Why is this so unthinkable nowadays? We didn't even have smartphones back then and my parents often had no idea where I was until I popped up again.

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BrittEklandsStuntBum@reddit

Not at all hours of the night though.

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DooficusIdjit@reddit

I mean, we didn’t have permission, but we did that, too.

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B_B_Rodriguez2716057@reddit

When the street lights came on I knew it was time to head home.

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RobinSophie@reddit

You know a lot of people say this, but ours was "you better BE HOME by the time the streetlights came on."

If you're still outside when the streetlight came on, just prepare for the ass whooping.

[-]

I never understood the street lights thing at all. Sure, it made sense in the summertime. But in the winter, it gets dark at like 5pm. My family was just getting off work at 5pm. Did yall really have to be inside at 5pm? That sounds lame to me.

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Euphoric-Blueberry97@reddit

Yes because by the time we cleaned up supper would be ready.

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AtariDave@reddit

So in the winter, you had to be home at 5 to get cleaned up for dinner, but in the summer you could be out until the street lights came on at 9pm? What about dinner in the summer? Did you have to come home at 5 and then get to go back out? But not in the winter?

Im just saying, for me, my family didnt get off work until 5pm. We didnt usually eat until 630 or 7 anyways. I was allowed to go back out after and come in around 9.

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RobinSophie@reddit

Our falls/winters are usually wet so by the time Daylight Savings comes around, we weren't playing outside anyway.

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elkniodaphs@reddit

Mine was, "just come home at some point." Roaming around the abandoned water tower at 3am drinking B&J's before tapping out and hitting the PS1 at [insert buddy's name here] was typical.

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Deep-Interest9947@reddit

I did have a period of time circa 1992-1994 when I crawled out of the window often in the middle of the night. Just to met up and hang with my middle school friends. I feel that would never happen now on account of more surveillance.

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weezeloner@reddit

Oh yeah. In my case it was to my neighbor's house across the street. I wouldn't call her my girlfriend because we never hung out at school since we hung out with different crowds but in 7th and 8th grade she was my late night hook-up friend.

I got caught a few times, but when a 13 year old boy can score, he's going to find a way to play.

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DrunkenDude123@reddit

Streetlights rule? My parents were strict but around 7th grade I was allowed to stay out until 10 then it stayed like that until like 11/12th grade where midnight, but half the time when I said I was going to stay the night at my friends we were out later

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ConflictOfEvidence@reddit

Well if you "camped out" you could do whatever you wanted all night.

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Temporary-Warning883@reddit

No, but I would sneak out of my window after my mom went to sleep. My step dad planted bushes underneath my window so it would be harder for me to do, but it didn’t deter me lol. Or you could use the old staying at someone’s house excuse.

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yamahowzer@reddit

Roses outside the ground floor window stopped working as a detergent so Dad started playing hearts on the family PC next to the back door and basically under the stairs until 2-3 am most nights

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Kgby13@reddit

I’ve never used roses as detergent. Guessing it didn’t get the stains out?

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FinallyKat@reddit

The bushes made it easier for my friends to hide stepladders and whatnot

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Alarmed-madman@reddit

Knotted rope tie to the bedframe

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BrittEklandsStuntBum@reddit

Haha yeah the garage roof was right under my window. That was useful.

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LiiilKat@reddit

We climbed onto the roof to jump into our in-ground swimming pool.

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BrittEklandsStuntBum@reddit

Happy cake day!

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LiiilKat@reddit

Thank you so much! (-^,^-)

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RezRising@reddit

I think I can see where your name came from.

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BrittEklandsStuntBum@reddit

Lol it's a reference to The Wicker Man - they used a body double for her nude rear shots.

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RR321@reddit

Well I remember going to sleep at a neighbor without asking and my mom the next day dating she would rather I told or called beforehand and that was it...

[-]

Taupenbeige@reddit

Unless we had to escape through a rift when a demogorgon was chasing us, or some other extenuating circumstance

[-]

CryptographerPast632@reddit

Or if we needed to stay up all night in an attic reading about how to help Atreu stop the Nothing, only to find out we’re reading about how WE stop the Nothing.

[-]

pewopp@reddit

But I have to keep my feet on the ground

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Titanbeard@reddit

Man, Artax, Optimus Prime, and Mr. Hooper dying hurt me so hard as a kid.

