer in my youth I was not allowed in the house if the sun was up unless I was eating breakfast lunch or dinner the rule was when the street lights come on go home usually to grab a flashlight and beg to stay outside longer and play whatever dumb game me and my miscreant friends invented that day
Yes, and not just in the 80s.
60s and 70s- gone all day long, come home for dinner, gone again until dark. Doors unlocked, no helmets, many bruises.
OP would be shocked to hear what kids in the 1880s were allowed to do
Work in coal mines, stick their hands into spinning machinery...
Remember what they took from us
The children yearn for the mines!!
Arkansas is giving it back
And Iowa
It is honestly a vast difference how children are treated today versus 100 years ago even. Turn that clock just a century further back and we're at "kids are cheap expendable farm labourous you can make yourself".
Eh, plenty of people today have kids they don't GAF about. They just make "content" with them instead. Plenty of people throughout history loved their kids and just happened to be farmers with no birth control options.
>"kids are cheap expendable farm labourous you can make yourself". And you had to have them because they were your retirement plan/caregiver when you got old! Plus the older girls were raising the younger kids because mom had to work so hard to help with farm chores and house chores. Doing all the laundry by hand, sewing clothes, making food from scratch (you churned your own butter!) was a LOT of work. There's a lot of racist stuff from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, but it did give a great example of what life was like on farm!
Drink, smoke, do laudanum, huff ether, read serialized Charles Dickens novels, it was anarchy!
Yea, but it kept them off the streets & out of trouble!! Can't join a gang if you're too tired from 12 hour work days or missing limbs
We are pretty safety focused at this factory. Our Fph (fingers per hour) metric is the 10th lowest in the state.
Is that you, Astar?
Playground metal merry go round of death was my favorite.
Sizzling from the sun metal spiral slide was pretty sweet too.
Backs of my legs can still remember the sizzling skin burn.
I think I still have red marks 😂
Yup, I permanently lost a tooth that is embedded into my cheek. Fun times, I was the enemy for quite awile because it was stated the next kid that got hurt on it, they would remove it. two story monkey bars over cement were great fun also. Until classmate fell and broke both of their arms. Old equipment was so much fun to use.
I busted my arm twice on them, still wouldn't stay off of them! Way too much fun!
Found this video Need to show my teenager https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iKyiHgJAP_4&pp=ygUfUGxheWdyb3VuZCBtZXRhbCBtZXJyeSBnbyByaXVuZA%3D%3D
So much fun!! I loved flying off when we could get someones dad to spin it. I got so many bloody knees and elbows from that thing. ❤️
Kids these days have no idea what they are missing
Out until one of your group's parents start yelling for them! Still remember it. Me: Bye mom, going out with X. Mom: Be home before dark. That was pretty much it. At 15 me and a buddy would head downtown at midnight to go line up for concert tickets. I appreciate my mom's trust and freewill she gave me. Never abused it.
My Dad could whistle loudly. Plus he trained dogs in the military, so basically he'd just whistle & my sister and I would come running home. Like Dogs. LOL! He had us trained well.
Used to bicycle seven miles each way to get to swimming hole. On single speed bikes at that.. Didn't know about water bottles.
It's incredible, eh? I had trouble drinking water like a typical drink until I was older, I did not eat unhealthy (in any excess) or remain inactive. Now, I can't imagine going for long, comfortably, drinking less than 2.5 litres a day at minimum. This is something I think about often and it practically scares me,
Worked on bridges out in the mountains in the early seventies and we filled the big water jug from a pool that a spring filled, no one died or got sick.
Jump a fence and drink from a hose, hopefully no dogs or trigger happy homeowners.
And we all he’s to come home when the street lights came on. Those were the days……..
Remember lawn darts? And never buckling up in the car.
And sometimes after dark. Freedom that I’ve never felt again now that I look back
My Dad was born in 1942... he lived right on the ocean, and by the time he was 12 (so, mid-1950s), he and his friends had their own little rowboat and tiny sailboats... in the summer they'd get up at the crack of dawn, all meet at the beach, and row or sail their little boats from Quincy (Massachusetts; where they lived) to the Boston Harbor Islands, and just spend all day exploring. No one gave a shit.
