How were children raised in the 50s and 60s?

[dbt1949]

Some of us were there and know the answer.
In light of child raising now a days what do think my parent's generation did wrong (if anything)?
How do you all think we were raised?

[Paingod]

My family's probably a bad example. I've heard tales from my family of them chasing each other with knives in the 50's and their parents being largely absent. Their mother was a drunk, and her boyfriends sexually abused one of my aunts. Their father left to live on his own a few years after returning from WWII.

I assume you were all given cigarettes at age 12, and encouraged to drink Ovaltine on a regular basis.

[LordMortis]

Some of us were there and know the answer.
In light of child raising now a days what do think my parent's generation did wrong (if anything)?
How do you all think we were raised?

My parents have been hard working and worked toward self sufficiency their entire lives. I don't know that they or my grandparents did anything wrong. I can't speak to their generation. They only things I wish my parents (and their siblings and in laws) would see differently is that just because they strive to be self sufficient and always have, doesn't mean they aren't benefiting from living in civil society and even when they aren't seeing all of the benefits, all of the benefits are there. I also wish that my mother wasn't so much ruled by (and in fear) of her Christian upbringing, even if I am sure that is part of what makes her such a shining example of the goodness that people can be.

[Isgrimnur]

My dad was raised by a single mother, shipped off to an aunt's farm for summers, and spent at least one summer in military school. His brother didn't learn after the first year and spent every summer in HS in military school.

My mother was a member of a brood of five, the second from her father. He and his first wife had three together. He worked in coal and copper mines, and they moved several times growing up.

I imagine that between the difference in family dynamics and location stability, one would be hard pressed to draw any conclusions from their experiences.

[Jaymann]

Mom was a stay at home mother. We roamed the neighborhood with abandon. Didn't lock the door and the gas man and milkman could enter at will. Kept frogs and snakes in the backyard. Climbed trees and made forts.
Born in the 50's.

[coopasonic]

It was a different time and a different world, so I am not sure you could say anything was done wrong. Expectations changed and they should continue to change as the world changes.

[Jeff V]

Parents had 5 kids. Dad was increasingly useless as he slid further into alcoholism. While they were supportive - I played baseball and a musical instrument and they attended events as expected, we (siblings and I) were often left to our own devices. I had 4 paper routes (since whenever I wanted anything the answer was always NO), was involved in several sports and organized a lot of pick-up games, spent summers at the public swimming pool. built Frankenstein bikes out of parts.. We walked to school, dealt with bullies, and were responsible for completing our own school work. We never went on vacation, I only ever got out of the house to go to boy scout camp (dad was involved and stayed involved a number of years even after all kids were out of it). We did go fishing a lot.

Over all, except for the part about dad becoming an alcoholic (and that affected my youngest 3 siblings more than myself and the next oldest brother), it was a balance of attention as needed and hand-off "learn it yourself." My parents increasing health problems were not enough to deter me from drinking and smoking, the latter quit on the day my mom had open heart surgery to repair smoking-damaged arteries. Now that I have 2 young kids myself, I appreciate more some of the challenges. I doubt my kids will ever get into sports because I am not able to play with them. So far, everything seems too parent-driven and not kid-driven, and when I get home from work, I'm too tired to engage more than is absolutely necessary while my night-shift working wife gets some sleep. As near as I can tell, other parents in the 'hood are about the same. With tons of kids all around the same age, you'd think they'd be interacting more than they do. My son tries, he'll go next door or across the street to play with kids his age, but they never come over, not even when invited for birthday parties and the like. Except for the two girls that live on the other side of the back fence. But he's getting to that age when girls, you know, have cooties.

[Blackhawk]

I think that 'where' also plays a factor. Rural parents have always been far different from urban, for instance.

If I had to come up with one big generalization, though, it would be raising kids while under the belief that there was only one way to 'be.' One way to be a man; you either fit that definition or you were a failure. One way to be a woman. One way to be an adult. One way to be a success (and thus worthwhile.) One way to be a husband. One way to be a wife. There was, at least around here, no other measure that mattered than the 'one way.'

[ImLawBoy]

My mom was raised on a farm in Iowa. My dad was raised on the north side of Chicago. I'm sure that their parents' parenting styles were wildly different, but I couldn't really tell you what was good or bad about them.

