Well for one thing cars did not routinely go as fast. They were also built like tanks. BUT the laws of physics have not changed - if your mother had been going 70mph and been involved in an accident with you in an unsecured carrier, you would likely not be here today. How did we survive? We got lucky. No car accidents while not seatbelted in, no head injuries while riding our bikes, didn't eat enough lead paint for significant brain damage, and when we wandered away from our parents in a crowded public place, someone found us before we got into serious trouble.

Now that there ARE safety measures out there, you'd be crazy not to use them. My son has one of the best car seats money can buy and he will sit rear facing to the weight limit of the seat. New studies show that in front end collisions (accounting for some ridiculously high percentage of car accidents) a child is 5 times more likely to walk away without serious injury, including neck and spine injury, rear facing. My parents and inlaws think I am insane and overly paranoid but such a simple thing for 5x better results? Why wouldn't I??? It's most likely that I will never be in a car accident with my son in the car. I have, knock wood, managed to drive for close to 20 years without an accident. But I am not willing to gamble my son's life and health that my luck will hold out.

How did we survive? Luck.

As kgwlisa said - Purely the luck of the draw.

Recently on a board I'm on I learned of a 6 month old baby that had gotten wrappped up in a blanket and suffocated. As a parent reading that I made sure my daughter (same age) doesn't have access to a blanket when sleeping at all. We had just started putting one on her legs for naps. We now use the sleepsack for naps as well. I'm just not willing to play the odds although the odds say the chances of it happening to my daughter are very small. I'd rather do what I possible can to protect my child.

I did lot of stupid things when young and how come I'm in one piece - just playing the odds.

I also don't think kids were in cars as much as they are today. We only had one car until I was about 10 years old. My father used it for work, and my mother stayed home with us. Even when we got a second car, my parents didn't drive us all over the place, like a lot of parents do today. I remember that my two older brothers used to hitchhike if they couldn't get a ride to their jobs or sports activities (this was back in the late 70s). Imagine kids hitchhiking today? Shudder...

What about infants having to sleep on their backs now. I guess all of mine are lucky to be alive, they all slept on their tummys. (70's and 80's) I think they changed that rule after my last one was born. Now my grandchildren all sleep on their backs, it just doesn't seem as cozy.

Lots of pregnant women smoked and drank, years ago.

Doctors didn't know this was harmful and one could even smoke in their hospital room. What's really strange is that I never knew a child with asthma when I was growing up.

We had a lot of bonfires in our neighborhood, also.

Let's see:

Bonfires in the fall with the sparks flying around us ....

Sparklers for the summer holidays (and yes! parents were very careful with firecrackers)

Riding our bikes without helmets

Being "kicked out" of the house on nice summer days ... and told to "stay out of trouble" because all the neighbourhood mums would call your mother if you got into any trouble! (sheesh -- we used to say that they had magical radar .... LOL!) I would hang out at the local libray -- one of the few places with air conditioning)

Going downtown on the commuter train (and subway) by myself (as a young teen) to get the groovy shops in town -- and we moved to other cities (like London, England) -- I learned to take the train to school every morning (it was one of the old ones with the very, very old doors that you had to open yourself at the station)

Flying by myself .... even to England

DH (and his three brothers) hung underneath the train trestle (bridge) with a 100-foot drop -- and dare each other to hang on while a train went by overhead!!

He had lead-metal soldiers when he was little (which may explain certain things today! his own comment ..... LOL!)

Riding in the back window of the huge old car when his parents went down to Florida in the winter .... the four boys would fight over this privilege!

Swimming by themselves in the Don River in toronto ....

He would climb onto the furniture -- and yes -- it would tip over!

Sheer Luck! LOL!

Jan

Having just returned from a bustling city in Mexico, I'm thinking of how "unprotected" the children are there, as compared to here in the states -- and yet they seem to thrive. I honestly believe that many of the protective measures put into place over the past decade or two (or three) are not "for our protection" so much as an attempt to mitigate liability by manufacturers in what has become an insanely litigious society. And that's sad.