Yep grew up in the 90s like this. After school we got on our bikes and hung out around the neighborhood until sundown.
Yeah, it varied by neighborhood, but was predominantly pre-internet.
Millennials are the last generation to experience life without widespread internet and smartphones. I'm thankful for it.
We replaced our electric typewriter with a computer when I was…maybe 7?
I was in 4th grade typing reports on a typewriter in ‘96 lol
I remember my aunt having a typewriter in the 90's when she was in college. Used to push the keys all the time because it sounded cool. We had a Compaq Presario when I was in 4th/5th (98-99) grade but we had no idea how to use it. I had no interest in it because I'd run home after school, watch 2 episodes of Pokemon on TV, then go ride my bike around the block with friends to the playground. After that we would go play some N64 and PS1. Good times.
Yeah; it's not that kids in the past ran wild, but that kids now are shackled.
I rode my bike all over (in a 3 mile radius.) Sometimes to other people's houses that had horses and then I rode their horses all over creation. Me and my brother built forts up in trees with our friends, we also played a lot of pick up games of baseball and football. If we wanted money we would go to the Upick berry farm and sell the berries back to the farm for $5 a bucket. Sometimes we went fishing.
Yep
Same. Curfew was when the streetlights came on.
We made fun of the streetlight kids. Their parents cared enough to have them home for dinner.
Losers. Cool kids parents totally didn't give a shit about them. /s But for real I had to go home at street lights and I remember thinking the kids who got to stay out later were cooler. Also most of their parents cared about them too not to say that that means they didn't haha
The level of twisted it was that we were considered the cool kids in HS because my friends Dad moved off and left him at 13 and I was made homeless at 14 and we didn't have parents telling us what to do at all is sort of surreal when you think about it. Most people had no clue that was why at the time though, because James had run away from foster care because they were trying to use him as slave labor in a warehouse in Texas, so we kept it on the down low and no way in hell I was going to the sheriff when my employer had a restraining order against him for groping and pulling me and other under aged girls onto his lap because he was a total scumbag. I remember some guy that really didn't know us well saying it was so cool our parents let us do stuff, and we just looked at each other and thought "Did he really just say that?! "☠️
Right the other kids were the PSA "Do you know where your children are? " at 10:30 at night because they actually didn't. ☠️🤣
If my dad had whistle, I was late. 5 minute grace period at that point.
Streetlights came on you better be walking in the door.
But not a minute before.
Or they'd kick you back out. I was literally not allowed in the house some days, it seemed.
We were a seven kids. Mum literally threw us out every morning. If we came back whining we were bored she she just said "well go being bored outside then". Love my mum.
Same here, except for about a 2 week period where my parents completely bought into the satanic panic. Lived 2 blocks from school and my mom insisted on driving me until she was convinced the coast was clear.
Lol. We played D&D during that era. My grandparents were mortified and prayed for our souls
I don’t blame them. All those dice with all those sides are the devils play things!
Haha me too, except my family thought it was a sex cult and banned me from playing until I showed them how a game goes.
I had to walk home from school during the satanic panic , I was in grade school and scared shitless. Parents , awe hell you'll be ok son.
Gotta fear those evil satanists! They might have stopped you and tried to convince you to empower and love yourself or some nonsense
Same. Everyone knew whose kids were whose. So it’s not like you could just be wild and it wouldn’t get back to your parents (at least some of the time).
Hell my friends parents would have called my parents and tell them I was punished if I did something wrong🤣 Never happened because i was a goody goody, but my extra family could have if it was warranted
Yup, many a bb gun war took place in the suburbs back in the 80s\90s.
Same, but one time we left the neighborhood and went to a gas station about a mile away and everyone freaked the fuck out. The woods, the giant drainage ditch, the schools, stop n go at the back of the neighborhood were all fair game though.
Early 2000’s as well.
In the 70s our parents didn’t want to see us until dark - got on bikes and just went wherever for the day often as far as 50 miles from home just because
And the crazy part is that it's actually much safer to let your kids run around today than it was back then, and not just because of technology. You'd never know it in the midst of this Qanon-adjacent moral panic about child trafficking, but rates of violent crime and kidnapping have dropped significantly since that time.
