Things kids take for granted today unheard of in our past…

[Fyrefox]

Things like individual private phones when we knew only the one telephone household. My parents had only one landline telephone, a heavy black rotary desk phone that was centrally located on a desk in their ground floor. Kids today demand and expect their own cell phones, which were science fiction in my youth, and used by James T. Kirk to communicate with the Enterprise circling a planet that he was visiting.

Privacy was unheard of while using this singular phone. My mother would listen intently to any call coming in or going out, often interrupting your conversation to offer her valued opinions on what you were saying. In my teenaged years, I’d learn the locations of every pay phone to have private convos with the opposite sex. Kids today would probably litigate against their parents for conditions such as these.

How about you? What do kids take for granted today that were unheard of in your earlier years?

 

[Judycat]

How about this? My parents refused to have a telephone in the house until a year or two before they died. Yes I spent my life without phone access until I was married. No they weren't Amish, just obstinate about moving into the modern world.

My dad was stuck in the days of kerosene lamps and the horse and buggy. Thankfully we had a car and a television set, but I don't think Mom and Dad were originally from this planet. Their ideas about life here were very strange.

 

[Aunt Bea]

One black and white television made out of wood, three channels, no remote.

 

[Aunt Bea]

 

[hollydolly]

Same..one black & white TV .. until I left home, they still had it, well into the 70's...

Same with the Phone.. we didn't get one until I was 14 and then it was a prty line... looked like this...

Now kids can play music on their phones wherever they want... we had to play on a Dansette, and buy each individual record, and treat it with care so as not to scratch it...

I had penpals and relatives who lived abroad, and the only way to contact them was to send a letter via air mail which could take 3 weeks to get there, and wait for a rely that could take another 3 weeks to get back to me ....the young today cannot even begin to believe that..

 

[Fyrefox]

I think my parent’s original TV which was in a big wooden case with closable doors got five channels, only three clearly without extensive snow and static. Kids today take dozens, even hundreds of TV channels with crystal-clear clarity for granted. When that tube-driven TV finally died beyond redemption, they went to a smaller black-and-white set with rabbit ear antennas that you had to move and swivel around to get better reception! Kids today couldn’t dream of fiddling with rabbit ears…and remotes? Forget about it! You walked to the TV to turn a manual tuner to change a channel!

 

[jujube]

View attachment 361227

Oh, yes, one bathroom with seven females in the house. Short showers because, "DO YOU THINK HOT WATER GROWS ON TREES???"

Three girls sharing a bedroom.

One phone, downstairs in the kitchen, and it's a "party-line", to boot.

One car for the entire family.

New shoes only when your other ones wore out or were too small. Or Easter.

 

[stretch5881]

I thought about this for a while.
Kids today are spoiled in every aspect of life compared with our childhood. Most expect everything to be dropped in their lap, without doing anything to earn it. I say "most" because I've seen some with a good work ethic, usually being brought up by their grand parents.

 

[Aunt Bea]

I think every generation is a bit spoiled compared to their parents and grandparents, that’s probably a good thing!

 

[Warrigal]

How about this? My parents refused to have a telephone in the house until a year or two before they died. Yes I spent my life without phone access until I was married. No they weren't Amish, just obstinate about moving into the modern world.

My dad was stuck in the days of kerosene lamps and the horse and buggy. Thankfully we had a car and a television set, but I don't think Mom and Dad were originally from this planet. Their ideas about life here were very strange.

I grew up in a home where there was no telephone and no car either.
For me, it was public transport or Shank's pony *.
TV did not arrive in Australia until I was in my late teens.

* https://wordhistories.net/2016/07/05/shanks-pony/

 

[hollydolly]

I think every generation is a bit spoiled compared to their parents and grandparents, that’s probably a good thing!

View attachment 361237

LOL... never mind grandparents.. when I was little before we had a bathroom, we had to have that tin bath brought out and placed in front of the fire, and my mother would fill it with kettles of boiling water.. and each of us kids had to get into the same water one after the other, with my mother topping it up with more hot water..

Equally before we got a single tub washing machine.. my mother washed clothes for 6 of us in the sink using a Washboard and Sunlight soap, and we had mangle clamped on the side of the sink... which I would turn while she fed the clothes through..

 

[C50]

Deleted

 

[Rae]

My father bought a TV set back in the 50's and the neighbor kids would come over to watch and some thought it was like a drive-in movie. We only had two channels and one had Howdy Doody but it was entertaining. Now, the kids would laugh at what we thought was fun watching that show.

 

[Radrook]

I remember my parents having to buy ice to put in the refrigerator icebox.

 

[officerripley]

Things that I think kids take for granted today that were unheard of in our past: climate change/global warming, home/house prices through the roof, skyrocketed higher-education costs, the knowledge of possible life-ending asteroid strikes.