Slightly OT: We rode numerous rickety buses in Mexico (which the locals do every day), and while on one, DH pointed to what amounted to a hole in the floor beneath us. It was probably a 12" x 12" square that at one time had some sort of covering over it, but the cover was now gone and it was open to about a 6" drop in the floor. A sure way to twist (or break) an ankle. That bus would've been pulled from service here in the states until the problem was rectified, but in Puerto Vallarta, it just kept on goin'. Something similar at the zoo there last year: Part of the walkway that winds through the zoo was missing a "guardrail" that separated the walkway from a fairly precipitous drop. Again, the zoo -- or at least that portion of it -- would've been closed to customers until a rail could be installed here. There ... business as usual. I think that in places where dangers such as these are more prevalent, people become more aware of their surroundings, and they teach their children to watch out for themselves. I sometimes wonder if we're doing ourselves any favors here by putting into place all of these "protections." Are we diminishing our natural instincts for being aware and vigilant in our surroundings by trusting "protective measures" to take over for us? I don't know, but I have been wondering about this!

I agree with the posters above that said "luck"! :-)
There are plenty of data and graphs to show how traffic fatalities have declined due to things like increased seatbelt use (car seat usage by kids would fall under this).

Taking care of your kids wisely (given new information not available to our parents decades ago) doesn't neccesarily equate to keeping them locked indoors with no freedoms or independence.

Unfortunately fatality rates in circumstances like those described above are a lot higher than in the US.

I think the reason the bus in Puerta Vallarta was not fixed was probably more due to the fact that they didn't have a bus to replace it with, and don't have the money to fix it without jacking up fares to ride, and who can afford that? It's not because they think "oh this will just teach people to be careful."

You can teach children to be careful but they are still just children and developmentally just do not get cause and effect the way adults do. The way they get that is by experiencing things for themselves but how many parents are willing to risk their child's LIFE by allowing them to learn cause and effect on a path next to a precipitous drop and no guard rail? Or risk shattering their ankle on a bus with a hole big enough that a small child could fall through it? My dad shattered his ankle and after 6 surgeries still has a lot of pain.

The age old dilemma for parents and when and how much to let your kids fall on their own. You want to let them get hurt just enough that they learn what to do and what not to do but not so much that they have lifelong disabilities or even die. It's a really tough call to make sometimes. My little guy started walking a couple of months ago and for a few weeks in there between the time he was confident enough to just start going where he wanted to go and when he got truly steady on his feet, this kid looked like we beat him. HUGE bruise on cheek, black eye and bruises all over his forehead... and that was WITH me catching him/breaking the harder falls. He had one spot on his forehead with bruises 3 different colors from a fall and hitting the same spot 3 days in a row! He needs to learn, yes, and I try not to hover but he also needs to not crack his head open on a cast iron bathtub or on the cast bronze insert in the fireplace etc. It's a balance to just let them be and learn on their own but also keep them from doing SERIOUS harm to themselves when they just do not get the implications of what they are doing.

I think the reason the bus in Puerta Vallarta was not fixed was probably more due to the fact that they didn't have a bus to replace it with, and don't have the money to fix it without jacking up fares to ride, and who can afford that? It's not because they think "oh this will just teach people to be careful."

Oh, I know that. I fully agree. I didn't mean to imply that I thought they were trying to "teach" anyone anything, but a byproduct of living in that kind of society is that you do learn to watch out for things that are a potential danger -- things that most of us here in the states have no reason to even thing twice about. You "live and learn", so to speak.

I agree with the luck thing. I'd much rather be raising my kids in the US with all its safety measures than among the parents in Mexico or other poorer countries who probably can't enforce such measures. I don't think it has to do with paranoia, either. I'll never forget this girl in my neighbor whose face was horribly burned because her brothers were playing with a NON childproof lighter, caught her hair and clothes on fire with it. I'm a big stickler for helmets, too, for kids AND adults. Why play russian roulette with the only brain you have?

Ohhhhh, I remember my childhood days when my brother and I would wander around the french quarter and garden district in new orleans. Those were the days! I think parents would be arrested for letting their kids do that now.

Remember lawn darts? I have a nice physical reminder of lawn darts. It's in the shape of a 5 inch scar down my calf. On the positive side, it did teach me not to just stand around while people throw javelins and spears at me.

I know 2 adults who were riding bicycles and got hit by cars, and if they hadn't been wearing helmets these people would have had serious brain injuries. One of them had serious spinal injuries, although not a brain injury (because of the helmet). The other one had fractures of the pelvis (among other broken bones), but not a brain injury (again, because of the helmet).

I also know someone who was riding a bicycle and forgot his helmet, fell, and suffered a serious brain injury. Those experiences put me squarely in the "wear your helmet" category.

Well those of us who didn't survive aren't here to post.

