Did children once have more freedom?

I remember being nearly 5 and my mother had to go on her bike to pick my sister up from school, she left me in the garden, I was terrified and stood by the garden gate waiting for her.

When I was about 7, I was often 'off' school with Asthma, she would leave me with stern warnings while she went t the shop nearby. Again I was terrified if the phone rang or anyone came to the door.

On the other hand from about 7 my friends and i would walk or cycle to the swimming pool, or the tennis courts. My mother just hoped I'd be back for tea. When I could, I'd cycle 3 miles (with friends) to the college my dad worked at, the grounds where so lovely. Wouldn't see my dad, just the beautiful grounds, there was no way of telling mum when we'd be back!!

We definitely had much more freedom in the 50's/60's. We lived in a rural area and our playground was a local spinney well away from any houses. Once my younger brother and I said we were going for a bike ride and asked for some sandwiches. We cycled 35 miles to the coast. I have no idea how we made our way there. DD did not own a car and we had only been there two or three times on a bus. Nobody was at all concerned when we arrived home. Another time myself and cousin (age 8 and 6) made fishing rods and asked for jam jars to go fishing in the river - maybe it was just a stream but it was away from any houses or roads and again nobody was concerned. I would be horrified at the thought of my GC doing the same.

Within reason, yes, we had a lot more freedom. In the 60s when I was a kid I remember playing (sometimes alone) in areas that I'd never dream of allowing a child to do now.

Yes we had far more freedom. My friend & I went out on our bikes alone & we went all over the place. I'm sure my mother would have had a fit if she had known.
Later on when we were a bit older & Mum had got a part-time job we had all our friends in when she was out & very often we had just boys & a lot of experimental behaviour went on! Mum & Dad would have had kittens if they knew. However I grew up well adjusted & happy so no long term harm was done.

Our DM would tell our dog to take us to school across our very large park in the 50’s. He would leave us at the gates & be there to meet us to go home. Light evenings, Spring, Summer & Autumn we would play in the park, building dens in the bushes, climbing trees. Sometimes going to the river to ‘fish’ with pieces of string tied to twigs! Always careful of ‘strangers with sweets’. Lovely memories & unbelieving GC now!

Sadly we did have more freedom and now we are rearing a generation of protected snowflakes with semi-permanent mental illhealth.

Children should be able to explore and learn how to cope with problems when the problems are little ones and there is parental reference available.

Ridiculous statement

I often wonder where the parents nowadays get their fear from

I was fortunate, grew up in the war years and afterwards, in a large council estate in Birmingham

we roamed freely, walked everywhere, unless needed a City Bus, to take us to the other side of the city. fortunately we lived a few miles, walking distance from Sutton Park, then a large, mostly free, open space, that is where I learned about the country and nature and FREEDOM!

Actually I do remember one little girl being murdered , round the corner from us.. but get into a strangers car? very few cars about... (smiling here) yes, we grew up in a better, more free time..

my ds and dil, 4 children growing up now, they have always been encouraged, let free, not quite as free was we were, but they go out and about, and always have done..

I know roads are now very busy, and lots more people about, but it is the fear of the parents, that I don`t understand, drive kids everywhere, if and when they are allowed out.. times have changed, but where has the fear come from?

now on BBC News someone telling men to be aware that young women are scared of them!!

I actually rember walking home from my school by myself. It was around a mile and involved crossing roads - only one with a lollipop person. We moved from there when I was 7 and I had a much shorter jojrney to mu next school

Yes, a lot more freedom - playing out, and I caught the bus back from school, with quite a long walk at the home end, from when I was about 6. The journey in was with my elder sister, but she finished later.

Before I could even read, I remember being sent by my mother up to the local shop with money and a list! I know I couldn’t yet read, because one of the things they once gave me was the wrong brand, my mother was cross, and I was upset, because obv. I couldn’t read labels to be able to tell the difference.

We drove past that house not long ago - the walk to the shops was considerably further than I’d remembered - no roads to cross though.

Moving on a generation, the names of another mother and me were once mud among the other parents at school, since after a lot of dithering and agonising we’d allowed our dds at just 13 to go alone to Calais for the day, by train to Dover and the ferry.

I won’t pretend we weren’t both having kittens until they were
safely back, but they were so dying to have an ‘adventure’ on their own, not to mention practising their French.

This would have been in the early 90s - I doubt very much that I’d allow it now!

I was a child in the 50's and was out all day playing. No one knew where I was and no phones. I'd be playing in the street, in the woods climbing trees, at the swimming baths, in the park, on my skates or at a friends house.

I'd dash home for some dinner then back out again till dark. In the holidays we'd get to the countryside on bikes or by walking 2-3 miles and look out for apple, plum and pear trees and try to get hold of some.

They were the days of fields full of cowslips, daisies and/or poppies. Also bombsites and allotments where we would make dens in the brambles.

My best friend's mum worked in a hairdressing salon so after school we would go to his [empty] house and watch tv: Lone Ranger, Davy Crocket, Popeye, Robin Hood...then re-enact the scenes and stories. Days of cowboys and indians, lions and tamers and knights on horseback.

I walked to school every day from aged 6-7 alongside one of the busiest roads in the city for a lot of it...playing marbles on the way in the gutters and picking up cigarette cards. A fair bit of traffic about where I was in those days too, we learnt to respect it.

So much freedom and I think we learned common sense, independence, how to help each other out, were streetwise and it was good to be trusted. I was told in Sunday School if anyone was following us or we were frightened to go to the nearest house and knock on the door...which were usually open when someone was in.

Very happy days and I know children now don't know what they're missing, are over protected and I find it sad.