[dbt1949]

My parents didn't know how to show affection. Their parents didn't show any to them. As a matter of fact they were rather stoic except to getting mad. Then they'd get the joy of beating the shit out of me with a belt. Until I got older and my dad said I was too big for that and started using his fist.
Most of my friends parents didn't see to mind beating their kids either.
I was allowed to go anywhere in the neighborhood (and beyond) by just telling my mom where I was going.
Until about 6th grade I stayed to to my 9PM curfew except on non school nights. Then it changed to 10PM.
If the schools were less than two miles we were expected to walk to school.
From an early age when we went camping out at the Colorado River my parents would go out in a boat and fish all day. I was left at camp to my own devices. I was given a candy bar and a can of soda to last my until the returned at dark and we ate supper. I would going hike out in the desert with my 22 boys rifle. I would travel many mile frequently. I learned to suck on cacti to ease my thirst.
I was told sucking on a smooth rock would ease my thirst but it never worked for me.
I only watched daytime TV for an hour to watch a kiddies show. Maybe an hour or two more in the evening.(at the most) And of course there was Saturday morning.
I was given more freedom than most of my compatriots. Freedom to go in the hills and mess around, freedom to visit my friends and freedom around the house. Except for making noise. MY dad worked nights and waking him was a capital offense.
By high school my dad and I hated each other. He probably had more reason than me. I was pretty lazy.
And that, is pretty much how it was for me growing up in the 50s and 60s.

[Cylus Maxii]

Well, all the evidence points to parents being just like on Happy Days or Andy Griffith.. Right?

[dbt1949]

Don't forget leave it to beaver.

[Kraken]

I basically had an Ozzie & Harriet, Leave It to Beaver, Mayberry RFD kind of upbringing, at least on the surface. As adoptive parents, mine tried extra hard to do everything right, as right was defined then. Dad was the breadwinner who worked all the time; I don't think he liked being around kids, at least not until we got housebroken and old enough to start being interesting. Then we did typical father-son things like fishing, hunting, playing catch, golfing, etc. Mom was the one who really owned the kids and did all the day-to-day childcare. Standard familial division of labor for the time.

When I hit my rebellious teens Dad got sick, lost his job, and coped with alcoholism. The family gradually fell apart then. Eventually his health stabilized (although he was never healthy again) and the financial crisis passed, and we resumed something approaching normal relations. By then I had escaped off to college and into adulthood.

I'm not going to criticize subsequent generations' parenting styles, as that never goes over well. I'll just say that I'm glad I lived when I did.

[hepcat]

I grew up in a small town in Ohio, so I didn't have none of your city slicker rules. We spent entire days out in the woods building tree forts, collecting acorns and trying to get me to scream in terror every time we saw a snake (seriously, I'm completely phobic about snakes...I don't understand why humans would want to play with anything without hair or that doesn't fetch).

Looking back, I guess I really have no room to complain about people who advocate "free range parenting" as my curfew was essentially, "If you're not back in 3 days we're gonna holler off the back porch for you a couple of times.".

Racism was wildly rampant, but only because we were an insulated valley of whiteness that had exactly one African American family with a child of school age. Nate was his name and he helped me to understand that jokes about minorities were offensive by kicking my ass whenever he heard me repeating one during recess. It also didn't hurt that he had a great sense of humor and easily made friends. I still remember our junior school photo day in which he showed up for every class picture in order to see if he could get away with it. He was listed that year as a freshman, a sophomore and a junior. But they caught on before the senior pictures were added in editing.

I thought my dad was a mean jerk until I saw fathers who actually were jerks, then I realized I had a great dad who would move the world for my brother and I. He taught me love isn't about buying you the latest Rom: The Space Knight action figure. It's about making sure you have a roof over your head, food to eat, clothes to keep you warm and a shoulder to cry on if you needed it.

Unfortunately, he also married a woman who should never have married another human, let alone have children. Their incredibly nasty divorce turned me off the whole concept of marriage and sparked my lifelong desire to stay single.

When I was a kid, there was no such thing as nutrition. Sure, you ate vegetables. But not because they were healthy, but because it was just understood that parents made their kids eat them in order to get to the dessert portion of the meal. As long as I ate my broccoli once a day, I was allowed to tear through bags of potato chips like Rommel through North Africa. But since I was constantly outdoors building tree forts and running like a teenager in a Halloween film from anyone who picked up a garden snake, I wasn't fat.

A perfect day for my little brother and I was going to our grandmother's house, watching her smoke 13 packs of cigarettes in 12 minutes, then getting to go to Eiler's Pharmacy to sit at their soda counter, drink root beer served to us by a soda jerk, eat white chocolate covered pretzels and read Legion of Superhero comic books.