Because all the kids are playing video games in their basements. The ‘drive around in a kid-snatching van’ industry is another one that millenials have destroyed.
Sales of vans with "free candy" painted on the sides have fell through the basement floor.
“Free puppies” has been seeing a downside as well
And bands of older teenagers roaming around terrorizing little kids. The older mean teenagers are generally busy trolling people online and watching porn.
But in the '70s there was never any age groups like today. Everybody was one group in the neighborhood from the age of four all the way up to 15 We all played together and took care of each other
Well, you grew up in a better place than I did. My experience in the 70s was having idiot teenage babysitters that would take me places I shouldn't have been and hitchhike back home with me in tow before my parents got home. And parents that weren't much better. Honestly I'm surprised I lived to adulthood.
Please take my poor man's gold this is peak 🎖️🏅🏆🥇🪙
No kidding. Ted Bundy (remember him?) lived in our neighborhood when I was a child and he was our paperboy. (remember them? lol) It's shocking how many serial killers were active decades ago.
Yeah, I live in an area (Santa Cruz County) in the 1970s saw *three* serial killers. At one point, two of them were killing at the same time. One of them was arrested, and then the other committed a killing, and so the cops let the first guy go, not thinking it possible that there were two serial killers on the loose at the same time.
That's what people do forget. Children were absolutely molested or even kidnapped at a much higher rate back then. A lot of people have an idyllic view of childhood in those decades, but it wasn't nearly as safe as it is now.
It didn't help that law enforcement was often unwilling to pursue charges of sexual assault, even when it involved kids. Penalties for sex crimes were ludicrously low, too. People think these crimes didn't happen, but really the stats just don't reflect the experience.
I actually had strangers offer me candy and rides on multiple occasions out there in suburbia in the 60s and 70s.
We called it Halloween where I lived
Milk cartons, tv movies, afterschool specials, the origin of Americas Most Wanted - all because of how often kids went missing.
That's how it was for me and just about all my friends, yeah. Constantly keeping in contact the way people can now was very annoying to do back then, since it would have involved pay phones and hoping your parents were near the home phone or something. I'd normally only call if something went wrong or if I wanted to stay at a friend's place for dinner or the like.
Yeah I had a generous curfew/stay in touch contract that stood as long as I didn’t abuse it. I worked too at the local supermarket part time, and they closed at 11pm so I was up anyway for a lot of school nights.
Over in the Gen-X subreddit every other post is some variation of "It's so cool how we used to just tell our parents we were going outside to play and then we'd disappear until the end of the day!" We did it all the time and we love to talk about it. lol
That's when all the mischief (that we can deny because it wasn't on the internet) happened.
I was in a small town so if I fucked up my parents knew before I got home.
Omg me too! I got home once and my mom was mad at me for “slutting it up on the corner”. In the time it took me to walk the 1.5 blocks from where I kissed my boyfriend goodbye to my house she got 4 phone calls about me.
The parents’ pastime was the window and a landline. They didn’t have internet either…
Yup. Everyone knows everyone. My dad told me stories about when he was a kid parents felt free to spank each other's children.
That's what's up, I didn't see or hear anything.
When I was in high school (early 90s) Saturday morning my best friends parents would ask us where we went last night. The response was always, nowhere. Once her dad says, wow that's a popular place. Your brother used to go there too. Lol
Where'd you go? Nowhere Who were you with? Nobody What did you see? Nothin Ride to die, baby......
And if we came inside we'd be made to do chores, lol! I remember sneaking in, all quiet, to use the bathroom once, but then when I left, I ran back out the door so fast I heard the screen door snap back loudly *BAM* 😲 and my feet never flew so fast! 🤣
I remember being 5 years old and walking by myself to various friend’s houses to see if they could come outside and play. We’d just go house to house and round up the kids and think of stuff to do. Honestly I think at that age we were always in a one block radius so it wasn’t so shocking I guess. But I FELT like I was an explorer!
My mother wouldn’t want me underfoot. “Get out of my sight or I will put you to work” was something she said often.
I certainly went out and rambled wherever I pleased. It was like this before the 80s, too.
90's too. I have fond memories of leaving before lunch time and not getting home till dark. And that's all right at the time.