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Taupenbeige@reddit

Yeah real talk

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Aggravating_Bat3618@reddit

We didn’t have that, but we had old man Bill yelling at us not to fuck up his manicured yard.

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Titanbeard@reddit

Hell, my ma woulda been fine if I went through a rift as long as I was home in time for dinner.

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modulus801@reddit

As long as you checked in after 9 or when paged with 411 or 911.

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LiiilKat@reddit

I sometimes miss the simplicity of a pager, being able to text a single word with numbers.

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Ok-Somewhere-2325@reddit

There were many of times I snuck out, there were even more times in high-school that I just went out the front door in the middle of the night to go for a walk under the moonlight.

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BrittEklandsStuntBum@reddit

Yeah I always hated it when that happened.

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Londin2021@reddit

Not happening on a school night

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jambr380@reddit

A lot of us had a cheat code, though. If our parents didn’t allow it, then we had a friend whose parents did. Then you could just have a sleepover at their house and do whatever you want at whenever

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protossaccount@reddit

Yeah I needed permission and in high school I told my parents were I was an who I was with. Sure I could get away with going to parties but that’s about it.

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Randym1982@reddit

I know in the 90s it was pretty much go out till the street lights came on. Or round 4-6PM depending on when your family started dinner. And most of the time it was contextual. If your friends were home. If you did or didn't have homework. If it wasn't raining, or too hot. etc.

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IAm5toned@reddit

I don't know that's debatable. Like, my friend group, We snuck out alot 🥷

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LiiilKat@reddit

My rollerblades took me lots of places in the latter part of the 90s!

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BrittEklandsStuntBum@reddit

Yeah but the phrasing of "did they have the freedom" implied permission to me.

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Lala5789880@reddit

True but it was so easy to sneak out

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jrm2003@reddit

That wasn’t necessarily allowed, but it didn’t require a ton of planning. There was always one parent who really didn’t care and you’d just say you were staying at that kids house.

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Jerkrollatex@reddit

They rounded us up and sent us to a for-profit mental institution. Got to love kick backs.

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EatLard@reddit

My city had a curfew, so if the cops caught you out after 11 they’d actually cuff and stuff you and take you to the JDC where your parents would have to pick you up. It became pretty controversial because they would also strip search kids before their parents got there. There was a big lawsuit and they quit doing that.

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thebookofswindles@reddit

We had a curfew in my city too and I was arrested a couple times. But there was no handcuffs. And strip searching… wtf?!!!

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Jerkrollatex@reddit

A lot of us went out our bedroom windows or "slept over at a friend's house".

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buffysmanycoats@reddit

True, at 10 pm the news would remind our parents to find out where we were.

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ADMotti@reddit

Do YOU know where your children are?!?

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Dan_Berg@reddit

I told you last night, no!

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Kidkrid@reddit

I told you last time, no!

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Pleasant-Reading3634@reddit

Only if there was a kidnapping story on.

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Dmbeeson85@reddit

I mean we had to be back at streetlights... Then my parents would pass out and we could usually walk out the back door and meet up with some friends to hang out under the lights or ride our bikes in a parking lot... Then we would see another adult we knew and scattered and pretend the next day we knew nothing about it

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RezRising@reddit

That, "It's 10pm. Do you know where your children are?" didn't come outta nowhere, man.

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No_Barber_1195@reddit

Just until 10pm. Then that reminder came on.

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ThrobbingMinotaur@reddit

You had to be back before your parents got up for work.

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Sumeriandawn@reddit

Especially for those who grew up in rougher neighborhoods

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RipErRiley@reddit

Exactly. My mother worked nights so I was always the last in our neighborhood clan to have to leave yet had to be in bed by the time she got home at 10.

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majikane@reddit

Sort of, though? If I told my mom I was staying over at a friend’s house, she wasn’t calling to check up on me. I don’t even think the parents of my friend group knew each other.

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-Invalid_Selection-@reddit

Till the street lights came on, then we better be getting home and quick

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whistleridge@reddit

If you grew up poor enough you did.

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BrittEklandsStuntBum@reddit

Point.

