Gezz66 t1_j8m2i02 wrote
To be honest, if you went back to the 60's or 70's, let alone the early 19thC, you would consider child treatment cruel by current standards. This is not any reference to abuse scandals, but actually what was considered normal and decent then. Parents smacking their children and teachers carrying out corporal punishment was acceptable and considered even necessary. Take a child out for a burger or pizza would be considered spoiling them.
It's only logical that the further we go back in time, the more standards seem more shocking.
I think the early industrial revolution period perhaps imposed unique pressures, not least that exploitation of the weaker was considered morally good. Even so, we don't care for children out of a sense of morality, but because we have an in-built biological programming to do so. I think what the moral standards of the early 19thC did, ironically with so much Christian virtue, was to dehumanise the weak and vulernable.
ZeMastor t1_j8nly9d wrote
>Take a child out for a burger or pizza would be considered spoiling them.
What country are you talking about? If you are talking about the US in the 1960's and 1970's, this is not correct at all. That era was the post-war Baby Boom, and the US was in prosperity mode, with plentiful housing and jobs. Returning soldiers started families, and tons of new entertainment opportunities exploded. Books, movies, records, TV, comics, amusement parks, Disneyland, etc. were ways that parents indulged their kiddos. So saying that in the 1960's and 1970's, your average parents were too cheap/stingy/harsh to take their kids out for a burger....? No way!
Source: I lived in those times. My cousins lived in those times. My friends and co-workers lived in those times and nobody had stories about "...my parents were so cheap that we couldn't go out for burgers or pizza." But I did hear stories about psycho nuns and rulers from the ones that went to Catholic school.
Gezz66 t1_j8pu4yr wrote
Before an unnecessary argument breaks out, I grew up in the UK, Scotland and Glasgow in particular. So rather more austere in comparison to a middle class US family.
I completely accept that taking the kids out to the pizza/burger joint was probably regular in the US. Interesting, but our perception back then was that US kids were spoilt brats. But I wouldn't now - it's just an indication of how standards changed.
Might also add, I attended a school where corporal punishment was normal, but curiously no one questioned it. We were just urchins that needed fixing, and besides, it toughened you up. Looking back, that value is quite shocking and such practices were banned in 80's (it had to go to the European Court though).
AccomplishedWasabi54 t1_j8owmxo wrote
No, people that live in poverty do none of those things you have mentioned regardless of the year or how well their country as a whole prospered.
ZeMastor t1_j8p17zx wrote
The statement was NOT quantified as "people living in poverty in the 1960's and 70's..." and poverty did not guarantee child abuse. Most parents of the 1960's and 70's who were poor were not monsters, and it's insulting to a hella lot of good people to imply that they were.
I still challenge the description of how things were in the 1960's and 70's as described by the poster I was replying to.
Disparition_2022 t1_j8uv8w9 wrote
The post-war baby boom was primarily in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Right after WW2, hence the name, although technically it lasted until the early 60's.
There was very famously a major economic recession starting in 1973 that lasted years and affected a huge number of people. The 70's in general was absolutely not a time of prosperity, it was a time of economic hardship for much of the country and is quite famous for that downturn.
Great for you that no one you knew couldn't afford to go out to eat, but yes it was absolutely a time when a ton of people had to scrimp and save.
ZeMastor t1_j8uyjc2 wrote
The poster had clarified that they were talking about Scotland as the place where child abuse by teachers and parents and apparently, many people were too poor to buy burgers and pizza for their kids lasted even into the 1970's.
Yes, there was a recession in the 70's, as well as an Energy Crisis and a gas shortage. But compared to today, with homeless camps parked on the sidewalks of every major city, those were the good times. My personal recollection was that we always had food, and burger, or family Sunday night out at a restaurant was still a thing. Buying class rings, or going on major field trips (hundreds of miles away) that cost out-of-pocket were out of the question though.
So how was your 70's life experience?
Disparition_2022 t1_j8ysgri wrote
I was a child, and we certainly were not able to go out to eat once a week. Later on in the late 80's, yes that became more normal, but I remember the 70's as a time of going out to eat being a rare treat, and a lot of dinners of steak-ums, fish sticks, etc. This was also a time when a lot of food became much more expensive (due in part to the gas shortage).
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