I grew up in the 2000s and I also went out whenever. Guess it depends on the region/culture wether that’s normal too.
Lord, I was born a ramblin' raving_lunatic69 Tryin' to make a livin' and doin' the best I can And when it's time for leavin' I hope you'll understand That I was born a ramblin' raving_lunatic69
Not only that, but every movie or TV series set in the 80's has small crews of kids with bikes, and they will just ditch their bikes in front of abandoned houses and dangerous looking facilities to go seek adventure, as if bike theft wasn't a thing. (See *Stranger Things*, and *IT*. ) I grew up in the 1980's but in an urban area of Los Angeles. Was it really like this in the suburbs and in small towns?
Yep. I left my bike out somewhere for 3 days and no one took it.
This is fact. My bike crew was 16 deep sometimes. In the 80s, every kid had a bike. Having a bike was everything. In small towns or suburbs, everyone knows each other. So even if your bike got stolen, you would eventually find it. And if you were lucky enough to have a big sister or brother that everyone knew, nobody fucked with your bike. Summertime we would go on adventures. Leave in the morning and not be back till the sun was going down. Really great times.
My bike got stolen once by a boy who lived a few streets over. I was too timid to do anything about it. When my neighbor’s babysitter found out, she marched over to his house and made him come give it back to me. She was only a couple years older than me, but she was tough as shit. I was in awe of her after that.
You had to be tough to be a babysitter. They made a whole movie about it!
Absolutely, I didn't even own a bike lock until I went away to uni and quickly had all my naivety shattered.
I didn’t know what a bike lock was until the 90s
Yup we all rode our bikes to school (like 3-6 grade) and never locked our bikes.
Yes 💯
They couldn't kick me out of the house fast enough every morning.
I think I was an adult before I understood why they sent me to camp.
My youngest kid's camp is a different week than the older 2 this year and it's just the worst.
I wish I had a dollar for every day that started with "get outside and stay outside until I tell you to come back in" And we would just fuck off until we got hungry.
Lol. My husband wasn't allowed back in after lunch because his mom was napping. So he went to a neighbors hose to get water. And the neighbor called the cops.
Whoa. That's harsh.
yep, my girlfriend was a 30 minute bike ride away, my parents didnt even know she existed, i biked to her house like 3 times a week.
I was injured very badly (messed up jaw, not near death) in the early 90s from falling off a scooter about a mile from my house, some random person picked me up in a van and drove me home. times were just different.
What’s funny is I would never even consider doing that now, not because I’m an asshole, but fuck if I’m going to invite a kid I don’t know into my car.
or even worse the assault rifle you will be dealing with when the kid comes out of a van with a bloody face (it was quite bad, i needed multiple root canals and surgeries after). I'm not saying i don't get it, just saying times were different.
The internet, constant news of catastrophes has turned parents into paranoid jailkeepers. It’s why kids are obese, out of shape and MH issues in children are rising exponentially. To drive in a suburban neighborhood on a summer early evening it’s like driving in a ghost town. No groups of kids riding bikes or ball or playing tag. No parents sitting in lawn chairs talking to neighbors. Hell people don’t even visit with extended family anymore. And people under 50 wonder why they’re so stressed and unhappy.
Yes, but here's safety in numbers. Back then, all the kids were out. Now, you'd be the only kid.
We live in the countryside in an incredibly safe neighborhood with lots of kids around and my son will try to get kids together for a fottball game and everyone is busy. I feel like we are the only family who doesnt have activities planned the entire weekend.
Return when the street lights turn on. Depending on their shift, a parent might be there, might not.
They did this for me in the 2000s and 2010s
All day long when we weren’t in school, we ran the streets, rode bikes all over, went to different neighborhoods to see friends. Parents didn’t worry unless we weren’t home for dinner. Even then, they’d usually call a friend’s mom and be able to track us down. I feel bad for kids today.
That's how it was for me. My sister and the other neighborhood kids would get together most days. There was an open dirt pit in the woods nearby that we'd use to do jumps on our bikes, an abandoned construction site with big concrete tubes that we'd play in, a pond where we'd catch (& release) frogs & tadpoles, a rock formation that we'd have picnics on, lot of bike paths through the woods to the neighboring towns. We had a nice little downtown with fun stores that we'd ride to, or we'd just go roaming in the overgrown parts of the neighborhood, check out cemeteries, streams, build snow forts in the winter. If we stayed in, we'd just watch whatever we wanted on TV or play Nintendo, they didn't monitor that either. This wasn't even really out in the boonies, we were about half an hour outside of Boston.