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trifecta000@reddit

Street lights come on, time to go home

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jbahill75@reddit

Me realizing that not only were we largely unsupervised, no one asked what we did either when we got home…I mean, we would have lied half the time if they asked so…

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Unlikely-Collar4088@reddit

If there’s one thing we xennials love more than our unsupervised childhood freedom, it’s celebrating posts like this every day on this subreddit

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brainfreeze77@reddit

The 3rd thing we love is knowing where our children are at all times and installing tracking apps on their phones and monitoring their social media.

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RodinKnox@reddit

Yeah, people always ask questions like, "Why don't kids do this today?" and it's because the kids who were raised like this grew up and didn't let their own kids live that way.

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Dmbeeson85@reddit

All of the 'oh shit I almost died' moments that didn't make us happier or safer

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GostBoster@reddit

Once I saw a family I didn't knew coming down the street and they were all unusually with their sunday best clothes and luggage, presumably to get an interstate bus on the roadside, as was the style at the time.

Climbed up as high as I could, perched myself upside down like a bat, and stared at them vowing to "never forget them".

As I still have that mental reminder, now I'm aware that I was also being a weirdo, creeping them out...

... and that I could have slipped, broke my neck, and my story would have ended there.

I started to realize that the last time I spoke with my late grandpa, when he said he was happy that all of his grandchildren are alive, thriving, and literate, for his generation had basically 20-30% infant mortality rate.

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jbahill75@reddit

It’s the power play of cat logic: I see you but you don’t know I’m here. Mwahaha

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No_Statement440@reddit

gif

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GostBoster@reddit

How are you able to post images that render on old reddit?

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No_Statement440@reddit

I'm still on windows 98

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Brcomic@reddit

I was left unsupervised with firearms, knives, fireworks and atvs. How I never suffered anything worse than a broken nose and concussion from getting run off the road on a 4 wheeler is baffling to me. I should have died 100 times by the time I was 16.

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Rob_LeMatic@reddit

When I first started walking, I was a climber. I scaled the kitchen cabinets and made it almost to the ceiling. There was something on top of the top cupboards, and with my toes in the porcelain dishes, I just barely gripped the lip and pulled it down on top of my head--it was a Tupperware full of heavy filers for shaving down metal gears, and we all went crashing to the floor together.

Another time, probably 3 years old, I was scaling the Thing with the Mirror, a wooden dresser with shelves on the sides and a mirror in the middle that went floor to ceiling. I made it on top and there was a Herters .357 revolver up there. It was loaded, but the trigger wouldn't squeeze. I found out later it was single action, and only didn't fire because the hammer must not've been cocked.

I think I might've been safer out alone in the woods than I was inside the house lol

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Brcomic@reddit

Sounds about like my youth. My mom still tells a story about how I snuck out of the house at the age of 3, because no one was paying attention to me. Walked about 200 yards to my grandparents house. Went in. Moved a chair to the cabinet, climbed up. Got a cookie. And all the while they are all freaking out because they finally noticed I was gone. Found me walking back with my cookie.

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RodinKnox@reddit

Haha, one time when I was like five or six, after my Sat morning cartoons went off, mom made me mad, so I decided to run away from home. I packed some stuff in my backpack and took off. I went off into the woods and followed a creek to some kind almost like campground area and decided to set up shop.

Later in the day (must have been around 1pm), I started getting real hungry, so I decided I needed to "break into" my old old house and get some food. When I did, mom was in the kitchen, and was just like, "Oh great! You're home for lunch? Do you want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?" and at that point I decided running away was too much trouble lol

From her perspective, I had just gone outside to play like normal. My parents were used to not seeing me for hours at a time on a Saturday.

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Admirable_Average_32@reddit

Did something very similar around 7 or 8 years old. Only my campground was the small space between two houses across the alley from my backyard. Was really comfy.

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RodinKnox@reddit

I don't remember a whole lot of details about my time, but one thing I remember like it happened five minutes ago was that I was allowed to go down to that area I mentioned. It was too far away from home. (And maybe my parents knew of stuff that went on there; I don't know.)