Good one Terri!!

I think Jen is on the mark with the liability issues. Don't dare let your kid get banged up or you'll be visited by child services. One time DD2 broke her pinkie finger at school. The gal at the office called me, hysterical and asked if I wanted her to call an ambulance. I told her to just give her an ice pack and I'd pick her up after school. OMG. She flipped out on me and insisted I take her to the doctor to get an xray and splint. She practically threatened to call CS. I picked up my DD, took her to the doctor who took a look at her finger, told her to ice it and be careful. Said they don't even splint them, as that causes more trouble than leaving it be. I had him write a note to that effect as I was worried the school administration would report me for negligence!

This is such a soap box topic for me...I'll just say that SOME things are good ideas (helmets and seatbelts), others, not so much.

daisy, I found out one of my friends from college died from not wearing a helmet. She was at the park, trying out her new bike . . .fell off and hit her head on a rock. She was 30.

I know someone who brags that her children (inc. her child less than a year, who is a passenger on the parents' bikes) do not wear helmets. Brags! Posts pics of this on FB! Her youngest had a lot of medical problems, too . . .not sure why the mom would chance this.

I am sad that I am so protective of my children, to an extent. I loved going around the neighborhood on my bike (no helmet) with my friends, planning picnics by ourselves. I was never in danger. BUT, after I saw "Adam" when I was young, I swallowed the Paranoia Pill.

My DD who is 7 rode today without her 5 point harness. She has finally outgrown it, to her relief. Now I just have to trust the regular seatbelt . . .

I'm also glad that we have safety precautions in this country. If you don't have things like guardrails, you are training the mother, not the child. (Because Mom is going to try to carry her child/children the entire time to protect them!)

When my children were 7 and 18-months, we vacationed in Colorado. While visiting a National Park there, DH and I noticed HUGE ant mounds. In the South, we have fire ants and are well aware of how dangerous they are. These ant mounds in CO were right up to the edge of the path. It would have been easy to take a misstep and put a foot in one. Many were covered with huge, red and black ants. We immediately asked the park ranger if those were fire ants. She didn't know and didn't seem too concerned. We asked another park ranger and received the same response. Needless to say, my 18-month-old's feet never touched the ground, and we kept a hand on our 7-year-old's elbow. Back at home, I googled fire ants in Colorado and discovered that those were indeed fire ants (new to that area) and dangerous. I'm surprised that they didn't even have a sign to warn people.

But back to the funny part of the thread, I think we all did things as children that were more dangerous than our parents liked. I know that my brother and sisters and I will sit around and recount our "adventures" and my mother's face will turn white!

This wasn't supposed to be a justification of how vigilant you are as a parent protecting your child and following all the safety laws to a T, it was a humorous post. I guess we all didn't have the crazy, dangerous childhood of my youth, or maybe I'm just older than everyone here and you all were raised with the new safety rules and never experience the dangers of my youth. :-)

That said, actually people drove much faster back in those days 70 mile and hour was the norm on the highway until the first oil crisis in the 70's. Also cars were heavier, but weren't designed to absorb impacts, so they were actually more dangerous than smaller cars today.

My first two sons slept on their stomachs - that was the rule then because in case they spit up you didn't want them to choke on their spitup. My last one I had sleep on his side, but honestly after the first few months, he rolled around all over the place - so it's probably an issue to worry about in the first few months. I was up all the time anyways to make sure he was "still breathing". Actually I'm surprised they haven't started selling baby monitor that you tape on your baby's chest every night before they go to sleep. Seems like something that would be worth a few hundred bucks to make sure you were alerted if their heart rate or breathing stopped.

The other thing was there weren't all these water wings and floaties for kids. I know there were drownings, but I'm surprised how long it took for water safety stuff to become common.

How about sunscreen? Even kids with milk white skin went to the pool and played outside all day.

What about peanut allergies. Did anyone ever know someone in their elementary school with a peanut allergy? This is an illness that has become an epidemic in the last 30 years. Why isn't anyone trying to figure out what in our environment is causing this? In fact allergies as a whole are way up in numbers. I remember there being a couple of kids who had milk or chocolate or shellfish - but not peanuts or wheat etc.

carol, re: sunscreen . . .yes, I did play in the pool all day when we were vacationing in Mexico and Costa Rica with sunscreen applied only once. (We didn't swim all day otherwise.) I got sun poisoning both times . . .I also got many other burns, complete with blisters and all. I worry I'll get cancer from that.