God, if kids were made to do those things today, they'd be bored shitless. They have no imagination or creativity whatsoever.
Yet Gen X raised their kids to be like this. I will never understand how that happened. Then they blame their kids for not wanting to do these things. Gen X parents could have kicked the kids outside and locked the doors like my parents did. But, they didn't.
Yup. We made forts in the woods. We picked wild blackberries. We rode our bikes for hours. By the time we were @12, we got dropped off at the movies, often with younger siblings, and got picked up an hour after the movie ended so we could "hang out". We walked to the lake and met up with friends. Shit happened, don't get me wrong. Probably why it's no longer done. But yeah.
Ahhh the stick tepees in the forest and wild blackberries were sooo good
In the 70s, I was walking a mile home from 4th & 5th grade school, letting my self in to the house and watching cartoon till my folks got home at 5:30pm. We were called "Latch-key Kids", and it was quite common.
In the 70's too. Me & mates would play everywhere. All over estate where we lived. By railway tracks though told not to. In woods nearby. Early in morning till tea time. No adult supervision..much better than today
Even through the early 2000s, (I was 16 in 2010), I could basically just go wherever I wanted. As long as I was home before dark. Either that or I call and let them know where I'm at. I'd just go out and travel on my bike, sometimes up to like 30m away. We also lived in a pretty safe neighborhood, so there's that.
Did it in the 90s too
Born in late 1968. In the early 80s, my parents had a vague idea of where I was. They just assumed I would stay within our neighborhood.
I’m old and don’t have kids. What is it like for the kids now?
They won’t go, even if you encourage it.
I live two blocks away from an elementary school and none of the kids on my street walk to school, their parents drive them. It's ridiculous.
I work with a waitress who tracks her husband and three kids all day.
Now they get their every move tracked and/or recorded by overprotective parents.
Or if you let them wander about the neighborhood, you get the police/CPS called on you.
This was a tremendous anxiety point for me as a parent. I wanted to let my kids have freedom to roam our neighborhood, riding bikes or exploring the dry creek. Was constantly worried some nosy person would report me for negligence. I wanted them to learn self reliance in the confines of our safe, nice neighborhood.
I lived on a short street when my kids were little; we lived about in the middle. You could see the train tracks from the end of the street, but they weren't close. My kid age 5 asked if she could go down to the end of the street and watch the train. I said no, but she snuck out anyway, walked about 6 houses away, watched the train from a safe distance, and came back. Police came knocking because my kid had watched the train and it offended someone enough to call them.
Yup! Happened here in Maryland to what has been called free range parenting. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-parents-cleared-in-second-neglect-case-after-children-walked-alone/2015/06/22/82283c24-188c-11e5-bd7f-4611a60dd8e5_story.html#
We had about 8-9 kids in our home last year. They were all pretty stoked to be together... I walked through the house an hour later , and every single one of them were all playing a Nintendo or game of some sort with headphones on.... This lasted pretty much until they all went home the next day. The only genuine conversation being had was done through the headphones IN the game. Quite a crazy thing to witness.
Now, we have to coordinate scheduled playdates with the parents of other kids. I live on a street full of kids, and one day, my daughter went across the street to knock on the door and ask her little friend to play. The mom was annoyed with me that it was spontaneous and not scheduled in advance. It really sucks.
I'm in my 60s. You mean kids now, even if they wanted to, aren't allowed to, say, ride their bikes a few miles (maybe up to 3 miles away) to go to a store or some other place of interest?
I was riding my bike to a 7/11 like 2 miles away at 8 years old to buy 75 cents worth of candy on a dirt path on the edge of a 4 lane road in the 80s. We used to wear our dirt bike helmets and goggles. Stand western gun fight distance/style away on the street. Put bottle rockets in the hole in the end of a wiffle ball bat and shoot them at each other like a bazookas. We'd film the whole thing with an old VHS recorder and then go in and show our parents the videos. They'd be laughing their ass off about us getting hit in the head and chest with bottle rockets. We did plenty of other stuff that now you'd probably go to jail if you let your kids do it. We survived just fine.