Anyway, I remember thinking, "I can't go down there. Wait! I ran away from home! Mom and dad's rules don't count now!" and was all proud of myself for figuring that out lol

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Basic-Place-4443@reddit

In fact, the more unsafe we were, the bigger the thrill. Mowing lawns for cash during the day and spending that money on weed, alcohol, and cigarettes. Being drunk regularly by the time you are 13. Let's not even mention that older kids and people's parents had loose boundaries with us, and we felt it was normal. We all knew that someone's cool mom/dad who said you can drink all the beer you want at my house, just don't leave here drunk and get us all in trouble. We all knew who was real freindly when they thought no one was looking. And I am not just talking about dirty old men either. People's moms and older sisters were just as bad.

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blood_bones_hearts@reddit

And let's not forget survivor bias. The kids who weren't so lucky aren't here to be posting about it.

My siblings and I were a bit tamer but my brother in law has some wild stories where him and his friends are only still here out of sheer luck and not because their parents did a good job.

Most of the rules and safety stuff we have now is written in someone's blood.

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Dmbeeson85@reddit

Oh 100%

I have a number of kids I grew up with that were injured or lost their life.

That's why when my kids are in highschool I'm going to tell them that if they drink they can call me, free get out of jail card if they call and ask for a ride home. Hell I'll lie to the other parents just to get the kids home safe.

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irate_alien@reddit

Yeah, tremendously that taste in your mouth when you had the moment of clarity of how stupid you were?

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AnotherName545@reddit

Yeah, upon reflection, maybe it wasn't that great that my friend's parents let us smoke in the house and in fact often joined us.

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jbahill75@reddit

Many of us had the luxury of growing in our parents’ hometowns. Everyone knew eachother to at least some degree in a neighborhood. Also, we did some crazy stuff. Didn’t want our kids doing the same…but of course they still managed to do it or did the same stuff later. Xennials just transferred our “spending the night trick” to “i’ve got a playdate with so and so” then you had your alibi for freedom and trouble.

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LokiStrike@reddit

People are literally being charged for neglect for letting their kids play out of sight.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/parents-in-trouble-with-law-after-11-year-old-121600960882.html

https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrested-son-park

https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/parents-charged-with-neglect-for-kids-playing-outside/67-236499005

https://pacificlegal.org/arizona-mom-listed-on-state-registry-for-letting-son-play-at-park/

https://reason.com/2022/12/08/emily-fields-pearsiburg-virginia-cps-kids-outside-neglect/

It's because in a lot of places it is basically illegal now.

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Basic-Place-4443@reddit

Some of us remember all the not-so-wholesome stuff we did that we can't put on those YT nostalgia videos, like riding your bike to the corner store after your parents fell asleep to buy beer, Mad Dog, or cigarettes. Buying condoms and sneaking into that cute girl's window down the street. Finding out that one of the high school kids in your neighborhood was left alone this weekend, and they were having a party. So booze, drugs, and older (drunk) girls would be there. There is a lot Gen X just doesn't talk about, but we enjoyed a lot of freedom. You were 30 by the time you were 16.

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RodinKnox@reddit

Oh no, that's certainly true, too. My sister lives in a place like that.

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kingrat1@reddit

True, I was going to say that. You're putting your children in danger of getting kidnapped - only now it's equally likely to be the government that does that to you (especially if you're dark-skinned/poor).

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Dashcamkitty@reddit

Yes I think of the places I went to as a child and how easily some pervert or psycho could have just killed us and nobody would have found us for days. I won't be letting that happen to my kids!

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KaOsGypsy@reddit

We would camp out in the yard, and when the adults were asleep, we would walk the train tracks, wander around in the industrial area, times were different then, but it was still crazy.

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drtyhppi@reddit

I remember in middle school I'd stay the night with my best friend and we'd dress all in black and sneak out his bedroom window in the middle of the night. We'd wander the streets, duck from passing cars and occasionally meet other kids that were doing the same thing. We never did anything. It was just cool to be out like that. Then we'd sneak back in through his bedroom window and sit up the rest of the night playing SNES or listening to music.

I lost track of that dude over the years. I recently tried looking him up, but ultimately decided that I'd rather remember him as my best friend in 7th-8th grade and left it at that.

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RelevantFilm2110@reddit

That's a lot of the places I was pretty much allowed to be. When you consider the stuff people our age did that we weren't allowed to or simply did without asking, it was even more dangerous.

