Weren't we more on our own?

fuzzybuddy said:
Yeah, things change. I'm not sure it was just my family or what. But 70 years ago, parents were much more hands off, and we were mostly on our own. No, I don't mean we weren't loved, unfed, and thrown out in the cold; but parents back then weren't so into their kids lives, as it seems today?
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I agree, there were really no "helicopter moms" back in the day like they are now. I was pretty much on my own to play out in the street with my friends, roller skate, jump rope, stoop or hand ball, etc. I had set times to come home though, for supper and before dark. My mother would hang out the window now and then to check on me when I was younger, but that's about it. Back then the neighbors kinda kept an eye on everyone's kids, to make sure nobody was in trouble or doing anything too dangerous.

Back then you could walk a mile or so to school on your own without it being a problem. Nowadays, busybodies with cell phones and too much time on their hands will call the cops if they see a kid walking around on his own. There was something in the news about a brother and sister walking together, in no distress, knew exactly where they were going...but a nosy person ended up calling the police and creating a big hassle for the parents.

Times are definitely different now, not as simple or innocent.
 

SeaBreeze said:
Back then the neighbors kinda kept an eye on everyone's kids, to make sure nobody was in trouble or doing anything too dangerous.

.
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Yep back then neighbors got involved. They would come knock on your door and tell your parents they saw you smoking. I know that for a fact :D
 
BW,lol,yes.

Now everyone goes to court.

I don't have many fond memories from back at that time but one green plastic skateboard was my love. We lived in a court and I would start at the top of one side and 'try' to make it to the other.the curve got to me most of the time.
 

Shalimar said:
yep, our Philly bs good. Of course the fact he is in love with a titian haired mermaid, should in no way affect the veracity of his expertise.
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Oh really? Anyone I know? :)
I had auburn hair once, dyed of course. A wannabe redhead.
Me.2000.jpg

Oops, sorry for railroading the thread!
 
vickyNightowl said:
BW,lol,yes.

Now everyone goes to court.

I don't have many fond memories from back at that time but one green plastic skateboard was my love. We lived in a court and I would start at the top of one side and 'try' to make it to the other.the curve got to me most of the time.
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At least you kept trying :)

My nightmare in 4th grade was a boy named Johnny Gray. Every single recess he chased me trying to kiss me until the bell rang to go back in. I was frantic running past other kids yelling " SAVE ME!" No one cared. It was horrible I tell ya. I was like that cat that runs from that skunk in the cartoons. These days, they'd probably have him or his parents up on charges.
 
vickyNightowl said:
BW,lol,yes.

Now everyone goes to court.

I don't have many fond memories from back at that time but one green plastic skateboard was my love. We lived in a court and I would start at the top of one side and 'try' to make it to the other.the curve got to me most of the time.
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Oh man, my skateboards were my prized possessions. When dad's business took off, we moved near the beach and I traded in my bike for a skateboard. Then more skateboards. Pretty soon I graduated to a surfboard. Ahh, the summer of '63.

Holy crap! I've been surfing for over half a century!
 
I agree with you Butterfly, while I was growing up in the 50's all the parents in my neighborhood looked out for all of us. I remember a funny incident. My mom always made me wear leggings under my dress in the winter to keep me warm. I hated them because they were such a pain to get on and off . One day, I think I was in the first or second grade I was walking home from school and I guess I didn't button them up correctly They fell down around my ankles. I had my hands full with papers and my book bag. I stood there, in the snow, trying to figure out how to pull them up and not have my papers flying all over the place. Out of the blue came a neighborhood Mom who pulled them up, wiped my runny nose and sent me on my way. I hardly knew this women but that day I was so grateful to her. I remember my mom called her to thank her for helping me out.
 
I had a lot of freedom as a kid, exploring the neighborhood on my bike, visiting friends and coming home for supper eventually. I think with so much access to information via books and tv, parents are now better informed on childrearing and seem to have more interest in their children than they did when I was a kid. My parents were preoccupied with their own lives, their work, their friends and their house. Plus the world is a much bigger place now with more people, and more dangers likely lurking than back then. I always knew where my own son was and who his friends were. My own parents had no clue half the time what I was up to. Parents are much less authoritarian and dictatorial now too, after the wars and 60s, they don't want to make the same mistakes their parents made.
 
I lived in Amber's neighborhood when she was abducted. To those of you who do not know who Amber was, she was the little girl in Arlington Texas who was abducted and murdered. Now every time a child is taken a nation wide Amber alert goes out. While it is sweet to remember the good old days, there isn't any going back.
 
