Were the 1960s a great time to be alive?

Mostly I feel the same as the rest of you but I had a very difficult upbringing so didn't have the opportunity to do all the above.

I don't think it was better than today, just different. We didn't have the expectations of teenagers today and may have been happier as a result. Only about 5% went to university, many of the rest didn't even get to take 'A' levels. At 11 you were judged a success or failure and the rest of your education depended on your 11+ result which meant that in some areas the top 25% passed and in other areas only 5% did. I think these days comprehensives are better than the secondary moderns were.

I doubt we thought about our expectations as much as they do today. Women generally, imo, assumed they would work for a while and then get married. A few years later they would start having children and give up work. No nurseries in those days so unless you had family to help you didn't have a choice. No one told us we might be gay or in the wrong gender which must had been hard for those who were but a lot easier for the rest as we didn't need to think about it while very young.

I think racial prejudice was probably endemic but where we lived I don't think we ever say a brown or Oriental person.

So although we didn't have all the advantages available today I think life may have been sweeter.

In the early sixties when I was 12, I told my parents I didn't want to go to Blackpool again for our holidays. They said where then? I said Torquay. They hired a car and we went. We never looked back and my parents always went to the south coast for their hols from then on. Life changed for everyone with cars, telephones, television, Central heating, foreign holidays, cheap flights etc. we take so much for granted now but I wouldn't change my roots.

I think mid to late 60s in the UK were a time of great optimism. You could walk into a job on a first come first hired basis no stressful competing with CVs, and we really believed we could change politics by demonstrating and marches. I really thought anyone could do anything they set their mind to in those days. I don't think there has been a generation before or since with that sense of freedom in this country.

1960 to 1964 ?

I loved the 60s. I went to art school from 1960 to 1664. A wonderful time. Folk clubs and jazz clubs on nearly every night plus dances and parties at art school. We worked hard though. Plenty of jobs for holiday employment. Post office at Christmas. I also worked at Brocks firework factory and Kodak. We were lucky also in that we had a reasonable grant.
Most of us dressed a little outlandishly. We were art students after all. And best of all I met DH. We had lots of adventures together and hitch hiked all around the country.

A lot of it was good but I wish we had had the opportunities young people have today. I am thinking of employment in particular which was very Male orientated. My first job was in a bank and the boys were paid more than the girls and offered day release to college to study for their banking exams. They also did the clerical jobs behind the counter for a minimal time before being put on the counter for the more responsible positions. Because I hated grammar school I left at 16 but after a couple of years I was bored and went to the Youth Employment Office. The woman who interviewed me said that I was too old to go to college to study further as I needed the A Levels to go to university. We didn’t have holidays abroad or go travelling either, something I would have loved to do, a week in Blackpool with two friends at 16 was considered very daring

The good things were the good times with friends, which didn’t involve getting blind drunk or taking drugs, we thought one lager and lime or a Babycham was exciting. The new fashions, music, Friday and Saturday night dances and being able to walk home safely on my own were also good.

Having had a difficult childhood and horrible home life, the 60s and my Beatles days in particular, made me realise that there was something good in life.

The 60’s were my grammar school years before teacher training college in 1969. I remember the years most fondly as the most exciting of my life. The decade was bursting with hope and optimism for the future, anything was possible, the young had a voice and would change the world. So different from what our young people face today. I was very lucky to experience that high level of excitement for life and living.

I was a happy married mum with two teenage children in the sixties. Their lives were very different to my teenage postwar years. So much more freedom.

I was 16 in 1965 , just left school and started working in a drawing office. Leaning over the drawing boards with skirts getting shorter and tights still not made it to Scotland ( or certainly my friends and I didn’t have them ) was no mean feat Loved that time with all the music/fashion etc. Pan stick makeup, strawberry meringue max factor lipstick and dance places ( still with no drink )

Grandad 1943.
The sixties for me were as a newly married with a two year old and a new born, being able to buy our first house. There was plenty of choice and housing estates were popping up everywhere. To help pay our mortgage and our once a year weeks holiday in a caravan on the east coast meant I worked so when H came home after work then I went out to work. Happy days and would do it all again.