I wonder about allergies, too . . .and asthma. Why so common now?

My 3rd DD slept on her stomach. (Well, for naps, but at night we co-slept, or during the day she napped in the sling, too.) The thing is, SIDS is an UNKNOWN cause of death, right? So if a baby dies from suffocation, it isn't unknown, so not SIDS. The only thing I've heard is they might be dying from the gasses from mattresses.

My mom was just telling me how, in the 60s, she saw an accident in which two cars carrying children crashed into each other. She said everyone just fell out . . .inc. the kids in the back of the station wagon. She doesn't know how many survived. I know, as a child, we didn't have to wear seatbelts in the back seat unless we were going on a highway!

I sometimes think what might actually kill us is not some tragic accident or dreaded disease ... but the stress from worrying about dying from all of these things that allegedly "threaten" us on a daily basis.

caroleh - I have an angel care monitor - it is a monitor that has a pad placed on a board under the crib mattress that senses movement and sounds an alarm if there is no movement within 20s. It has saved my sanity as I had a preemie and in the hospital she had some brady's. They were all gone and then she got a cold at 2 months and we experienced something similar so I bought this monitor. I finally got some sleep even though she slept 6 hrs stretches way before that.

Oh how I wish I had worn sun-screen in my teens. My skin wouldn't have all these moles covering all these surfaces. I'd still have some, but not nearly what I do. Since I've had cell changes in some I need to go for monitoring too.

anele - I think some of the allergies and stuff may be doctor's are treating more than they did in the past. I had a mild form of asthma as a kid and not enough to use an inhaler so I never got one, but as I got older doctors wrote prescriptions for it even though I still don't really need it as my airways do not close off fully.

When we were kids in the 1960s, we lived in the country and went to the Catholic school in a town about 12 miles away. There wasnÂt a bus to our school, so we were sent on the public high school bus, and we had to walk about 10 blocks from the high school to the grammar school. My older sister was with us up until she went to high school, but she was 4 years older than I so that mean that from 5th grade on, it was just me & my younger brother to walk, with whatever other kids went that way too. There were no adults watching us, and back then the schools didnÂt call home if someone didnÂt show up, so if we had gone missing, my mother would not have known until we didnÂt come home at the end of the day. Not only did we see many educational things on that high school bus, but we also encountered many other kids on our walk to and from, some of them bullies, in all kinds of weather as well. We had to deal, thatÂs all. I was a real tomboy, and came home one day and told my parents about a really cool pocket knife I saw a guy use  it had a button that opened the knife  how convenient! My father told me that it was called a switchblade, and no, I could not have one.

My kids are now in their 20Âs, and when they were younger we lived in a small town and all the kids walked to school. My kids did not want their mother walking with them (none did) and I thought that was just fine. Now I always see parents with their kids at the end of their own driveways waiting for the bus. So different, and I understand about safety, but it seems that kids donÂt have freedom anymore. I have co-workers with young children, and they wonÂt let them play in their fenced-in backyards unless they are outside with them. Maybe they need a little razor-wire on the top of that fence. No wonder so many kids watch a lot of TV.

I agree that seat belts, car seats & bike helmets are very good things for safety. ItÂs automatic that my kids & their friends buckle up, and IÂm glad for that.

I also wonder about all the peanut allergies  what happened???

I got a great e-mail a while back basically suggesting that anyone over the age of 30 lived an entirely different childhood than those under the age of 30. We had the freedom to roam and play, 24 hour cable had not taken over our lives, video games and computers had not yet become a common household staple -reading was still a mainstay, and parents still yelled "Turn down that music!"

Raising my own children now, my kids, and my friends kids have made it through some strange freak accidents that probably should have killed them but didn't, yet a baby can suffocate on it's own warm blanket or choke on a screw. I think that's the law of nature, some things are simply unexplainable, no matter the care and diligence we take.

Sexual predators can't be new, I'm sure they've always existed!? Yet if someone develop a satellite tracking system for them I WOULD consider buying one!

Parenting has also changed. This is generically speaking and assuming it follows the over 30 theory from above, but back then people didn't give much thought to having and raising kids, it was just done, a small piece of the pie of life. Raising kids now, they -become- your life. Even corporations realize this by marketing to the youth and to their parents. Perhaps it was the ho-hum attitude of the previous generation that forced us to be more involved and watchful of our own children?