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Romulan-Jedi@reddit

I just looked at Google Maps for the town in which I grew up, and while the town center is still ideal for walking, all of the local hangout spots are either gone or have a more grown-up feel. There's just no reason for kids to want to spend time there any more.

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RodinKnox@reddit

I've talked about this before (on this subreddit actually), but the destruction of our third spaces is honestly extremely bad and something people don't talk about enough.

Like I wish my nieces and nephews could hang out at the mall like I did as a teen. But they don't have one. It doesn't exist. The mall was kind of great, too, because my parents could also feel pretty comfortable with 1) knowing where I was and 2) It being a public space with lots of people around.

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Romulan-Jedi@reddit

We still have a mall, but it no longer has any place that could be considered a hangout spot for kids, except for the food court. No comic or baseball card shops, no coffee or snack shops that cater to younger folk, etc.

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RodinKnox@reddit

Oh man. Yeah, we'd do the rounds: Comics, music, movie store, game store, arcade, confectionary, etc.

Plus, we would fairly regularly buy stuff with money from summer jobs and whatnot. So it's not like we were even just loitering. (Which, to be fair, I'm not against as a general rule.)

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Useful_Tomato_409@reddit

Because we have social media now, and have watched too many shows and movies, and the veil of our childhood was lifted off and exposed the various ways in which the world/society just doesn’t care about you, or anyone else. It’s safer today than it was back then too.

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vikmaychib@reddit

The other day someone posted in our local school Facebook parents group a picture of some strange car and was concerned of it driving around and was warning everyone about the worst possible scenarios. The engagement of the post was insane, and many were chiming on the panic. After few hours, a neighbor recognized the car and said it belonged to some workers that drive around asking for small jobs (landscaping, recycling materials, etc). Immediately, no one said anything nor acknowledged the idiotic collective reaction we were about to dive in. Most of us in that group are Xennials and Millennials.

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RodinKnox@reddit

That's one thing that kills me. We really are much safer today than when my parents used to let me run around for hours when I was like five. But it doesn't feel like it with our media intake.

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Leading-Summer-4724@reddit

Basically this. When I was 5 me and my friends used to tease the local alligator, and my parents never knew. I’m not putting my own kid in that position.

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killa_sushi_robot@reddit

Discord servers

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Remarkable_Kiwi_4096@reddit

trying to give my kids that childhood! they do have phones with a location on, but i honestly never look at it and never text them when they're out. it's there for emergencies only.

once when she was about 14, we had a fight about some training thing she was supposed to be completing. she didn't want to go any more, and when i dropped her off, she stormed into the building in a rage. she came back home a couple hours later, acting like she had done it, and i never let on that i'd suspected she'd left the building the second i pulled away and checked her location just to see where she'd ended up. i let her deal with the consequences of pretending she'd finished the training when her chickens came home to roost a few weeks later.

we specifically chose to live in an area where kids play outside and take transit from a young age and they were both comfortable going places on their own from early on. we don't encourage them to use their phones to text for every little thing (like at school, or if they're at a friend's)...

it's possible, i think, to raise kids that have freedom and relatively little surveillance, but not all of the insane risk that i did in the 90s.

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oh-no-varies@reddit

Ha! Unfortunately true. I treasure the memories of riding my bike around the neighborhood after school, building forts in the woods behind our school, and walking to friends homes alone with my thoughts. But I cannot imagine my own 8 year old even walking a block to the nearby playground alone. I can't even leave my kids in the car when I run into a corner store to buy milk. Times have changed.

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angnicolemk@reddit

But... times have changed for the better. Crime is down everywhere and abductions are down everywhere.

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DickWhittingtonsCat@reddit

They love to conflate the very rated actual stranger abductions with ex-husband not returning kid after weekend to really muddy the waters with the abduction thing

They do the same thing homicides and gun violence, that gets tossed in a bucket with gun deaths- but half of those are suicides.

Not saying illegal custody or depression should be minimized but it’s reminder to always dig a smidge deeper when stats are being wheeled out- because every outlet has point of view and is trying to manipulate you.

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weezeloner@reddit

Yeah, actual abductions by strangers are less than 100 a year. And of those taken, more than 93% are recovered alive. In the 1990s, that number was 63%.

