Ah, the nostalgia of an eighties childhood. If you’ve ever watched “The Goonies” or “Stranger Things,” you’ll notice that most of the time, parents played a minimal, if any, role in their children’s lives. Children went on unsupervised outdoor adventures for hours on end, getting into just enough trouble to learn a lesson but not enough to perish (typically).
But is this truly what it was like to be a youngster in the 1980s? Were parents truly that hands-off? Did young people truly have the freedom to explore as depicted in movies and myths? Did no one care what the kids were doing when no one knew where they were and there were no cell phones?
Someone asked that same question, and the overwhelming response indicated an obvious answer.
On one hand, certainly, 80s kids did experience childhoods that are difficult to picture now.
“Did parents in the 80s really allow their kids to roam freely, or is that just a portrayal seen in movies?” X user, OThingstodo, inquired. Here are the leading responses:
Really. And that was great.”
“Facts. We are the generation that reared itself. Every night, a commercial aired asking parents whether they knew where their children were. We survived on hose water and whatever we saw as food. (berries, fruit trees, etc.) We weren’t permitted to sit inside; if we did, we’d be overwhelmed with tasks. We were genuinely the wild generation; we pushed ourselves to new heights with no guts or glory and no fear. It was an incredible moment that even now elicits a surge of yearning at the slightest remembrance.”
“This is quite true. And sometimes we just have to make our own TV meals. And our parents didn’t have to continually engage us or keep us entertained.
“Allowed? We were not permitted to enter the residence during the day. We had bicycles and pals. There were three rules. 1. Don’t be hurt. 2. Don’t get hauled home by the cops. 3: Do you see the light? “If it’s on, you’re late and grounded.”
“In the summer, that meant getting home when the streetlights turned on. Raised on hose water and neglect.” It was glorious.”
“I used to wander the sewer ditches throughout town with my companions”just a few of us and some flashlights.”
“Yep. We rode our bikes all over the place, discovering reality. We had illegal lemonade stands, and if we ran out, we’d bike to the store for snacks. We had our own house keys, remained home alone after school, and prepared our own meals. Nobody freaked out about it either.
“We left the home after school, and they didn’t see us until the streetlights went on. They didn’t ask us where we’d been or what we did. We grew up with hose water and neglect in the 1970s and 1980s.”
“Well into the nineties. They instructed us to be home for dinner by ___ or before nightfall. They didn’t know where we were or how to find out. This was simply the norm until mobile phones were introduced.
“It is true. Remember that there were no mobile phones, video games, or 24-hour children’s television back then. You wanted to be with your buddies outside, even in the winter. Your bike was your prized possession, and while there were bad things back then, they weren’t as common. Sad.”
The sentiment “while there were bad elements then too, it wasn’t like now” came up a lot in the answers. Let’s go into it a little bit.
It’s common to view the past with a distorted perspective.
Everything individuals recount about their childhoods in the 1980s is largely accurate, except for one aspect: the world was not significantly safer at that time. There weren’t any fewer “bad elements” or crimes.
Around 2015, publications began to appear claiming that children were statistically safer than they had ever been.
In fact, by nearly every statistical metric, the 1980s were less safe than today. Looking at violent crime statistics from 1960 forward, we can observe that the 1980s had much higher violent crime rates than the 2000s. The notion that Gen X childhoods were carefree with nothing to worry about is just incorrect. We just weren’t aware of everything there was to dread.
Social media and 24-hour cable news networks constantly bombard us with terrifying images, creating a distorted view of reality. And this is not just supposition; according to Pew Research, Americans believe crime is increasing even while it is decreasing. “In 23 of 27 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993, at least 60% of U.S. adults have said there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite the downward trend in crime rates during most of that period.”
Those who recall their free-range childhoods as delightful and safe appear to have forgotten that we began our days pouring milk from containers with photos of missing children on them. A few high-profile abductions and killings of children sparked a missing children panic in the United States, prompting President Reagan to sign the Missing Children Act in 1982 and the Missing Children’s Assistance Act in 1984, which established the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
In the 1980s, however, “high-profile” referred to a position on the nightly national news and a newspaper headline. Most crimes were only publicized locally; there was no “going viral online,” and it was simple to ignore disturbing news if you wanted to. Today, we live in a completely different world, but not in the manner most people assume. We’re safer in almost every way, including automobile accidents, infectious diseases, and violent crimes. However, we feel less safe, which directly influences how we raise our children.
There was truly magic in our innocent ignorance.
There’s something to say about being oblivious to everything horrible that’s going on in this world. Although we may have been less protected in the 1980s, our ignorance of this fact had its advantages.
The question is whether we can reverse this trend. Is it feasible to provide children an 80s-style upbringing in an age when devices are omnipresent and parents are imprisoned for allowing their adolescents to stroll less than a mile from home alone?
The societal expectations of what children can and should do have shifted dramatically, as have levels of worry and dread in general. Parenting practices have evolved toward increased participation and attachment, which is not always a negative thing, but it may be carried too far. The previous negligent parenting approach was not ideal, nor is the current overprotective model.
If we could find a way to give children the joy of unrestricted outdoor exploration in the 1980s, while simultaneously enhancing parent-child interactions in the present, we could have achieved the ideal balance for raising healthy children. Perhaps the next generation of parents will work things out.