The upside is the awareness of safety, stranger-danger, drugs, child abuse etc. The down side is the paranoia of danger, no letting children be children by roaming and playing,(can you say childhood obesity?), the over-involvement and scheduling of children's lives because they are not allowed to roam and play, and children that are all materially spoiled beyond belief as compared to previous generations!

Now here is another thought... I have some younger friends- around the 30 mark, these girls think nothing of sending their little ones to "Mom's", or daycare so they can clean the house, go grocery shopping, get a massage, or to take the other child to the doctors! PUHLEEZE! What's the fun in trying to do all that without your kids hanging on your leg, fighting, and crying! Okay-I will admit I'm a bit jealous, misery loves company! :)

Parma mentioned drinking, smoking, pregnant women, & I was in the womb of one of them! I consumed a pack of cigarettes, a 6-pack of beer, & countless aspirin & alka-sletzer while in utero. Was a small (4.2 lbs.) but healthy girl at birth & still am to this day, knock on wood! Like everyone says...luck of the draw!

Interesting thread, Carol!

I remember how fun it was to wander all day outside- playing games, riding skateboards, bikes, rollerskating wandering all over the neighborhood and sometimes when we were older a bit beyond. Back in the days when it was fairly safe. We just had to be in by dusk.
Remember how much fun beebee guns were? now a days they are taboo!

BB guns-yes! I had a friend whose brother's would dress her in her snow suit and motorcycle helmet, make her run back and forth on the lawn while they shot at her from the windows upstairs! Too funny- of course the parents weren't home for that!

Ah, one of the best movie lines ever: "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!"
;-D

Amen Never ending! We used to have to be home by the time the street lights came on. In the summer that could be 9 or 9:30 PM!! We rode our bikes all over town, played Stab the Queen in the front yard, were constantly bare foot and we lived through it.

I can't imagine letting my 11 year old take off on his bike for 4-5 house knowing he's just out and about and would be home when the street lights came on!

How about the fact that to this day school buses don't have seat belts? I find this so ridiculous. I remember my youngest when he went to kindergarten we were told to bring his car seat in for field trips because he was so little, and they used cars for field trips, but goodness when it came time for him to ride the bus home, they just took his little 40 pound body and sat him right down no problem. Not to mention that half the body of a bus is glass windows for a child to be projected from or has a solid metal frame right in front of his little face.
I've been told it's because it would take too much time at stops for a child to unbuckle his seat belt.

Caroleoh: My oldest daughter has peanut allergies, and let me tell you, it is no fun for her dealing with it (Nor us parents). There is currently tons of research going on, but nothing definite for a cause. She is also allergic to shellfish and tree nuts. Not fun at all :(

I can imagine a peanut allergy would be a nightmare to try and protect your child from. Especially because alot of reactions are quite severe.

Two peanut allergy reactions I remember reading about was the kid who went into band and played a piano that someone who had just eaten a peanut butter sandwich had played on and then there was the boy who kissed his girlfriend after eating something with peanuts. Sortof gross if you think about it, but crazy how these reactions can occur without the child actually eating a peanut.

You just have to wonder what has changed in our lives over the past 30 years that has compromised our immune systems to react to things so adversely. Is it that we're too clean and our bodies don't produce enough of the right antibodies in some people, is it preservatives in our food, chemicals in the air or water?

My one friend who's son has peanut allergies told me her doctor told her it was because she ate alot of peanut butter sandwiches when she was pregnant with her son. What? I had a friend who recently gave birth and her doctor told her to not eat any peanuts while she was pregnant because her other son has other food allergies, so this baby may be prone to be allergic too.

I would think exposing a child or baby to allergens in small doses when they're very small would help them build up a resistance to that allergen. I've heard that children/babies exposes to cats and dogs as infants have a lower incidence of being allergic to them later...Don't know if that's totally true, but makes some sense to me.

I am so glad to see this thread- gives me a chance to vent as I was just thinking these thoughts the other night as I went to bed. The advent of technology has greatly changed our lives to the degree that you can almost draw a line between those who grew up without it and those who grew up with it.