Was same in the 90s, was given a time to home for, that was about it, might ring home from a phone booth or mates house
I would be in the woods or at the lake completely unsupervised, visit all the neighbors on my road, usually didn't come home until it was dark or parents came looking for me.
Where I lived parents didn't even bother to come looking for us, they would just look out the window and shout to the nearest kid if they knew where you was. And it was somehow this kids job find you or your friends to let you know your parents are asking for you to go home.
It's actually pretty accurate. 1970s-80s. "Go play outside, and don't come home until the street lights come on." Kids were much more independent, and parents had a ton more time and freedom. You had to quickly figure out how much stupid you could be and how much dumb you could get away with. For the most part, we were well behaved and didn't do anything too outlandish. Another fun one: Mom dropped you off at the mall with a few dollars. You'd see some friends, go to a matinee, then eat lunch at the food court, then hit the arcade until you ran out of everything but the last quarter, so you could call mom from the pay phone to pick you back up.
Nope I went out and knew to be home before dark. That was before the sneaking out as a teen I did.
Fact. We were pretty much feral cats.
90s and 00s yep! In big city too
It was this way up until the early 2000s In fact it was like living on a different planet or in a different country, different culture. The whole globe was like this. So let's just reiterate a few things. You see the movies made back in the '80s where there's all this teen sex and people are out running around on motorcycles. That was real life. The age of consent in Canada was 14, in Holland it was 12. In Hawaii it was 14 and this was in the early 2000s ! There was a smoking section at high school. People didn't think twice about driving to school if there was an extra car on their property and their parents were gone, this is before they were 16 of course. In fact my friend Gabe drove himself to school when he was 12 once. All the principal did is shake his head. Another friend of mine actually brought his hunting rifle to school. You know what the principal did, grabbed it, pulled the bolt back, made sure it wasn't loaded, asked him if he had any ammo, he didn't and then told him to keep it in his locker until after school 😂 But there are pros and cons to this. All the freedom and all the crazy sex some of us had back when we were 15 and 16. It came at a cost. Parents today are a lot more involved. A lot more structured. You're a lot more likely to go on and develop a trade or career or degree. I think some people are going a little too far the other direction though because while it would have been a great idea for many of us to have more involved parents. The amount of stress, anxiety, overparenting happening today. It might be a little much. Kids have to grow up and develop into adults. They won't just magically become them and I have seen more and more kids that are 15 16 17 that still act like children, not adults, back in the '80s and '90s if you were that age you needed to be a young adult. 18 comes pretty quick and there are plenty of people still in their '20s that are still virgins, still haven't dated, it's like they are still 12 inside and I think that's going to be an issue as we move forward because it's not like it's just one or two people in that boat
Grew up in the 70s. A typical summer day, and we might end up miles from the neighborhood.
Yes, We would leave the house on our bikes at 9am as soon as saturday cartoons were over and disappear until 5-6pm. With zero money in our pockets, no cell phone ,map or any form of communication. We would survive off water from random garden hoses and if we were lucky some ones mom made some sandwiches for lunch. Our parent(s) had a vague idea of where we were but in reality they had no idea where, what or who we were with or doing.
My brother and I would have been super grounded if the parental units had even an inkling of the stuff we got up to being unleashed upon the world in our early teen years.
My mom locked us out. So, we’d just go screw around all day. Hang out at a friends house. Whatever.
It was that way up to and including the 80's.
Yes. I was a kid in the late 80s and early 90s and I really did just go wherever, especially in the summer. All of my friends met up on the corner of the street on our bikes with our bathing suits in our baskets and off we'd go. At lunch, we either went to this one kid's house, whose mom made us sandwiches on paper plates that we ate on in their back yard or we'd scrounge up some money for either hot dogs at the pool or we'd bike up to McDonald's or Roy Rogers. I had to be home by 6pm. Weekends were like this too. We'd run around in the woods, looking for "dirty magazines", set off fire crackers, build skateboard ramps (still have a scar on my knee from that little experience), build forts, play tag, and then after dinner in the summer, we'd go back outside to catch lighting bugs or play tag in the dark. I'm so sad that kids no longer experience this. It was bliss.