They were the most wonderful time ever.

Although born in England I grew up in South Africa, a very conservative country then, and decided to visit England for a holiday. I had a job so saved up for a year and came over. My money did not last long as living in London was so expensive, it was 1960, so I got what I thought would be a short term job in a library. There I met my husband and we got married very soon after. Well you know what hormones are like at the age of 20! Got pregnant very quickly. and the rest of the 60s were just a blur of terry nappies and endless feeds... No memories of parties and other jolly things.

I believe what made the sixties were very different from any decade since was that it marked the end of the wartime recovery.

All of us born in the 1940s can remember the food rationing which never came to an end until 1954. On top of that many cities and town centres had to be completely rebuilt following the wartime bombing. That work and much else prevented a recession such as that which followed the first world war. However, much of the 1950s were very drab years, until around 1958-1959 when it all seemed to come together for Britain.

Suddenly Top Rank dance halls opened in those new town centres where you could actually get a drink untill 11:30 p.m at night, now who would have ever thought that.?

The car became within the price range of working people, with models such as the Ford Anglia and of course the Moris Mini coming into production. With that, suddenly travel and holidays in Devon and Cornwall were to be had, very different from the traditional Blackpool and Scarborough resorts.

The above I believe made the sixties the decade of that century, which came about all under the banner of recovery and change.

Loved the 60s especially the Mary Quant fashion, the music, parties, boys as well. I had a great time I met my dh in 1965 and we married in 1968, we carried on partying until the 70s when we had our two children.
Great time to be young, and I just loved the fashion. Mini skirts, mini dresses. Long boots.

I was just that little bit too young for the sixties but felt there was great social change and couldn't wait to be a part of it. Everything seemed so exciting with music, fashion and technology. Our parents who'd come through the war seemed staid and out of touch. Dad was a bit like Alf Garnett. There were double standards.
I feel I missed out a little - but were things really as good as they looked? We still have social problems - knives, drugs, on-line porn and gangs. Blimey, I sound like a little ray of sunshine, don't I? But anything seemed possible in the sixties, now we're more cynical and jaded which is a pity.

Were the 1960s a great time to be alive?

Not for me they weren't. All the things other posters seemed to enjoy were all outside my teenage sphere. I was constantly miserable.

It wasn't until I got married at 22 and had some control over my life that I was able to blossom into the the happy, optimistic person I still am and who enjoys every moment of life.

No going back for me.

I left school in 1961 and went to train as a nurse. I was tall and very thin and all clothes looked good on me, only problem was I didn't have the income to dress the way I wanted.
Music was big in the NE, lots of the big groups played in our town and at Durham university Saturday night dances.
It was a decade in which I got engaged, married and had my first child, no money and life was hard but we survived.

It was a turbulent decsde, flower power, teenagers discovered clothes their parents didn’t wear, pop groups.

But death of JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Dr King, nuclear fears .

Any time when you are in your youth before the restraints of buying a home, feeding children etc, is a time of freedom and is often reflected on as being the best times.

It was a wonderful time ! The sheer optimism of it all. The Summer of Love. The music. The fashions. Pirate Radio.

The feeling that with Love and Peace, we could do anything !

Sky Arts have some excellent programmes about the various decades. Some are a tad USA centred, but none the worse for that.

For me, the one musician who was constantly great throughout the sixties was Roy Orbison. I seen him in concert in 1963 (i think) and I still feel it was the greatest concert I have ever been to.

Still love his music today.

Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers at the start of the decade, then the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Cilla Black and the whole Mersey Sound by the middle of it.

Great times, especially for music.

What a decade to live through as a teenager!

The Stones, Radio Caroline, coffee shops, Cuba Crises, mini skirts, tights (American Tan ?) discos, Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch, Uni, Bob Dylan, CND marches, Kennedy assassination, first moon landing, Vesta Chow Mein, wine....