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oh-no-varies@reddit

Yes, crime is down, but parenting norms have changed. People will literally call the police if they see children alone in a car for 5 minutes or walking unsupervised. Other parents will alienate your family from playdates and social activities if you don't conform to the current safety norms. And when I was a kid part of why I was safe walking to the bus stop or biking on the street was because adults expected to see kids out and about, and our friends would join up in packs so we weren't alone. If I sent my kid out she would be the only one walking to and from. My neighbors drive their kid 7 blocks to our school! A lot of families don't even walk the walkable distances anymore. We are parenting in a different landscape.

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Pearl-Internal81@reddit

This, the time we live in now is insanely safe from a crime perspective.

The best example of this trend I can think of is serial killers, and yes, I know that’s a really morbid example. But think about the last ten-to-fifteen years, how many have you heard about? Or on the flip side how many old serial killers from the “Golden Age of Serial Killers (1970’s to like the mid-to-late 1990’s) have you heard about because they’ve been apprehended in their dotage due to modern technology?

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External-Praline-451@reddit

I think it's partly the lack of herd protection- so few kids play or walk alone in the neighbourhood, if you let your kids do it, they stick out like a sore thumb and seem more vulnerable. I don't have kids myself, but heard other parents say this and I reckon I'd feel similar.

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weezeloner@reddit

I'm trying to break my wife from this. She almost had a stroke when she got home from grocery shopping and noticed our 15 yesr old wasn't home and I told her she walked to the convenience store to get a slurpee.

She came back alive and well. Not even one person jumped out of the bushes and tried to take her.

We don't track what apps she uses. But we do limit how much she can use apps and what times she can use them. We did recently have to take her phone since she has a D in geometry.

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fleetiebelle@reddit

Beyond all the other reasons, having to hands-on parent kids 24/7 could be why some people are saying "no thanks" to the whole endeavor. Can you even imagine being reachable all day every day or communicating with parents even at school? Back in the day they'd have to call the office, and that would have to be an emergency.

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el_loco_avs@reddit

I mean. Plenty of kids get unsupervised online time. That's probably more fuck up lol

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martianunlimited@reddit

lol.. ya... I sometimes wonder who the target audience Chris Hanson's To catch a predator was ...

in the same vein... try this parody PSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LehnGZDdXeo (watch to the end)... (the channel is full of 90s style PSA parodies)

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SpoonFullOfSugar1111@reddit

I feel so seen right now

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sleepytipi@reddit

Things were no safer back then either. If anything they were worse.

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weezeloner@reddit

Crime was 2 to 3 times higher than today. That's the crazy part.

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three-sense@reddit

Yeah you’d have shit like John Wayne Gacy because nobody knew where anyone was. Not fun.

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Wonderor803@reddit

Yeah these kind of posts are total “old man yells at cloud” clickbait for Xennials and Boomers to reminisce about how much better it was back when.

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RelevantFilm2110@reddit

No, opposite... it's mostly looking back on how amazing it is that we didn't hurt or worse..

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Shiresire1565@reddit

Or maybe we've just seen the entire world around us go to complete shit and people eating each other and destroying each other like they're fucking mad men and it used to not be this way and we're really the last generation to experience it not this way

[-]

Unlikely-Collar4088@reddit

Yes, we are all rueful

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RumpleDumple@reddit

We drank from the hose, godammit!

[-]

zombietrooper@reddit

Nectar of the Plastic Gods!

[-]

TotalHell@reddit

“Things were so much better back in my day” posts and comments are, unfortunately, eternal.

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HotTubSexVirgin22@reddit

It should really be pinned to the top.

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Admirable_Average_32@reddit

Had multiple sleepovers that led to all nighters literally running the streets. The oldest trick in the book: tell your mom you’re staying at my house, tell my mom I’m staying at your house and BOOM! Out all night!

Pack a bag of snacks, drinks and any other necessities. It was dumb and not really sure of the point but man it was a blast!

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metallicadefender@reddit

Even in the 90s. As long as your homework was done. You just ran around or rode around on your bicycle.

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Negative-Squirrel81@reddit

It wasn't like our entire childhood, just like, the very end of high school when we started to get drivers licenses. Unless going to other people's houses in the same neighborhood seems like crazy freedom to people.

