What Decade Marks Your Young Childhood?

jrockbridge

jrockbridge

Stealing Your Riffs
Were you a child of the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 2000's, etc? What was growing up like in your decade?

I grew up as a child in the 70's. We were mostly unsupervised. We ate sugary cereal for breakfast. We watched cartoons on Saturday mornings. We had a lot of freedom. We were left to play outdoors, unsupervised. Our bicycles were our prized transportation. We did not have bike helmets. The parent rule was that we had to be home when it started getting dark, when the street lights turned on. We climbed trees. We made tree houses in the woods. We made go carts out of junk and scrap wood. At times, we were latchkey kids after school. There were no computers, cell phones, nor social media. There were times we were completely alone with our thoughts.

Apparently, being raised in this way, as free-roaming kids with minimal supervision created strong adult traits. Psychologists claim 70's kids generally learned to navigate social dynamics and risks without parental mediation, fostering strong internal motivation. They say it created resourceful, pragmatic adults comfortable with solitude, boredom, and problem-solving.

This video sums up a lot of the 70's touchstones I remember from childhood...


This video sums up the psychology resulting from being raised in the 70's....


What was your childhood decade? Was your childhood similar? How was it different?
 
Honkridge said:
60s for me. I flew kites and swam all summer. On Saturday I'd take off on my bike and be gone all day.
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How could I forget about kites. We flew kites in the 70's as well. We bought kites at the store, but we also built a few from newspaper.

For one birthday, I was gifted a Cox brand, toy jeep that was gas powered. My older brother had a Cox brand, gas powered toy airplane that would be flown via lines of string that connected to an analog controller that adjusted the flaps on the plane.
 
The eighties. There was nothing better than going to Pizza Hut for dinner, playing Pac-Man, finding a lighter someone left on the windowsill, and using it to start fires when my friends and I were running around unsupervised the next day.
 
jrockbridge said:
Were you a child of the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 2000's, etc? What was growing up like in your decade?

I grew up as a child in the 70's. We were mostly unsupervised. We ate sugary cereal for breakfast. We watched cartoons on Saturday mornings. We had a lot of freedom. We were left to play outdoors, unsupervised. Our bicycles were our prized transportation. We did not have bike helmets. The parent rule was that we had to be home when it started getting dark, when the street lights turned on. We climbed trees. We made tree houses in the woods. We made go carts out of junk and scrap wood. At times, we were latchkey kids after school. There were no computers, cell phones, nor social media. There were times we were completely alone with our thoughts.

Apparently, being raised in this way, as free-roaming kids with minimal supervision created strong adult traits. Psychologists claim 70's kids generally learned to navigate social dynamics and risks without parental mediation, fostering strong internal motivation. They say it created resourceful, pragmatic adults comfortable with solitude, boredom, and problem-solving.

This video sums up a lot of the 70's touchstones I remember from childhood...


This video sums up the psychology resulting from being raised in the 70's....


What was your childhood decade? Was your childhood similar? How was it different?
Click to expand...

This is me.
 
jp_nyc said:
The eighties. There was nothing better than going to Pizza Hut for dinner, playing Pac-Man, finding a lighter someone left on the windowsill, and using it to start fires when my friends and I were running around unsupervised the next day.
Click to expand...
Zippo style lighters were still popular in the 70's, but Bic lighters began to take over. My friends and I had metal lighters, though I can't recall the brands.

There were cigarette machines near the front of the neighborhood grocery store. We used to go in with coins. We were convinced that adults would stop us if they saw us buying them. One person would act as lookout, waiting for the right moment when nobody was watching. We'd drop coins in, pull the handle out, the pack would drop. We'd grab the pack and run out to our bikes and ride away. Looking back, nobody ever said anything to us. Nobody ever chased us. They probably did not care.

We had a smoking fort out on the woods that was a discarded crate, the type they use to ship a motorcycle. We had a cigar box, buried under leaves, full of different brands. The older kids were impressed that we always had their preferred brand. But, it did not last.

My best friend's Mom figured out he was smoking. She had a doctor put the fear of God into him. He was not allowed to play with me unless I quit. I chose him over smoking and my lungs are healthy as a result. I owe her thanks.
 
I was a little kid in the '70s. Big Wheels (and the Green Machine), plastic skateboards, bikes with banana seats, GI Joe with Kung Fu Grip, making ramps for the Evel Kneivel Stunt Cycle so it could jump a bunch of Hot Wheels cars, Pop Rocks, and Stretch Armstrong. Good times!
 
