I’m a Gen Xer, a child of the 70s, and oh, don’t I just love to tell young folk how much better it was when I was a kid. I’ve reached that age.
I came across an interview with Salon’s Heather Havrilesky. She’s just written a memoir, “Disaster Preparedness,” about being a child of the 70s and in an interview, when asked what her overall take on such experience is, she says this:
The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that you opened the door and let your dog run into the world and then you called it to come home and you pretty much did the same thing with your kids.
Ditto. My parents shoo’d us out of the house on weekends and left us to work out life on our own until the next meal time. Mum and Dad were vaguely interested in what we’d been up to. Mum paid no attention to scabs and cuts on Sunday evenings when she lined us up on the veranda and scrubbed our knees and cut our toenails ready for school. We had relative independence and took responsibility for injuries along the way.
I don’t think helicopter parents existed back then.
What comes to mind for you about growing up in the 70s/80s?