News travels fast. So fast we longer live in ignorant bliss when a child goes missing in a different state. Fear strikes our hearts and all children have to be herded in everywhere, forever. Child predators aren't new, they had to be around when I was a kid, but you never heard about them until we became "cabelized". Now if I a see a strange older man at the beach instantly my radar is up -there is no way he could just be out enjoying the day, and forbid if he tries talking to my children! I hate having to think in these terms and wonder if we didn't go to such lengths protecting our children would the outcome be the same? We as a generation made it through and we were and are, better for it. Have the dangers really increased or are we just more aware? When anthrax can come in the mail and kill you, should I drive myself crazy preparing provisions for myself and my family in case the swine flu hits and the planet shuts down? I don't know, of course I can't take the chance, I've got kids to protect.

Every now and then my mother makes a comment here or there about how either I'm too laid back raising my kids or how difficult I make it on myself, and I want to tell her she hasn't got a clue what it's like to raise a child in today's world, for goodness sake she let me run wild through the neighborhood, left me in the car while she went shopping, and even spanked me on occasion!

I also think it was luck.
I remember the good old days of going outside and playing with my friends and not having to be home until the streetlights went on.
That all changed when a 10 year old girl in my neighborhood went missing, and was later found in a shallow grave nearby. I'll never forget that and it changed my trust in the world forever.

My mom didn't have outlet covers for us. Then again, our house didn't have that many outlets, especially not ones we kids could reach.

We didn't have pads on the hard corners of the living room furniture. If one was behaving in the living room, and not playing or running, then it was difficult to knock one's head on the furniture. I remember being told that when I was running in the living room and fell into one of those corners. You played outside.

Mom put the dangerous stuff out of reach so we didn't have cabinet locks. She probably regretted that once I learned how to make "music" by banging the pots and pans together.

We had boundaries that expanded as we became trustworthy. If you broke the trust by being out of boundaries or coming home late or not being with the people you said you were with, then boundaries got cut severely. I still remember the day I was allowed to go all the way around the block. We used to race around it by bike, skate, skateboard, and running during the "neighborhood olympics."

Our jungle gym had dirt under it.

We were always seatbelted, and we had baby seats when we were babies, but no booster seats. I seatbelt my dogs in the car now (no kids, thankfully). But we didn't have childproof locks, and yes, I did lock my mom out of the car once. Boy was she mad at me! I guess I could have suffocated except Mom would have used the Brick-o-Matic if necessary.

How awful Polly. It does happen. We had three boys die sliding on the ice in the winter, I'm sure all those mothers wish they hadn't let their children out of their site. Even if you are diligent and safety minded, life is so uncertain. The scary horrible part of being a parent.

Hey who remembers soda's in glass bottles in soda machines for a quarter? A big treat along with Saturday night popcorn and soda? Or how about walking to the neighborhood store with a dime for candy? Banana seats and streamers on bicycles? Sprinklers? Shoes not sneakers?

AJ, re:I sometimes think what might actually kill us is not some tragic accident or dreaded disease ... but the stress from worrying about dying from all of these things that allegedly "threaten" us on a daily basis.

Yes, absolutely. We think worrying will somehow protect us, but really, so many things happen randomly. I DO think worry and the stress it brings can lead us to an early death. My uncle, for example . . .my cousin died by getting hit by a train when he was 22. My uncle was never the same, and within a year he developed cancer, and then passed away from it within about 5 months.

I don't watch the news, which horrifies my mom . . .but my mom is ALWAYS SO WORRIED. I don't get why she does that to herself. Of course, I can't help knowing certain things, but I think it is crazy to watch the news right as you are about to go to bed. I still worry too much, but I am learning to let go.

I really need to learn to meditate daily. I think this would be the best medicine of all.

Yeah....it's funny I'm not DEAD!
(besides my Spinal-Meningitis scare ~ 1970...)

* Used to climb on our farm equipment!
* Play in mud-puddles with Tonka's...actually sitting in the water! Woo-hoo!
* Loved riding in the back of the pickup barreling down gravel roads.
* Climbing in the barn grain-bins with grain in there...
* Playing outside when it's -20...ACTUAL temp...not this "Wind-chill" silliness!
* Waiting for the school bus on our country road when it was -20.....hmmmmm....what is WRONG with me!?!!!?
( Calling off school 'cuz of "temperature alone" just didn't cut it up here...)
* Grew up small-grain farming...with BAD grain-dust allergies...yeee-haw! Finally started getting allergy-shots in the mid-70's.
* Working with grain augers, chemical tanks, PTO shafts, underneath diggers changing shovels,......

I'm still here!