60s. We had a big hill in the backyard that everyone used for sledding in the winter (this was NY) until my mom would make us stop when she heard too many kids slamming into the back of the house. Also there was a huge rock back there we could climb on that was actually the Starship Enterprise.
 
The 60’s were not drastically different from the 70’s. No backpacks, yet. Endless jello mold recipes, yuck! I’m glad I was too young to recall that food. My Mom only did jello molds as a dessert.

 
Born 57' , so young child of the 60s, teen of the 70s.
But I was a rural kid and also an only child so my childhood wasn't that typical, at least until I got my drivers license at 16 and could get out of the house more.
 
I was born in 1951, so my childhood years were in the 1950s. My teenage years were in the mid to late 60s; I turned 18 in 1969. We had a pretty good amount of freedom to play in the neighborhood when I was younger; as a teen we walked alone about five miles to get to E.J. Korvettes. They had an excellent record section with an amazing selection of folk albums that went beyond Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary.
 
Kids in the 80’s had a lot of the same freedoms as those in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Outdoor fun was still popular. Bicycles were still important. Vinyl records were still selling well, but cassettes made music more portable. Skateboarding and roller skating were popular. Video arcades became a thing. VHS and Beta video tapes became mainstream. Blockbuster Video became big. Rubik’s Cubes were all the rage.

I was in my late teens as we entered the 80’s. I recall mountain bikes becoming popular. I made mix tapes from vinyl records.

80’s kids…
 
Gary Blanchard said:
I was born in 1951, so my childhood years were in the 1950s. My teenage years were in the mid to late 60s; I turned 18 in 1969. We had a pretty good amount of freedom to play in the neighborhood when I was younger; as a teen we walked alone about five miles to get to E.J. Korvettes. They had an excellent record section with an amazing selection of folk albums that went beyond Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary.
Click to expand...

Kids in the 50’s…
 
The 80s were great. My youth was very similar to your description @jrockbridge. It's hard for me to imagine being as loose with the kid supervision as my parents were. But then again I got into a lot of things way too young that have probably had negative effects on my physical and mental well-being. But it was fucking cool at the time.
 
jrockbridge said:
The 60’s were not drastically different from the 70’s. No backpacks, yet. Endless jello mold recipes, yuck! I’m glad I was too young to recall that food. My Mom only did jello molds as a dessert.

Click to expand...

Fortunately Mom was a great cook and never made jello molds that I recall. I think we had TV dinners rarely not regularly like the video suggests but Mom and Dad didn't have a lot of spare income with 4 growing boys so it was mostly homemade meals and sandwiches for school lunches. And yeah the amount of freedom we had as kids compared to these days was crazy. Mind you I lived in a small town so it might have been a bit different in a bigger city. I started a paper route at 8 for my first job riding my bike what seemed miles to deliver the papers. I looked at my old town a few years ago and saw that my paper route was about 3 miles total (though in the winter slogging through the snow made for a long day). And no way did I earn $1/hr probably closer to $1/day
 
Late 90's, early 2000's.

Children's television in NL when I was growing up was absolutely mental. Did a lot of skateboarding and listening to late grunge and early emo stuff.

I still have my trusty old 3310 in a drawer somewhere :embarrassed:
 
jrockbridge said:
Were you a child of the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 2000's, etc? What was growing up like in your decade?

I grew up as a child in the 70's. We were mostly unsupervised. We ate sugary cereal for breakfast. We watched cartoons on Saturday mornings. We had a lot of freedom. We were left to play outdoors, unsupervised. Our bicycles were our prized transportation. We did not have bike helmets. The parent rule was that we had to be home when it started getting dark, when the street lights turned on. We climbed trees. We made tree houses in the woods. We made go carts out of junk and scrap wood. At times, we were latchkey kids after school. There were no computers, cell phones, nor social media. There were times we were completely alone with our thoughts.

Apparently, being raised in this way, as free-roaming kids with minimal supervision created strong adult traits. Psychologists claim 70's kids generally learned to navigate social dynamics and risks without parental mediation, fostering strong internal motivation. They say it created resourceful, pragmatic adults comfortable with solitude, boredom, and problem-solving.

This video sums up a lot of the 70's touchstones I remember from childhood...


This video sums up the psychology resulting from being raised in the 70's....


What was your childhood decade? Was your childhood similar? How was it different?
Click to expand...

Born in 1964, so this perfectly describes my childhood.
 
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