I lived in a small Welsh village and got my first job at 16 in the nearby town. I got up at 5 am, 40 mins to get ready then a 15 minute walk to the bus stop. 5 miles on the 6 am bus into town, then a 35 minute walk to the other side of town to the industrial estate where I worked. I started work at 7.30 so I was always a bit early to work. I earned 10 shillings (50p!!) a week as a typist and the woman I worked for was horrible. In Winter it was a dark and chilly trek to work.

Near where I lived there was an area known as the Seven Cornfields, and I was strictly forbidden from going there. A neighbour had been walking her dog and been stopped by a man, and something happened involving knickers, I was never told what, but the police were called. I was also forbidden to take a shortcut back from my music lesson walking through an unlit lane at the bottom of the garden, but I ignored that. Would not dream of doing it now.

mokryna

I too roamed miles freely in the late 50s and early 60s. Caught the bus to primary school and when there was a strike walked. I was traveling daily to work by train, on the 7.55, to London at 16. People were innocent about health and safety until TV informed them.

Yes, I moved from home to work in London at 17. Thought nothing of it. Travelled up from East Anglia a few times for interviews and then moved when I got a job.

When I was a child in the 1960s it was pretty free and easy there was a sense of community and strangers were not frequent so my parents were quite relaxed, even so they might not have been if they knew all the scrapes we got into. My own children were all boys so had similar free run plenty of the usual pranks, but I took them through Cubs and Scouts, they learned a lot about responsibility.
Girls I would have been much more concerned about, even more so these days, sad really.

it's interesting that most everyone was warned about stranger danger, when by far most danger to children, then as now, comes from people within their circle of acquaintance, ie non-strangers.

I too roamed miles freely in the late 50s and early 60s. Caught the bus to primary school and when there was a strike walked. I was traveling daily to work by train, on the 7.55, to London at 16. People were innocent about health and safety until TV informed them.

I was often out over the fields and woods from the age of 7. Sometimes took my younger brother with me but he got stuck in mud one day and the friend and I couldn't get him out. The friend went home and I eventually had to fetch mum. When we got to the field he was gone. Imagine how scared my mother just have felt but luckily the farmer turned up with my brother, having pulled him out of his boots first...didn't think of that!! I suffered my mother's wrath once we were back home.

IMO one of the biggest contributors to a lack of freedom for children is the number of families where both parents, or a single parent goes out to work so children are left with GP's and/or child minders.

As you've posted JenniferEccles GP's are unlikely to allow the GC in their care to play outside and unattended and that's certainly something that a child minder would never do.

Our boys spent hours with their friends, playing in the fields around our village and making dens. The sort of freedom I doubt our GC have.

Iam64 your pond story reminded me that we had a river at the bottom of our road. Large city rivers in those days were not pristine country streams - they were polluted by heavy industry and effluent, and the only brown things you saw floating by were definitely not the trout I fish them for now that they have been considerably cleaned up! But we never thought about the million nasty illnesses we might catch, and would find our way down onto the bank underneath the railway cutting (this in itself was hazardous) and paddle, and fish for water snails. Like you, if we got wet, the game was up!?. I had occasion to be opposite the same spot a few years ago and wondered how on earth we managed to get down to the water - we had no fear then; I wouldn’t attempt it now!

I remember being out all day on my bike from the age of 8. I went a lot further than my parents realised though. One of the places I liked to go was near one of my dads colleagues. Now I look back, it was a good 7 or 8 miles away from home! Occasionally, the colleague would spot me and I would get reported to my parents and got a ticking off. But they didn't stop me going out.

All these wonderful descriptions of the freedom we all had would horrify today’s parents.

Yet, I don’t remember anything awful happening to anyone then.
Yes of course terrible things did happen- the Moors murders of course but I do wonder if we were ok because the world was a safer place, or are today’s parents far too protective?

Yes of course traffic is far worse now but are there really more weirdos around now or is it just that we hear more about them?

It’s a question I have often discussed with friends.

Nevertheless when we are looking after our grandchildren I bet none of us would dare to allow them to play out for hours unattended like we and their parents did, would we?

I can only echo what others have said about growing up in the fifties. We were out all day in the park and the woods, and later on our bikes. We had all the usual “stranger danger” messages instilled into us, but even so, how many parents these days would blithely let their children loose to roam at will, run riot all day in a wood? My own children too - DS particularly - had considerably more freedom than their children have had. At one point we lived on the edge of a disused Second World War airfield with many empty buildings, and of course, although they were strictly forbidden to go near them, I (much) later learned the temptation had often been too great! Fortunately, they, like we did before them, roamed in a pack and so were never on their own or far from home! My GS was around ten or eleven before he was allowed to go to a friend’s house, or across to the playing field on his own to join a few friends to play football, and then, the biggie - to go on the bus into town to the cinema (my generation went to the cinema every Saturday morning on our own when we were still in single figures! More cinemas then, and closer to home).

Aged 10 i would travel 10 miles to the next town on my own, aged 12 i was allowed to take overnight train to London them make my own way to my Sister in Kent. No parent would allow that now.

Yes we had lots more freedom. Traffic wasn’t really an issue and parents weren’t blamed in the way they are now. I played out from age 4, the big girls tended to look out for the younger children. There always seemed to be large numbers of children of different ages around.
When we were 11 or 12 we began exploring further. I remember long bike rides with a group of us. Picnics and we’d be gone till 5 the magic hour when we’d all go in for tea.
One summer when I was 10, groups of us went fishing’ in a large pond if the field at the back of our houses. I couldn’t swim. We all knew you hadn’t to fall in because your mum would go mad and that was more scary than drowning
Weren’t we lucky, all that freedom to work our so many life skills