The "good old" days?

I remember when kids asked to be excused from the dinner table.

One thing I hated was when a parent physically punished a child after dinner then made them go to bed. How was a child supposed to enjoy a meal knowing they were going to be spanked, whipped, beaten?😞
 

Some men wore jacket and tie to work and then changed to their work clothes.
My mother never worked after she married. Gay was happy, a homosexual was a "queer".
In the 40s and 50s all fit young men would be drafted. There were no middle schools in our area. It was grammar school through 8th grade, then high school. The drinking age was 18, and the voting age was 21.
In the 70s wife had to sign for a man to get a vasectomy.
 

Lots of good memories and lots of learning.

Having a good paying job at 16 I was able to save & buy a 54 Ford Crown Vic. convertible. Learned that girls like a guy that has a car. Learned that the back seat of that convertible was reduced due to the roof folding into the sides. Not comfortable at all as back seats go.

Learned to that when my mother wanted to drive it with the top down she wasn't happy with the wind blowing over her. We stopped to put the top up & that is when the pack of condoms fell out of the liner between the canvas and roof ribs. Mothers are supposed to be smart but my mother wasn't because she asked me. What are these?
 
In the 1950’s and early 1960’s, kids in America didn’t worry about gun nuts coming into their schools to shoot them. We did, however, have air raid drills where we cowered in basements, against interior walls, or under our desks out of fear that the Soviets were coming to drop an atomic bomb on us... 😱
 
One thing I can't believe about the "old days"... walking to and from school each day, Monday through Friday, and I never once encountered a kid that complained.

Rain, shine, snow, sleet, hail, wind, blizzard, baking heat... nothing stopped us.

Did it from the time I was in kindergarten until my grad year. No snivelling, no pouting, no - "I can't do it", oh, boo-hoo... no nothing.

Nowadays kids are chauffeured around town on Halloween night. What's up with that? Might as well stay home. Biggest part of the fun for me on Halloween night, was running from door-to-door, neighbourhood-to-neighbourhood. I really didn't care about the candy.
 
StarSong said:
Divorce permanently branded and impoverished most woman, but freed up most man.
Speaking of divorce, people usually had to present evidence to a court to obtain one. Infidelity, mental cruelty, etc.

On the plus side, children generally had much more free time. Helicopter parenting was a rarity. Parents didn't want to referee disagreements between kids and their friends, nor did they freak out over skinned knees, a broken bone, a few stitches, or other relatively minor injuries. They'd patch you up - or take you to the doctor who'd patch you up, and life went on. Scraped up bodies were considered part and parcel of interacting with the physical world.
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It is true, at least according to "Gibsons divorce law" 1935 edition, if a woman left her husband for another the courts would deem her unfit to raise any children, so the father got custody in most cases, (and in the reverse scenario the father wasn't prejudiced to the same extent). I still think divorce impoverished both, but it was so rare, maybe less than 5% seeking divorce before or after WWII, and the whole thing being frowned upon played a big part in it.
A great uncle of mine left his wife because she could not have children, so he was one of the rare ones, though he paid towards her for the rest of his life, as he was expected to do, (his second partner furnishing him with the children he craved).
 
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I was born in 66 so my memories are of the 70s and up, but even in the 70s there was a lack of recycling and waste reduction, and factories were dumping toxic waste into the rivers as a matter of course, including the river I played in. :( We still have a long way to go regarding the environment, but at least there's been some progress? Or so it feels.

Oh and corporal punishment was legal in our elementary school so long as it was with the parent's permission. I'll never forget the one kid in our class who was routinely given the strap by the principal for every little transgression, per his father's orders.
 
Was just reflecting on my early school days (elementary school years), where the school grounds were designated, one side for boys, the other for the girls.

Thinking back in it now it's so utterly absurd, but I don't remember it lasting overly long. If my memory serves me correct, the segregated grounds rule was phased-out by the time I hit the second or third grade.
 
Knight said:
Lots of good memories and lots of learning.

Having a good paying job at 16 I was able to save & buy a 54 Ford Crown Vic. convertible. Learned that girls like a guy that has a car. Learned that the back seat of that convertible was reduced due to the roof folding into the sides. Not comfortable at all as back seats go.

Learned to that when my mother wanted to drive it with the top down she wasn't happy with the wind blowing over her. We stopped to put the top up & that is when the pack of condoms fell out of the liner between the canvas and roof ribs. Mothers are supposed to be smart but my mother wasn't because she asked me. What are these?
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Trust me, she knew what the were and was just pulling your chain. I'll bet that she was very happy to see that you were taking some precautions.
 
How about when the concept of FAMILY actually mattered- both in terms of family units and relationships between the family members?

When I was new to this area, a local (not much younger) told me cell phones are so popular because it's the only way family members stay in contact. I took it to mean kids staying after school for an extracurricular activity, parents finding they had an after-work meeting, etc., but that's not it at all. From what I've seen, at least locally, there's very little in-person interaction, and kids and parents alike are all out "doing their own thing" and "living their own lives." :(
 
I think we look fondly back at our past. We remember the good parts, and gloss over the not so good parts. We were carefree and happy, at least we try to remember it that way. The problems of today just didn't spring up out of nowhere, they had their roots in our past. We still face some of those deep, hard problems, today. But, little by little, we are growing into a freer, more socially aware society. Just think, at some future time, a school teacher will be discussing the history of the 21st Century, and the concept of "self guaranteeing" from the great Virus of 2020; and the kids are going to say. "They did what?'"
 
In the state where I grew up there was no segregation. As a result, we got along just fine all through elementary, secondary and high.school. Sterilization for a woman was not dependent upon her husband's approval, and abortion was affordable, safe and clean and easy to get once Roe Vs Wade was passed.

Maybe a lot of this depends on what state / country you grew up in?
 
StarSong said:
@fuzzybuddy. No need to wait until a future time. I have no idea what the term "self guaranteeing" means outside of the financial realm.
Please explain.
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Probably it's meant to be "self-quarantining."

I doubt that it will be important enough for teachers of the future to mention it at all.
 
Let's not forget that fathers were not allowed in the delivery room, and babies in the maternity ward were held up to the glass to show.
 
Remember "home for unwed mothers"?

A teen girl would mysteriously need to go out of town to care for her sick aunt. (Rumors would indicate otherwise):(
She'd return next school year but her old clique would pass her by.
 
Platitudes:
If you don't know where you came from, how do you know where your going?
How do you know when you arrive?
Fuzzybuddy makes a good point-except we also have an inherent resistance to changes
that we do not understand.
 

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