You know, I can still remember being very young and how much fun it was. Or at least I think I remember it being fun. I felt safe, lacking stress or pressure, and was interested in what the great outdoors had to reveal.
Now, you have to know that I lived in a pretty nice neighborhood, where the family ate dinner together, we all went to church on Sunday, and where it was OK to play in the street, ride your bicycle, climb trees and build forts. If you skinned your knee, the neighbor called your mom, and by the time you got home she had the bandage and tincture of iodine ready.
I did my homework, the dishes, and played. Period. Oh, yeah, I had my sports (I rode horses), played golf, figure-skated, bowled, played badminton and croquet, and was on the rifle team. But did I run from activity to activity, requiring an appointment book for scheduling “play dates” with my friends? Absolutely not.
What did I have? A “normal” childhood for the time. You see, I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s in the U.S. It was post-World War II and Korea, the America I knew was booming, and we had a revival of the happy days that you see on Andy Griffith, Leave it to Beaver, and Superman. This was an era where we were taught that life was fair, that the good guys win and that if you followed the rules, you would be safe and happy. And, oh yeah, everything was resolved in less than an hour. Remember Bonanza? Even the most awful circumstances were fixed by the end of that show.
What happened to those times? Were the good old days actually better? No. They weren’t. We were just naive, didn’t have the stuff that is now on the news 24/7 (that began by televising the Vietnam War with nightly body counts and gruesome images), and didn’t have to worry about terrorist attacks, bioterrorism, cyberspies or identity theft.
But we did dive under our silly desks at 1:00 every Monday afternoon as the air raid drill was sounded. We were afraid of Russia dropping The Bomb on us (er, just like we had done to Japan. Twice).
We had only two antibiotics, and my doctor used to come down the drive to give me a shot of penicillin once a day when I was sick. I was, and am, allergic to the other one, sulfa. I remember taking the Salk vaccine for polio, since it was still a problem in the United States. We also took paregoric (ohh, gag!) for nearly everything from tummy aches to sleep problems. What did that mean? Only the physically tough survived. The flu was expected; so were measles, mumps, and even whooping cough (although that was on the way out). Our parents feared polio and scarlet fever. My fourth grade buddy died of pleurisy (look it up!). I still remember that.
Why am I talking about this? Well, I reflect back on the “good old days” and they weren’t so good for adults. Just for kids. And the kids lived completely in a fantasy world that had nothing to do with the cigarette smoke-filled, boozy happy hours that our parents enjoyed. My parents remembered the Great Depression, they knew about war, and they had often lost family members to disease and disaster.
Mental health was never spoken about, barely whispered. Depression was seen as a weakness, and never treated, unless you became so depressed that you couldn’t function, but could afford going into a sanatorium. I live near one of the most famous private mental hospitals in the country, where Zelda Fitzgerald and Jonathan Winters recovered from depression (or bipolar disorder, in Winters’s case). Only the rich could go there, and only the rich were treated fairly.
Just down the freeway from my home is a state hospital that was shown on TV in 1961 as still being cruel to the insane, as we used to call those poor people who suffered from delusions and hallucinations. I remember the show very clearly and it shocked even my youthful mind. They were strapping people down, or to the hospital room walls, naked. It was easier to clean them if they didn’t have soiled clothes. Imagine that. Only 48 years ago, and they were still treating humans more poorly than they were treating their own pet dogs.
We didn’t get the Civil Rights Bill signed until 1964. At least my generation fostered some of the change we wanted. This bill fostered change for everyone; men, women, children, black, white, red, or yellow. The mentally ill, and those unable to care or protect themselves. Everyone.
Life was a fantasy for kids, but not for adults back then. But how do you think your kids are going to look back on their childhood, especially because instead of playing with a large cardboard box (that could be anything from a castle to a fire house), riding bikes, fishing, and playing miniature golf, they are watching movies like “Dragged Into Hell” and playing video games where you blow things up and murder people (or androids, same thing). These kids are isolated and getting more depressed and angry as the days go by.
Maybe your childhood wasn’t as “magical” as I thought mine was. Perhaps it was. But you have the power to change your kid’s childhood (or even your own, if you’re still a kid) by getting out there and doing things. Riding a bike (where it’s safe), going to the playground (with supervision) and playing Wii with others can foster truly great memories, no matter how accurate. Get up, get out there, and have fun. Childhood is gone as quickly as your breath. This is the time that you can build a great adult.