Disney was every Sunday at 7pm, Hee Haw was every Saturday at the same time. If a John Wayne movie was on, we could stay up and watch it as long as it didn't run past 11pm. Saturday mornings started at 7am with reruns of Loony Tunes cartoons that weren't edited to avoid scenes of explosions, then turned into a Sid and Marty Krofft/Hanna Barbara fest until around noon. If the TV broke, my little brother and I would immediately find religion and pray to God that someone would fix it before Gloop and Gleep was on.

At that point in my life, everything was either really great or really awful. I didn't have time for neutral emotions. And cynicism wouldn't be invented until I was well into my teens.

I still consider those the good old days, even though I'm now aware that many of the housewives I saw every day were being treated like second class citizens at best, or that almost every minority character I saw on TV was a blatant stereotype.

Would I go back to those days if given the chance? Depends on what day you ask me. But I do know that I would never be able to see it with the same eyes.

[Blackhawk]

My own upbringing was an exception. It wasn't how he was raised in the 30s/40s (I know, I lived with his mother for a couple of years.)

Essentially, after my mother got sick and died when I was 8, i didn't have parents. My father would have food somewhere in the house, but that's as far as parenting went. I was left to my own devices and left to find my own answers. School was required by law, but he didn't didn't put any thought into it beyond that. Straight As and Fs were the same. There was a bed time, but that was mostly because it got me out of the way. I more or less raised myself.

The effect of all of it was that, by the time I turned 21, found myself with a wife and child, that I had absolutely no idea how to function as anything but a solitary child, and failed - hard.

[dbt1949]

Actually, I didn't consider my childhood bad. It's just the way it was.And yes racism and treating women as second class citizens was bad but hey, it didn't affect me (at the time).

[Jeff V]

One other thing I remember was that the park was on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. We weren't allowed to wander across the tracks. That prohibition did not, however, preclude us from playing on or around said tracks, and that's were we were often found. There was a particular copse of trees perfect for all sorts of monkey business (including climbing them like monkeys). We built a catwalk in the upper reaches to facilitate movement from one side to the other. We'd place various things on the tracks to see what happened when the train ran them over. Once, we stretched a rubber band chain across the tracks and watched it stretch a good half a block before snapping. The best was the time we draped ourselves over a branch above a street and let our legs dangle and move slightly with the wind. That alarmed more than one passing motorist.

Good times.

[killbot737]

Under the constant imminent threat of ATOMIC HOLOCAUST!

[Isgrimnur]

Under the constant imminent threat of ATOMIC HOLOCAUST!

That was still going strong into the 80s.

[Scuzz]

I was 10 years old in 1960. I can remember coming home and watching TV, or maybe walking or riding my bike over to a friends house. I used to ride my bike for mile in whatever direction I wanted, thru any neighborhood, until I decided it was time to head home. I remember for most of that time my mother worked either part or full time while my father worked 10-12 hour days trying to start a business.

I ended up with a couple friends who had coke problems, but nobody who didn't come out okay. A couple guys I used to hang out with are probably "real" millionaires now, having started their own businesses.

But times were different then. Nobody was afraid of crime, there jobs if you actually wanted one and school and housing were relatively cheap. Heck, I remember $2 six packs and $.33 gasoline.

[Scuzz]

I still consider those the good old days

I have been told (on the internet by strangers of course) that using the "good old days" line is racist and a sign of white privilege. Apparently no minority ever had a time they considered the "good old days".

[Kraken]

I, too, ranged far and wide on my bicycle when I was a child. My mom was unconcerned with the details, as long as I was home for lunch and dinner (or informed her if I made other arrangements, like eating at a friend's house). When I was 12 we moved to a big house at the end of a street in a suburb on the edge of civilization. There was a little creek in our backyard and nothing but fields and woods and farmland beyond. It wasn't unusual for me to pack a sandwich and a coke and roam all day with my BB gun, just exploring and plinking tweety birds. A little later, I got a minibike, and I could go as far as the trails went -- which was very, very far. A few years later I upgraded to a dirt bike with better speed and range, and routinely ranged 20, 30 miles or more from home.

Eventually the housing development swelled beyond our house and consumed all its surroundings. The creek is gone, the fields are all houses, even the gravel pits got filled in and turned into a shopping center. All of the semi-wild places where I spent my teens are paved over and built up. I was lucky to live where I did, when I did.

[gameoverman]

My childhood was more early '70s, but I'd describe it as 'safety not guaranteed'. We never wore seatbelts, ever, no one, not the driver or any passengers. Seatbelts slipped back in between the back and bottom of the seats, never to be seen again. My dad cleaned everything with gasoline. We drank water right out of the garden hose and who knows what those were made of back then? Lead paint? What's that?