 

[MarkinPhx]

I think every generation is a bit spoiled compared to their parents and grandparents, that’s probably a good thing!

I agree. I am sure my nephews and niece think their kids take things for granted because their kids don't have to deal with things such as VHS tapes, landlines, dial up internet (if someone wasn't using the phone) and buying CD's.

My dad grew up in rural Texas and had to use an outhouse so I guess I took having a toilet for granted when I was growing up . Plus, I was able to take a warm shower every morning. I watched kids TV shows when I got home from school instead of listening to the radio like my parents did when they were kids. I guess I was spoiled when I was growing up compared to my parents childhood experiences.

It's not only kids who take things for granted these days. I make long distance calls without a thought of how expensive they used to be. I can listen to just about any song I want to at anytime with out thinking how foreign that concept was when I was growing up. I do many things on a routine basis these days forgetting how unlikely such things were thought of when I was a kid.

 

[chic]

One thing kids expect today as their due is a car! When I was young you had to work for a car. My family had all the other stuff like TVs and stereos, but cars were something else.

 

[hollydolly]

One thing kids expect today as their due is a car! When I was young you had to work for a car. My family had all the other stuff like TVs and stereos, but cars were something else.

I never knew a single person who had a car when I was at school..it just wasn;'t something British kids had mostly...to own a car first a 17 year old has to pass a stringent Driving test.. currently £35 per hour for lessons or it's equivalent in the early 70's.. then you had to have parents who could afford to buy a car for you.. most parents couldn't. The cost of living was so high that most parents worked out of the home, and could barely get by...so for any teen to get a car they had to work themselves and save the money...

 

[MrPants]

My father bought a TV set back in the 50's and the neighbor kids would come over to watch and some thought it was like a drive-in movie. We only had two channels and one had Howdy Doody but it was entertaining. Now, the kids would laugh at what we thought was fun watching that show.

I remember going with my parents to the neighbour's house every Sunday after dinner because they had a TV and we didn't. We got to watch the Ed Sullivan show then a bit of the Burns & Allen show that followed. It was our weekly treat!

 

[Born_To_Lose]

We had a TV my whole childhood. The first one I remember was a Philco.
I got a car when I was 17, but I had to work for it. I paid for the insurance and gas. My parents took care of the maintenance, but dad and I did most of it. My dad was very mechanically inclined. He could fix just about anything.

 

[jimintoronto]

One thing that makes me laugh is an 8 year old who thinks they should be consulted by their Parents about everything. My Parents were NOT my "best friends " they were the adults who made decisions based on their income and ability to afford things they bought. Don't get me wrong, I never went without any essential thing as a child in the 50's, but my Parents were not buying me a pony or a dog, just because I WANTED one. JIMB.

 

[MarkinPhx]

Actually , one thing that I think that today's youth takes for granted is the fact that they can use a rideshare to get a ride to anywhere they want to go at anytime of the day. Getting a drivers license at age 16 isn't considered as much of a "right of passage" as it was when I was a kid.

 

[jimintoronto]

Actually , one thing that I think that today's youth takes for granted is the fact that they can use a rideshare to get a ride to anywhere they want to go at anytime of the day. Getting a drivers license at age 16 isn't considered as much of a "right of passage" as it was when I was a kid.

View attachment 361272

Here in Ontario, if a kid quits high school with out graduating, they cannot get a D.L. until they are 21. THAT keeps them in school, for sure. Even when they are able to START the process to get to a full unrestricted D.L. it takes them 2 YEARS to go through the G1 and G2 classes. As a G1 driver the person can have NO Alcohol at all in their blood, cannot drive at night, cannot drive on high speed highways, cannot have more than 1 adult passenger, and if they are convicted of any traffic offence, they have to RESTART the license process all over again. Tough but fair.

 

[muffin]

As a young child we never had a fridge or freezer,
And my mum never had a washing machine, we had what they called a copper.
And irons that was heated on the gas stove.

 

[MarkinPhx]

Here in Ontario, if a kid quits high school with out graduating, they cannot get a D.L. until they are 21. THAT keeps them in school, for sure. Even when they are able to START the process to get to a full unrestricted D.L. it takes them 2 YEARS to go through the G1 and G2 classes. As a G1 driver the person can have NO Alcohol at all in their blood, cannot drive at night, cannot drive on high speed highways, cannot have more than 1 adult passenger, and if they are convicted of any traffic offence, they have to RESTART the license process all over again. Tough but fair.

I was doing some research for the reasons why kids aren't getting them as much anymore and what you stated is one of the reasons. I had no restrictions when I got my drivers license when I turned 16. Of course there was a local curfew at the time but the law ignored it unless kids were causing trouble. My state has similar restrictions that you listed so many kids do take rideshares to work and other events now. I agree with it being tough but fair. i know when I first got my license I was not a very responsible driver at times.