I was born in 1971... My children were born in '96 and '97.
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930s, '40s, '50s, '60s and '70s!!
First, we survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank
while they were pregnant.
My mom gave up smoking and drinking while she was pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.
I take aspirin and eat blue cheese dressing, I always have tuna in a can (does it come any other way?), and I've never been tested for diabetes. I don't understand this one.
It's true that I didn't give aspirin to the kids when they were young but that's because Reye's Syndrome is no fun at all, and Tylenol is a perfectly acceptable substitute.
Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
My mother was terrified of lead in paint. She knew all about it from volunteering to teach slum children when she was a young woman. Hungry babies chew on things. Lead paint tastes sweet. They start eating it. Permanent brain damage is nothing to joke about and it was always more of a problem in poor communities than wealthy ones. My mother got an unpainted crib for me.
As for tummy-sleeping, my babies preferred their tummies and I decided it wasn't worth the hassle fighting with them. I suspect many parents still go with what the baby wants, regardless of what their ped says.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets, and, when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps,not helmets, on our heads.
MY mother put a lock on the medicine cabinet, to keep me safe. She thought childproof lids were a great idea.
As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes..
My mother ALWAYS made me wear a seat belt and sit in the back seat. She never took chances with the car, and always kept it in good working order. If she could have done more she would have.
As for my husband, HIS dad was a mechanic. You can bet they never drove a car with bald tires!
Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
This is the one and only thing I did, that my children haven't done. I got to do it once on a visit to Mississippi, and my mother didn't know, or she wouldn't have let me. However, up North in my husband's home town, I still see children doing it, even today. So it's not disappeared.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.
So do my kids. Don't yours?
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.
My kids do this, too.
We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And we weren't overweight.
WHY?
Because we were always outside playing...that's why!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day.
--And, we were OKAY.
Actually, while this could describe MY children's lives fairly accurately, it doesn't describe mine at all.
In the seventies, I was living in a brownstone apartment building in downtown Trenton, New Jersey.
When we moved in my mother loaded me into my stroller and went for a walk around the neighbourhood. She was delighted to find a corner store close by and stopped in to chat with the owner. She barely noticed the youths loitering outside. The next day she opened the paper to find out that the shopkeeper had been murdered, just minutes after she walked away with me. Those youths had been waiting for her to leave. My mom didn't go out for any more walks after that.
I grew up inside the walls of our apartment building. I had so little activity that my thigh muscles didn't develop properly and I got a pronounced swayback. I wasn't the only one either - lots of inner-city kids kept that cute little baby belly for a lot longer than they should, due to their lack of play space. At least we were on the 5th floor, so I didn't have to sleep in a bathtub for fear of stray bullets coming through the walls!
The seventies were SO much fun!
We would spend hours building
our go-carts out of scraps
and then ride them down the hill,
only to find out we forgot the brakes.. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem..
My kids got to do this. They also got to go sledding and skating. Obviously, I didn't.
We did not have Play Stations, Nintendos and X-boxes. There were
no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs,
no surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms.
Oh man, I would have LOVED having these things! I felt so isolated and lonely as a kid. I can't imagine how awesome it would have been to have friends only a push of a button away.
Right now I can hear my son talking to his buddies over the Xbox, while my daughter is going back and forth between a pile of library books and the computer, researching her latest obsession - Ancient Egypt. I love technology!
WE HAD FRIENDS
and we went outside and found them!
No I didn't, I wasn't allowed. I did get to take a bus to school for a couple weeks, but then a kid was shot to death at my bus stop, so that was the end of that. My mother decided it was safer to drive me to school.
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth,and there were no lawsuits from those accidents.
I didn't do any of these things, and my children have done them all (well, except break bones - so far they've managed not to do that). We've never filed a lawsuit in our lives.
We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, belts, ping-pong paddles, or just a bare hand, and no one would call child services to report abuse.
I remember being 10 and deciding - after my mother had spanked me with a belt - that I would not spank my own children. Why? Because I remember all too clearly the contempt I felt for my mother at that moment and I never wanted my children to feel the same way about me.
My kids seem to have survived my disciplinary neglect well enough.
We ate worms, and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
Ew! No, I didn't!
My son did once eat a potentially poison mushroom. Getting charcoal into a little boy sure isn't fun! He also ate a sow beetle. His sister ate a lot of sand and dirt.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and -although we were told it would happen- we did not put out very many eyes.
Kids still get BB guns in the US. It's not such a popular toy up here in Canada. My kids certainly made up games with sticks and tennis balls, though.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.
Another thing I didn't do, which my kids did - and still do!
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Imagine that!!
Nobody here's into Little League. A lot of kids play hockey though, and there's leagues and tryouts. It's very competitive.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
Some parents always bailed out their kids, even back in the fifties. Especially rich white kids - they never had consequences for their actions!
These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers,
problem solvers, and inventors ever.
The past 50 to 85 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas...
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
My kids have freedom, failure and responsibility. Not to mention, I work with my church's youth. So I'm rather offended by the idea that these bright, caring young people are somehow not going to be risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors, in their own time.
If YOU are one of those born
between 1925-1970, CONGRATULATIONS!
Yeah, thanks. Me, I'm just grateful I can give my kids a freer and healthier childhood than I had.