SeaBreeze said:
I agree, there were really no "helicopter moms" back in the day like they are now. I was pretty much on my own to play out in the street with my friends, roller skate, jump rope, stoop or hand ball, etc. I had set times to come home though, for supper and before dark. My mother would hang out the window now and then to check on me when I was younger, but that's about it. Back then the neighbors kinda kept an eye on everyone's kids, to make sure nobody was in trouble or doing anything too dangerous.

Back then you could walk a mile or so to school on your own without it being a problem. Nowadays, busybodies with cell phones and too much time on their hands will call the cops if they see a kid walking around on his own. There was something in the news about a brother and sister walking together, in no distress, knew exactly where they were going...but a nosy person ended up calling the police and creating a big hassle for the parents.

Times are definitely different now, not as simple or innocent.
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I did walk more than a mile to school at five years of age, in the dark, in the rain and cold and snow and crossed a major highway (with the help of the "Crossing Boys"). It was just something we had to do, but these days my parents (and many more) would have been arrested for child abuse and I would be in foster care faster than you could say "Speshul Snowflake".

Things were a little more restricted when my daughter came along, but she also walked to school when she was five (though only four blocks) and was flying unaccompanied at the age of five, too. She had her first actual job at 12.

My granddaughter, now.....I usually didn't let her out of sight but since she was doing triathlons at the age of 8 (1/2 mile open water swim, 12 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) so there were some times she was out of sight. It's amazing how long I could hold my breath.....

Little Miss Thang (my great-granddaughter), though......she's going to have a leash on her until she's 21 if I have MY way......
 
SifuPhil said:
Well, it's YOUR hour ...

Obviously you've already passed through the primitive oral phase. Remember that the character of the ego is a precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes and that it contains the history of those object-choices.

Along with the demolition of the Oedipus complex, your female object-cathexis of red-heads must be given up. The super-ego retains the character of your father, while the more powerful the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression, the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on.

The tension between the demands of conscience and the actual performances of the ego is experienced as a sense of guilt.

Certainly your religious, moral and ethical values cannot be properly arranged in your mind except by way of the ego, which is the representative of the external world to the id.






In other words ... you like redheads.
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Hmmmm ....
 
Cookie said:
I had a lot of freedom as a kid, exploring the neighborhood on my bike, visiting friends and coming home for supper eventually. I think with so much access to information via books and tv, parents are now better informed on childrearing and seem to have more interest in their children than they did when I was a kid. My parents were preoccupied with their own lives, their work, their friends and their house. Plus the world is a much bigger place now with more people, and more dangers likely lurking than back then. I always knew where my own son was and who his friends were. My own parents had no clue half the time what I was up to. Parents are much less authoritarian and dictatorial now too, after the wars and 60s, they don't want to make the same mistakes their parents made.
Click to expand...

I don't think parents were so much authoritarian and dictatorial (in a bad sense) as you just knew they meant what they said. If the rule was "be home for dinner," you knew you damn well better be home for dinner and you complied.

In watching kids nowdays (like in Wal-Mart screaming for toys) or on the schoolground in my neighborhood (using language that would make a sailor blush and viciously beating on one another), I think kids nowdays could use a little more "authoritarian and dictatorial" at home. If you don't learn what is acceptable behavior and what is not and how to be respectful of others and their property while you're a child, you're going to have a tough row to hoe as an adult -- or end up dead or in prison.
 
jujube said:
I did walk more than a mile to school at five years of age, in the dark, in the rain and cold and snow and crossed a major highway (with the help of the "Crossing Boys"). It was just something we had to do, but these days my parents (and many more) would have been arrested for child abuse and I would be in foster care faster than you could say "Speshul Snowflake".

Things were a little more restricted when my daughter came along, but she also walked to school when she was five (though only four blocks) and was flying unaccompanied at the age of five, too. She had her first actual job at 12.

My granddaughter, now.....I usually didn't let her out of sight but since she was doing triathlons at the age of 8 (1/2 mile open water swim, 12 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) so there were some times she was out of sight. It's amazing how long I could hold my breath.....

Little Miss Thang (my great-granddaughter), though......she's going to have a leash on her until she's 21 if I have MY way......
Click to expand...

We walked to school, too, from grade school on. It was pretty much the only way we had to get there. School busses weren't all over the place like they are now, and my family only had one car, which my dad took to work. Pretty much everyone walked to school, except those who came from pretty far away -- they had busses.
 
Butterfly said:
I don't think parents were so much authoritarian and dictatorial (in a bad sense) as you just knew they meant what they said. If the rule was "be home for dinner," you knew you damn well better be home for dinner and you complied.