I invite others to write about the goodness in their own childhood, or talk about how they are helping to build positive memories for their children. There’s always time. But it is time to make that difference, take that step, for better mental and social functioning for our kids and ourselves.
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5 Comments to
“The Age of Innocence”
My pre-teen playground was either a storm-water drain, a huge oval-sized deep sandpit or the local creek by the railway line where frogs were caught. I loved my childhood. We now live next to bushland (this is Australia) and during the school holidays I encouraged my children to play there. They’d raid our shed for planks, nails and hammers and build cubby houses and bike ramps and come home dirty and hungry at night-time. It’s still out there for all to enjoy and I don’t believe there are more kidnappers or paedophiles out than there was back in the 1970’s.
My pre-teen playground was either a storm-water drain, a huge oval-sized deep sandpit or the local creek by the railway line where frogs were caught. I loved my childhood. We now live next to bushland (this is Australia) and during the school holidays I encouraged my children to play there. They’d raid our shed for planks, nails and hammers and build cubby houses and bike ramps and come home dirty and hungry at night-time. It’s still out there for all to enjoy and I don’t believe there are more kidnappers or paedophiles out than there was back in the 1970’s.
Oops…forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next one.
I was born/reared in the same time period as the author of this article. We played out of doors a lot with less supervision than I gave my own children. I read lots of books and do remember having some fun. I also remember being physically, sexually, emotionally and spiritually abused in a time when “whatever goes on behind closed doors is nobody’s business but our family’s”. The neighbors knew bad things were happening and no one ever tried to help. My childhood was so frightening that I blocked much of it out of my up-front mind. I used dissociation to a huge extent to survive and have since spent my adulthood trying to get past my past. I am the 3rd generation of the kinds of abuse I experienced - and most thankfully I broke the chain and my own precious children were not abused. They did have to deal with a mom who had major problems.
I recently realized that “child welfare” services did not even exist when I was young and that the neighbors did not have any idea of what to do to help me. My childhood felt like a concentration camp to me because I saw things and experienced stuff no one should have to.
I’ve done a lot of thinking about my childhood and my family and my own children. The thing that ultimately helped me survive was developing a spiritual relationship with God. If not for that I would have destroyed myself and possibly others along with me.
There are still people suffering behind closed doors. I wish I had a perfect plan for a good society, but I don’t. My age of innocence ended before I said my first word. It still hurts.
I was born in 1971 and even during my childhood, the 70s & 80s, things were less stressful.
I played outside all summer long. I didn’t have to come home until the street lights came on. My mom never worried about where I was or what I was doing.
I did have video games. I was about 7 years old when the Atari 2600 came out. We played Pac-Man and Space Invaders. On an Atari system you can only play so many minutes of Pac-Man and Space Invaders before you get really bored with it. Then we went outside to play.
We didn’t have cell phones. We didn’t have day-long scheduled activities. We didn’t have computers. We didn’t even have cable TV. When there are only 10 channels to choose from… you play outside a lot.
We played in the corn field. We played baseball in the cul-de-sac. We played hop scotch. We had lemonade stands. We swam at the pool. We rode our bikes. We played… outside.
I’m SO glad I grew up when I did… I have fantastic memories.
I would like to say, first of all, that I found this post very interesting, thank you. Second of all, Lisa, my heart goes out to you, you’re a strong and amazing individual and kudos to you for breaking that chain!
Back to The Age of Innocence, I guess I should say that I was born and raised in Ukraine so that probably makes my perspective somewhat different, but my point is, I, too, remember my childhood as being happy.
When I first read the post, I agreed with its main points, but as I keep thinking about it, a question comes up. If we were to go to the future and ask today’s kids (now all grown up) if they consider their childhood to have been a happy one, would they say yes? Perhaps, most children, no matter when or where they have grown up, (except for, of course, extremely traumatic circumstances)have the experience of a happy childhood.
Is the right to an innocent childhood really being taken away from American children or do we just see it this way from our “adult” point of view? Having said that, I still do think it is important for parents to spend quality time with their children and tear them away from television and computers (even if they make them happy), if only for the sake of making sure they still remember what the sun and the sky look like in the real world.
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