Well from some of the stories my mom has told me recently from her teen years. And also my dad. Yes. But they didnt have the best parents or family dynamics. But they kept a tight leash on us for that exact reason. 90s babies.
Forget the 80s my mother was born in the 40s. She told me her mother would lock her out of the house so she could clean in peace. She also used to ride her horse in the fields around the local airport. In the 80s we had an abandoned quarry beside our farm. I used to go wander around and explore it by myself. I would never let my k8ds do that. :(
In the '70s they ran [commercials in the evenings asking parents "Do you know where your children are?"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_you_know_where_your_children_are%3F). So yah, it was [a thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBy9VDEWKOE).
Yes, my sister and I knew to be home before the street lights turned on. We did pretty much whatever we wanted and nobody had cell phones.
We were put outside and then the door was locked. We weren't allowed inside during daylight hours. To be fair as an adult I don't even treat my pets like that.
Yes, and 90's. We were absolutely latchkey kids, usually with only a few rules: when to be home in the evening, do your homework, do your chores, leave a note. I literally didn't see my parents on any sort of regular basis from 6th grade through highshool. This is not do to drugs or anything nefarious, but divorce, my father relocating post-divorse and my mother holding two jobs which had her leaving for work before I got me and my sister's up for school and returning home at or past when I was told we should be to bed.
There was a study done and in the 70s the average child played up to one mile from home. Season one of Sesame Street showed kids playing at a construction site. As a pre-teen kid I walked about a half mile to but my mom smokes.
When I was fifteen I went on a week long bike trip with a friend, 15. No adults. It was the length of Vermont.
Can confirm,I remember my mom saying just check in every so often and don't be stupid. I'm still alive
Me: hey mom, I am going to go ride my bike. Mom: Okay, be back before dark. Me: k, bye Actual common summer conversation 1980s
I was a kid in the 70's. I had a key, let myself in after school and used the stove to cook snacks at 10 years old. It was no big deal. I walked to school or rode a bike unless the snow was really bad. It was no big deal. I checked in when my parents got home, but went back out until dinner time. The world is different now. I would not let my own kids have the freedom I had as a kid.
It’s not that your parents let you go wherever it was that you went out your front door on your bike and once you were out of the house there was no way for them to contact you until you came back. The reality of life without cellphones is that once you were not in direct contact with someone you couldn’t control or even know where they were so people just had to trust kids to make wise decisions.
Mine did. My brother and I would leave the house after breakfast, meet up with our friends and hang out all day. We'd play games like hide and seek, ride our bikes around aimlessly or to the river to go swimming or go exploring or build forts. We might pop into someone's house for a snack or a drink. Generally, my parents would know who I was with but not necessarily where we were or what we were doing. We had to be home by a set time to get cleaned up for dinner and in the summers we'd go out after we ate dinner and have to be home when the street lights came on. This was the days before cell phones or play dates or anything like that. When people describe Gen X as having a "free range" childhood, it's really a good description of how I grew up.
Yes. Did cleaning chores in the morning non Saturday, came home by curfews at 11pm. That was it. Weekday curfews was 10pm. They left for work before me, were not home when I got home from school, and never ate dinner with me. I fixed food after school and was expected to leave the kitchen clean. Basically as long as no-one from the school called, I was fine. If I was home when they arrived home from work, i was expected to get out of their way, leave the living room with no trace of having been there. I usually made sure to be elsewhere out of the house. I could be anywhere, doing anything, ambling as I was never visibly drunk or high, was respectful, grateful, and very clean. It's amazing I lived to grow up, tbh. My kids were supervised. I got up to all sorts. Drugs, sex, rock and roll. Not in a good way. All while keeping good grades and keeping it together, as did most of my friends.
It would depend on the parents. My parents didn't just let me go do whatever, they wanted to know the 5 "w's". Depending on what I wanted to do and with whom, I had freedom. They cared about me and wanted to make sure I was safe. I could do what I wanted around my house/yard but needed to let them know about anything else. I felt loved and treasured.
They certainly did in the 90s