In watching kids nowdays (like in Wal-Mart screaming for toys) or on the schoolground in my neighborhood (using language that would make a sailor blush and viciously beating on one another), I think kids nowdays could use a little more "authoritarian and dictatorial" at home. If you don't learn what is acceptable behavior and what is not and how to be respectful of others and their property while you're a child, you're going to have a tough row to hoe as an adult -- or end up dead or in prison.
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Parents weren't wrapped up in their own egos. They outgrew that when they got married. And life wasn't just about them anymore after they had kids, if it ever was. My mom always looked nice but she dressed like a mom, and she didn't mind it. Neither did dad. Or anybody. Success was having a nice house and well-behaved kids. These days it's looking like a Kardashian.
 
Butterfly said:
We walked to school, too, from grade school on. It was pretty much the only way we had to get there. School busses weren't all over the place like they are now, and my family only had one car, which my dad took to work. Pretty much everyone walked to school, except those who came from pretty far away -- they had busses.
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I walked to school as well - at least, until 9th grade.

Grade school (1st to 6th grade) was about a mile walk, over 2 main roads and a little creek with a saggy wooden bridge surrounded by "bums". Mom would walk me when I was younger - over in the morning and back over at the end of the day. This meant 4 trips back and forth for her.

Never a complaint, in any season, and Mom had the best legs in our neighborhood. ;)

Once I started going on my own - maybe 2nd grade - it was a big adventure. None of my classmates lived near me, so I went it alone. Lots of side-trips to the candy store, but I was never late for class, because I knew they'd call Mom.
 
Wrigley's said:
Parents weren't wrapped up in their own egos. They outgrew that when they got married. And life wasn't just about them anymore after they had kids, if it ever was. My mom always looked nice but she dressed like a mom, and she didn't mind it. Neither did dad. Or anybody. Success was having a nice house and well-behaved kids. These days it's looking like a Kardashian.
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Very true. Nowadays parents are more child-like than their children. They've got their heads stuck in computers and video games and big-screen TVs while the kids are left to their own devices, no discipline, no actual "child-raising".
 
I dunno, I raised mine, hands on. My mother had the maternal instincts of a rabid barracuda, my aunt her wannabe acolyte. I raised myself. I know many others who raised themselves also. In every generation, you can find negative examples of

parenting, kids who grow up poorly, become crappy adults. For eons, old folks have been complaining about the new generation. It's what we do. Times change, the world we remember is gone. For every crappy kid, I can show you ten good

ones. Same with parents. Of course, the good ones don't make the news. Hell they are referred to as the "exceptions." sigh.
 
Shalimar said:
I dunno, I raised mine, hands on. My mother had the maternal instincts of a rabid barracuda, my aunt her wannabe acolyte. I raised myself. I know many others who raised themselves also. In every generation, you can find negative examples of

parenting, kids who grow up poorly, become crappy adults. For eons, old folks have been complaining about the new generation. It's what we do. Times change, the world we remember is gone. For every crappy kid, I can show you ten good

ones. Same with parents. Of course, the good ones don't make the news. Hell they are referred to as the "exceptions." sigh.
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I suppose so. I like to paint with a broad brush and be a fear-monger. It's sort of a hobby.
 
Yep Philly, the allure of the negative, the painful pleasure of the glass forever empty. A tragedy in the making......very "Waiting
For Godot." Always hated Camus. Man needed a cerebral enema, stat!
 
It all depends on what you consider good parenting, is it making your kids walk for miles to school and disciplining them so well that they dare not make a peep in a store. I'll bet the nazis had very well behaved kids who didn't mouth off and who walked miles to school, cleaned the kitchen and scrubbed the floors after doing hours of homework.

I think the good parents are interested and involved with their children and guide them in a loving and conscious way, for starters.

There's a couple of great and entertaining movies out there on Netflix (children's actually) - Nanny McPhee and Nanny McPhee returns which are great fun on the subject of training and teaching children.
 
Cookie said:
It all depends on what you consider good parenting, is it making your kids walk for miles to school and disciplining them so well that they dare not make a peep in a store. I'll bet the nazis had very well behaved kids who didn't mouth off and who walked miles to school, cleaned the kitchen and scrubbed the floors after doing hours of homework.

I think the good parents are interested and involved with their children and guide them in a loving and conscious way, for starters.

There's a couple of great and entertaining movies out there on Netflix (children's actually) - Nanny McPhee and Nanny McPhee returns which are great fun on the subject of training and teaching children.
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The movies are entertaining and cute. In the books, Nanny McPhee scares the dickens out of the children.
 
Nanny McPhee gets less scary looking as the kids become better, her moles disappear and she gets prettier. Great fun -- for kids of all ages.
 

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