My Reality Is Completely Shattered After Reading These Heartbreaking Stories From Gen X'ers And Boomers About What Really Went On In The "Good Old Days"
Note: This post contains mentions of abuse, alcoholism, and PTSD.
We often romanticize life "back in the day" with rosy stories about how much better life was. Unfortunately, those feel-good stories weren't always the reality for a lot of people. Recently, we posted about older adults debunking the myths about the "good old days," and it shed a lot of light on some things I hadn't even considered. Here are more stories from folks about the harsh reality of growing up back then.
1."Men did everything they could to get in the way of women having anything in life. Women were discouraged from getting an education. The only jobs they were hired for paid next to nothing. They were paid less than men to do the exact same job. If they were sexually harassed, it was considered to be funny. They weren't allowed to have their own credit cards. They couldn't get a loan for anything. They were charged more for cars. If they could even get a real estate agent to call them back, they had to come up with a bigger down payment for a house."
"Domestic abuse was absolutely rife. If a woman sought help from the police, it was a joke to them. When women looked for support in their efforts to escape, they were endlessly lectured and pressured by their families and people at church to stay and let their husbands abuse them forever."
2."What people didn't talk about was back then when our dads returned home from WWII with PTSD, which took the form of alcoholism. It wreaked havoc on our families' lives, as societal pressure meant we all carried this shameful secret. Psychology and mental health support was in its infancy then, so we were all on our own. I grew up in a small town, so there was fear of being found out if we went to an AA/Al-Anon meeting. So many families suffered in silence. This stuff messes you up as an adult. I graduated high school in 1975, and we never talked about these things. I spent many adult years in therapy because of all the trauma."
3."There weren't any single-income families in my neighborhood. Even in families with stay-at-home moms, the father worked two or three jobs, and the children worked and paid bills for the family. My sister worked a 40-hour week while she was in high school. My friends' families were just like us."
4."Everyone was poor. Housing was cheaper, but as a percentage of income, food was almost twice as much, with zero variety. Going to a restaurant was an event. Vacations were a road trip without air conditioning to a cabin somewhere cheap where the only electronics were a fridge and a radio that got a Christian station."
5."It was a myth that people didn't have sex outside of marriage or that pregnancies outside of marriage didn't happen. Either the girls were rushed into marriage or were shipped off, had the baby, and gave it up as soon as it was born. Also, the myth that there were fewer abortions. Oh, come on! People did all kinds of dangerous things to cause abortions. Another one is that there were fewer gay people back then. No, they just stayed hidden. And lastly, there were fewer kids with ADHD or autism. That's because the commonly known descriptions for ADHD or autism were for white boys, and everyone else just fell through the cracks."
"My parents had me tested in elementary school because they were concerned. I was diagnosed with 'short-term memory disorder.' It wasn't until both of my children were diagnosed and the psychologist was listing out characteristics of ADHD that I realized that I had it all those years!"
—Anonymous, 47, Tennessee
6."I worked for a Fortune 500 company in the '80s and '90s. The racial and gender biases were unbelievable. I outperformed my male counterparts and was bypassed for promotions countless times. I got to train people to get promoted above me who didn't have the same work ethic or knowledge that I had, but as a Latina woman, I was overlooked in favor of white males because that's the way it was. I shouldn't have tolerated it for as long as I did."
7."Housing is so important to understand, and many people don't. My mom was in a family of seven kids and considered rich when she was growing up. She shared a bedroom with her three sisters and slept on some pillows on the ground. All the boys were in another room, and they all ate a lot of cheap food to feed the whole family."
8."My dad graduated high school in 1960. He said half of his male classmates were drafted. He was safe because he was supporting the family, as his father had died young. He said of those who were cleared for service and sent over to Vietnam, about half were killed. That's a fear like we can't understand."
9."Life was nowhere near as convenient then as it is today. School projects that required even cursory research involved a trip to the public library. Everything ran on mail. Many people didn't have bank accounts because they couldn't actually access a bank during business hours. Need to cash your paycheck? You went to the grocery store or an enterprising tavern because the bank was already closed by the time you got off work. There was no 911; if you had an emergency, you picked up the phone, dialed 0, and asked the operator, literally an employee of the local phone company, for the police/fire/ambulance because the phone number wasn't public."
