Gen X’ers Are Sharing The “Forgotten Things” From 50 Years Ago That Society Erased From History

27.

“People forget that raising ‘free range’ kids, ’70s–80s-style, really did entail putting children into danger that they probably should not have been put into. There was a gap between moms in the neighborhood being home and a sense of neighborhood/community of the ’50s–’60s, and kids were being dumped into a world they were unprepared for without any oversight or protection. By the age of 7, I was coming home alone to an unlocked house in an area full of transient weirdos living in rented duplexes — no one knew you, no one cared, and creeps abounded; I didn’t even know my parents’ work numbers. I was left alone at night with infants in my care by the time I was 11. It was terrifying. My parents only cared about their own lives and their own good times — and they were respectable professionals! Can’t even imagine what people whose parents were actually scumbags were experiencing.”

“As we got older, we started drinking, smoking pot, and experimenting with sex before we were even 12 years old. Much older teens and even young adults were involved in this.

Did the helicopter parents of the ’90s on take things too far? Yes, sure, but there was no excuse for what kids growing up in the ’70s and ’80s went through. It wasn’t all bike rides and Goonies adventures.”

—atomickristin