[Madmarcus]

My childhood was more early '70s, but I'd describe it as 'safety not guaranteed'.

That's a pretty good description although I like to remember that this wasn't out of a willful disregard for safety but just out of a different attitude towards some risks and a lack of knowledge about others.

[hepcat]

I still consider those the good old days

I have been told (on the internet by strangers of course) that using the "good old days" line is racist and a sign of white privilege. Apparently no minority ever had a time they considered the "good old days".

I believe it’s okay as long as you don’t write ol’ instead of old.

[Default]

I was eaten by bears when I was four. I don't remember much after that...

[Madmarcus]

They only things I wish my parents (and their siblings and in laws) would see differently is that just because they strive to be self sufficient and always have, doesn't mean they aren't benefiting from living in civil society and even when they aren't seeing all of the benefits, all of the benefits are there.

I've long ago forgiven my dad for any similar views. He grew up very poor in rural WV in the 40’s and early 50’s but he came out of it as somewhat stoic, practical, and convinced of the value in hard work and education. He'd always been
good in school but he had a come to Jesus moment (a funny expression as he isn’t religious) in college when he almost flunked out after freshman year. He worked for a year on a road crew before going back committed to getting a good degree leading to a better job.

Being an ant (working hard, delaying gratification) worked for him. He's seen it work for his circle of friends. He's seen it work for my generation and he's seeing it so far in the next generation. He'll gladly agree that he was also supremely lucky in where and when he was born. He'll also agree that the connection between ant behavior and success is not a perfect correlation. Of course he's not very empathetic with those that he thinks are grasshoppers out of free will and he has some built in anti-Democrat feelings which complicate things but I can understand his world view even if it leads him to choices I don't like at times.

[Moliere]

[GreenGoo]

My childhood was more early '70s, but I'd describe it as 'safety not guaranteed'.

That's a pretty good description although I like to remember that this wasn't out of a willful disregard for safety but just out of a different attitude towards some risks and a lack of knowledge about others.

Until your kids have taken a nap in the back window of a buick/chevy, you really don't know what complete disregard for safety means.

Although a 2 story play structure is just as good.

[Madmarcus]

There were three kids so we'd often find ourselves in the station wagon. One stretched out across the seat, one stretched out where the feet would normally go, and one in the tailgate stretched out on top of the luggage/camping supplies.

[LordMortis]

Being an ant (working hard, delaying gratification) worked for him. He's seen it work for his circle of friends. He's seen it work for my generation and he's seeing it so far in the next generation. He'll gladly agree that he was also supremely lucky in where and when he was born. He'll also agree that the connection between ant behavior and success is not a perfect correlation. Of course he's not very empathetic with those that he thinks are grasshoppers out of free will and he has some built in anti-Democrat feelings which complicate things but I can understand his world view even if it leads him to choices I don't like at times.

Are we brothers?

[Jaddison]

Don't forget leave it to beaver.

Ozzie and Harriet and the Nelson boys.

My Three Sons.

Father knows best

The Donna Reed show

[em2nought]

They were raised to "NOT" walk into buildings and start shooting people, other than certain villages in Vietnam.

[Madmarcus]

Are we brothers?

Don't take this the wrong way but I hope not! One of my fears is that one day one of you guys will finally admit you are actually my real life brother. I've never said anything that I wouldn't want him to hear but it would be really weird.

[Holman]

No problem. If the middle kid slips, the park bench will break his fall.

[Holman]

Pros:
Free-range exploration
Comic books cost a nickel
Meatloaf every night

Cons:
Lead paint playgrounds
Father Murphy's "special lessons"
Polio

[dbt1949]

I remember most comic books in the late 50s costing a dime. 15 cents for the "Classic" comics.
I discovered my aunt's MAD comics in the early 60s. Seems like they were around a quarter.
I remember the first polio shots. I was sure happy when they switched to the sugar cube.
And you forgot asbestos.

[Blackhawk]

Yeah, the 12 and 15 cent comics mostly hit in the 60s.

[Jeff V]

And you forgot asbestos.

There was a sheet of asbestos behind a stove pipe in our garage growing up. We used to marvel at its properties by taking a propane torch to it and observing it not burning. The stove pipe was never connected to anything, it was a relic of time long passed.

[dbt1949]

Looking back I think it was worth all the chances we took to have our freedom.
Not as many of us survived to adulthood unscratched or alive but it was still worth it.