"Bills often had to be paid in person, in cash, at the office of the utility or phone company. Not all accepted checks by mail. Stores were closed on Sundays and by 5 p.m. most weekdays, leaving working families with restricted access to necessities. Serious illness meant the loss of income. Same with a broken-down car if you couldn't fix it yourself.
We live in a comparatively magical world that resembles what science fiction shows and movies of the time depicted."
10."Gen X here. I spent most of my younger years with my great-grandma, who was born in 1914. Yes, I have used an outhouse in weather conditions that are 90+ degrees. It is not fun. And yes, I survived drinking from a hose, riding in the back of trucks, not wearing a seatbelt, etc. But enough did not survive, and these things were changed. I can guarantee you that most of the kids who were left alone — latchkey kids — are lucky to be alive. There was so much physical and sexual abuse."
11."People think traffic wasn't as bad, and people could get around easier. Two-lane highways and streets would be stacked up for miles. Often, side streets weren't paved or even graveled. Four-way intersections with stop signs were much more common. Only the most expensive cars had air conditioning. Air travel was too costly for the middle and lower classes, so you either drove or took the train. Both would take days to get to places a quarter or more across the country."
—Anonymous, 63, Virginia
12."I think a big element that's missing from the idealization of pre-Civil Rights housewife culture is race. If you were a white woman, being a housewife was considered classy. If you weren't white, you were uppity at best. Women of color were pretty much required to work back then. Housewife life was seen as glamorous as long as it was strictly a white thing."
13."I recently read a very old letter from my great-grandmother and was truly shocked. I don’t know who she wrote it to, but it was an account of her life starting in the 1920s and of her extended family that read like a Greek tragedy. The thing that stood out most was how many kids died. She mentioned in a casual tone that one woman in her family had six kids, and half died from diseases. My great-grandmother left her husband, who was abusive. This also surprised me because I thought divorce was forbidden back then. Maybe it was more common and not discussed."
"She also discussed how much financial struggle her family faced. It was very much a story of people surviving. But she persevered, and her letter never had a tone of self-pity. I wish I could go back and tell her how much I respect her.The point is, I am very happy to be alive in a world with vaccines and civil rights."
14."I'm Generation X. First, the amount of bullying that was tolerated was incredible, and we couldn't tell because nothing would happen, and then the bullying got worse. I was bullied starting in sixth grade by older kids who were in my class due to being held back. My grades went down drastically, and it was blamed on my lack of good study habits and not because I was being emotionally tortured. Another thing I remember was the high amount of teen girls with 'boyfriends' in their 20s or older. Personally, my first 'boyfriend' was 22 when I was 15."
"I grew up at a time when it was normalized on TV. Thelma from Good Times, for example, dated Lou Gossett Jr. Her character was 17, and he was in his 40s. One of her other boyfriends was working on his Master's thesis, and she was 16. Then, Little House on the Prairie, where Adam was Mary's teacher, and they married when she was a teen. Almanzo was 10 years older than Laura.
For years, I blamed myself for putting myself in a bad position. Only as an adult did I realize I wasn't in a relationship but was being groomed."
15."My mom, as a young teen/tween, ran away and went to a police station in the early '70s to report abuse in her home from her father. The officer looked at her and was like, 'If I were your father, I’d beat you, too. How dare you come here and talk about your family’s business?!' So, yeah. Policing has at least gotten better in some aspects."
16."My great-grandmother married when she was 17; he was abusive, and she ended up fleeing. Her family had to pay off her abuser so she and her daughter could get away. She couldn't actually marry my great-grandfather until after her first husband had died, as he wouldn't allow a divorce."
17."Education was not readily available if you had a disability that prevented you from climbing stairs or a sensory impairment like being blind or deaf. You could be legally barred from attending school and later college. Employers could refuse to hire you if you were disabled in any way."
—Anonymous, 72, Illinois
What myths about life back in the day do you want to debunk? Let us know in the comments or fill out this anonymous form.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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