Faron

Hey Faron, you DID live on the edge! We weren't allowed inside the grain bins unless they were almost empty. (Then we had to shovel, scoop, push the last bit of grain into the auger in the middle.) As for dusty grains, milo (grain sorghum) was the worst. We stopped planting milo after my dad and granddad ended up in the hospital with the farmer equivalent of black lung. And I HATED climbing on the outside of the grain bin, especially carrying a full bucket for my horse. One of my childhood memories is putting my little brother and sister inside a grain hopper to play. My brother could scramble out, but I had to roll my sister out the hatch at the bottom!

I survived, but not unscathed. Some didn't. The saddest funeral I ever attended was for a little boy I babysat; his mother didn't secure him in a car seat. He was thrown from her car and killed when a drunk driver hit them. When we had children I knew that I could not protect them against every bad thing, but I could take reasonable precautions. My mother didn't want to be inconvenienced by having to use car seats for my children, so I solved that problem by not letting them ride with her.

Once I was 10, my parents rarely knew where I was during the summer or on weekends, since they played golf frequently. Sometimes Mom would forget to leave the spare key in its hiding place and I'd be locked out. If I had money I could ride my bike 3 miles to the DairyQueen to buy a Coke, but if not I'd get a drink from a neighbor's garden hose. There were worse consequences of their inattention, but I won't go into that here.

None of us worried about sunblock, although we did use baby oil to keep from drying out while we baked. Everyone in my family has (or had) skin cancer, as do many of my friends. The ones who continued baking as adults now have skin that looks like tanned leather, dotted with light spots from the removal of melanomas.

There was a lot of underage drinking, as well as a lot of partying by some of the parents, but I was too afraid of mom's beatings if she caught me drinking so that was postponed until college. Back then, the legal age was 18 in many places. There was also a lot of pot, in the schools as well as at the beach. Some people experimented with hard drugs; a few had very bad results. One dear friend, who was in my honors classes in high school, was artistically and musically talented while his siblings were focused on science and math; that didn't go over well at home. He self-medicated the emotional pain, then spent the next several decades in various psych hospitals. My mom nagged me about befriending a certain crowd at the country club, not knowing that the most "popular" kids were also the biggest dealers at the beach.

In college (a good Jesuit school), the drug of choice for most students was quaaludes and I'd guess that at least half the students indulged in both pills and pot. Keggers in the Quad were common Friday afternoon events, with various student organizations hosting a party almost every week. Despite the lack of restrictions on drinking, there were other strictly enforced rules, and several girls from my dorm were sent packing for having guys spend the night. The guys' dorm was much looser, and RAs looked the other way when girls were there after visiting hours. I never saw a pregnant student on campus, but I did know/know of several girls who suddenly transferred to the state school back home. This was before folks knew about HIV, so physical barrier precautions were scorned and the Pill was popular. My last roommate graduated a semester early, filled with deep hatred toward all men and a nasty case of genital herpes (which freaked me out, naive as I still was.)

It seems like people were less informed about drug interactions or concerns about mixing certain Rx drugs with alcohol. A friend died because she didn't realize that she should not mix alcohol and her Rx. The authorities guessed that the combination made it difficult for her to recall if she'd taken her proper dose and she accidentally over medicated. I know that some warning labels seems like too much CYA litigation prevention, but I wish the health care industry had shared more information with patients sooner.

My husband grew up in the midwest, and his experiences or recollections are worse/scarier than mine. His family lived in an affluent bedroom community of a large city, and all of the kids attended various private schools.
He had a devoted and loving mother but she was so busy with a very large number of children that she couldn't have supervised all of them adequately even if she thought it necessary. It just wasn't common for parents to be so involved in the '60s - '70s, for better or for worse. The kids did enjoy a lot more freedom and seemed to become independent sooner, but there was a downside as well. Underage drinking was one problem, but drugs were much worse. When I look at my children's generation, I wonder how many of their medical and behavioral issues are related to their parents' drug use. When I got to college, I was stunned to learn about the extent of drug experimentation (cocaine & LSD, among other things.)

So I am one of the lucky ones, just because I'm still alive. But I have scars, both emotional and physical, that will never completely fade. I tried to find a balance between being too lax and hovering with my own children, but what I thought was being prudent was seen as overly protective by my parents and in-laws. Yet my kids still climbed trees, rode zip lines, shot pellet guns, went white water rafting & kayaking, flew in ultralights, tried snow skiing & snowboarding, etc., and I have plenty of grey hairs to attest to their exploits. ;-)

There's an interesting blog about raising children without being overly fearful - see the link below.