To Those Of Us Born In The 50's

Off Topic
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Did you ever wonder why us old farts have no use for these “survivor”- type reality shows on TV? I got this from a friend, and with a little paraphrasing by me, thought I would share it with my contemporaries in this forum.

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren’t overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

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 O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride 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.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms…WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

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. It WAS all fun and games!

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!

Little League and field hockey had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!

And we have never, EVER curled in the squat rack!

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Well, if yall were so tough, why did yall raise us (your kids) to be such a pussy group of adults? I hear the same stories from my parents (both born in the 50’s), but never an explanation of why child rearing and childhood became such a pussyfied thing. What gives?

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Nice one!

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[quote]BIGRAGOO wrote:
Well, if yall were so tough, why did yall raise us (your kids) to be such a pussy group of adults? I hear the same stories from my parents (both born in the 50’s), but never an explanation of why child rearing and childhood became such a pussyfied thing. What gives?[/quote]

I think this tells ya why, “You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives.”

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Well, I was born in 62,but this sounds exactly the way I grew up. Great article,thank you!

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[quote]firebug9 wrote:
BIGRAGOO wrote:
Well, if yall were so tough, why did yall raise us (your kids) to be such a pussy group of adults? I hear the same stories from my parents (both born in the 50’s), but never an explanation of why child rearing and childhood became such a pussyfied thing. What gives?

I think this tells ya why, “You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives.” [/quote]

Right, but it is now YOUR generation of lawmakers that pass the garbage laws that regulate us. Did yall grow up and look back and say “We need to fix how we do things” and start to over analyze how we grow up?

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[quote]BIGRAGOO wrote:
firebug9 wrote:
BIGRAGOO wrote:
Well, if yall were so tough, why did yall raise us (your kids) to be such a pussy group of adults? I hear the same stories from my parents (both born in the 50’s), but never an explanation of why child rearing and childhood became such a pussyfied thing. What gives?

I think this tells ya why, “You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives.”

Right, but it is now YOUR generation of lawmakers that pass the garbage laws that regulate us. Did yall grow up and look back and say “We need to fix how we do things” and start to over analyze how we grow up?
[/quote]

Those lawyers were the candy-ass kids we used to shoot with our BB guns, and then they went crying home to their mommies, while we shouted “Tell, tell, go to hell!” I guess they showed us!

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[quote]magick62d wrote:
Well, I was born in 62,but this sounds exactly the way I grew up. Great article,thank you![/quote]

I was born in '77 and this is how I grew up too. I think somewhere along the line parents got soft and with the introduction of political correctness, things have gotten worse.

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The biggest thing for me is the lack of personal responsobility. When did it become everybody else’s fault for what you did wrong amd not your own?

1 Like
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I was born on the tailend of '59. I grew up tough, remember going to the Doctor one time, and we went barefooted and didn’t even have a telephone. If I got in trouble at school, I also got in trouble at home.

What happened to our kids, someone asked: Well, this Doctor calling himself Dr. Spock wrote a book on child rearing in the early 60’s and the world swallowed everything he said, hook, line and sinker! The biggest mistake was causing society and schools to frown upon spankings. We need spankings badly today.

Mikefrommms

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Cool post! I was born in 65 and life was the same for us. You see all the overweight kids these days and if they played outside like we did, it would be such an epidemic. Another thing a lot of us had in the good old days was both parents. When I was a kid there was not that many divorce moms raising kids.

If I would not have had a dad I probably would have turned out different. One of the neighbor kids that always got in trouble lived with his mom and his parents were divorced. Not all kids from divorced families were bad news, but I think this is a big problem today.

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[quote]Yo Momma wrote:
BIGRAGOO wrote:
firebug9 wrote:
BIGRAGOO wrote:
Well, if yall were so tough, why did yall raise us (your kids) to be such a pussy group of adults? I hear the same stories from my parents (both born in the 50’s), but never an explanation of why child rearing and childhood became such a pussyfied thing. What gives?

I think this tells ya why, “You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives.”

Right, but it is now YOUR generation of lawmakers that pass the garbage laws that regulate us. Did yall grow up and look back and say “We need to fix how we do things” and start to over analyze how we grow up?

Those lawyers were the candy-ass kids we used to shoot with our BB guns, and then they went crying home to their mommies, while we shouted “Tell, tell, go to hell!” I guess they showed us!

[/quote]

This is the best explanation I’ve gotten yet.

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Actually I was born in the 80s and my childhood was pretty much just that.

I think it all just depends on the parents.

1 Like
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[quote]BIGRAGOO wrote:
Well, if yall were so tough, why did yall raise us (your kids) to be such a pussy group of adults? I hear the same stories from my parents (both born in the 50’s), but never an explanation of why child rearing and childhood became such a pussyfied thing. What gives?[/quote]
Lawsuits & Jail time (and/or the threat of same)…

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[quote]zdrax wrote:
Actually I was born in the 80s and my childhood was pretty much just that.

I think it all just depends on the parents. [/quote]

I second this – I was born in 85.

How you turn out comes down to who your mentors are.

The problem today is that parents focus on providing material things to their children when they really need to be mentors.

Also, a lot of divorce kids get everything they want by playing one parent against the other. People grow up never hearing no, and my generation in general has a pretty shitty work ethic – they want everything for nothing.

1 Like
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This is a fantastic post!

I loved it. I grew up like that ( born 1970 ) and I remain unimpressed with the technological “advancement” we’ve made. We had less innovation and real motivation since we didn’t need a concoction of stimulants to get out of bed either…

I hate posting on the internet - oh, the joy if we could meet at a T-Nation gym “playground”!

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I my-self, blame it on the grandparent’s.

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Those who read this forum are old enough to remember 10-15 years ago that the media made a big deal over a statistic that more than 100,000 children are abducted each year. But that’s absurd when you think about it. That’s more than twice the number of Americans who die in car crashes every year, and more than twice the number of Ameicans killed in the Vietnam war over 10 years. Most likely you’ve known people who died in car crashes. How many children have you known personally who were abducted by strangers?

Later it was revealed that this statistic included children in parental custody disputes. Sorry, but a parent not delivering the kids to the ex when they’re supposed to is not the same thing a stranger snatching them away.

Yet, the seeds of panic were planted among parents, watered by widely reported yet rare incidents of actual child abduction, and since then children aren’t allowed out of their caretakers’ sight.

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Education got destroyed by John Dewy and his marxist disciples. The system had not yet descended into moral relativism in the '50s. Remember, ‘shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations’.

The youngsters are all screwed. :wink:

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[quote]Phillip Wylie wrote:
Cool post! I was born in 65 and life was the same for us. You see all the overweight kids these days and if they played outside like we did, it would be such an epidemic. Another thing a lot of us had in the good old days was both parents. When I was a kid there was not that many divorce moms raising kids.

If I would not have had a dad I probably would have turned out different. One of the neighbor kids that always got in trouble lived with his mom and his parents were divorced. Not all kids from divorced families were bad news, but I think this is a big problem today. [/quote]

Spot on. Most of my troublemakers in classes are from single-parent households.

On Tuesdays and Fridays, I now end each class with pushups. We count in a different language (Korean in Aug/Sept) so its leaning also. I have to start with 10 for a while, since many of the kids are in PATHETIC shape. I may get fired for doing this but, gd it, someone’s got to turn this around, for our kids.