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Basic-Place-4443@reddit

It was considered healthy for your kids to play outside. Yes, when the streetlights came on was a normal curfew, even when the summer days would naturally be longer. Spending the night at some random person's house, your parents never heard of, was normal, and the reverse also worked. Having friends you just met during the day could, at the last minute, spend the night with you, after your moms spoke on the phone for 30 seconds. Friday night, scary movies would be shown on local tv stations after midnight and the whole neighborhood of kids would be sleeping all over your living room, or some other person's living room. Oh, and your friend's siblings would also have all their friends, too. Imagine the mayhem. Yes, there were actual PSA announcements at 10 PM on the tv. "Do You Know Where Your Children Are?" I was 9 and learned how to ride a bicycle. My parents rarely showed any concern other than asking me if my homework was done. At 16, when I got my driver's license, the only concern was just to call home if you aren't coming home, so we know you are ok. Life in the 1980's was completely unsupervised and free. By the 2000's, that was all gone. It was normal to hover around your kids.

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CmdrFortyTwo@reddit

My parents made me leave notes as to where I was going to be, and heaven help me if I wasn't where I said I was going to be.

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MetaverseLiz@reddit

I was rare. I was an only child with helicopter parents. I was always jealous of my friends and peers that got to run around, and I didn't.

It made me hyper independent and not close with my family. I'm trying to make up for lost adventures I wish I was able to have as a kid.

Now, most of my friends are having only one kid and are giving their kids less freedom. No one knows what it's like to be an only kid and feel like they are caged.

If I had the Internet the kids have now when I was growing up, I'd also be glued to it. I fear there will be less adventure in the younger generation.

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Euphoric-Blueberry97@reddit

Same. Except I had an older sister but she was enough older to not want to hang out with me. I spent half my childhood completely bored. The bright side is now I find even fairly ordinary things to do exciting.

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PokerbushPA@reddit

I'm amazed that people are amazed by how neglected and ignored we were.

They can't grasp that the most spoiled and entitled generation ever (Boomers) would feel burdened by children and therefore neglect them.

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PunkyBrewster1980@reddit

So many thoughts! The time period of this show and the nostalgia it brought was the PRIMARY reason I watched it. To anyone who "helicopter parents," or who critizes freedom on a bike, go read "The Anxious Generation." Gen Z is so screwed. AND...I was super stoked when my 8 and 9 year olds took their bikes around the neighborhood (alone) and gathered up friends to bike with them today! No cops showed up at my house, so it was a success!

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SinStarsGalaxy@reddit

Definitely not all hours of the night. If I wasn’t home after 9 or when the street lights came on then I was definitely at a friend’s house and my mom knew. I would be back around noon the next day.

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RoundTheBend6@reddit

What’s a parent?

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Therealfern1@reddit

This is why we read Lord of the flies and didn’t blink an eye. We basically lived it on our own on a daily basis. Just coming home long enough to sleep and do it again the next day.

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angnicolemk@reddit

I'm sad to see so many people in these threads that almost sound like they're supporting crapping your children in a bubble. We were in far more more danger as children, and didn't realize it. The real truth is that crime is down significantly in the United States since the 80s and 90s, and abductions are also down significantly. There's real reason to be so incredibly terrified to give your children some independence. I feel like a lot of people here don't realize they are the ones that are creating the GenZ kids that can't handle real life adult experience at all because they've been so freaking sheltered.

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weezeloner@reddit

I've been working on this with my wife. I let our 15 year old walk to the convenience store and my wife had a fit. I then asked her if she ever walked to the convenience store near where we used to live? (Wife and I grew up 3 streets away from each other. Went to all the same schools but i didn't meet her till I was 30). She of course replied, "Yea. But things were different back then." I said, "Yes, they were much more dangerous. And that convenience store is at least twice as far as the one our daughter is walking too. She'll be fine."

And sure enough she was.

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Crans10@reddit

Well before Amber Alerts.

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TrustAffectionate966@reddit

Hahahah. It was WORSE! I remember when I was 8 and went to a corner store to buy BEER and loose cigarettes! (This was in Latin America.)

🧉🦄

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Deranged-Pickle@reddit

Because Gen Z and Alpha can't think critically

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Dextropic@reddit

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zenlittleplatypus@reddit

I'd leave the house at 7 and not come back until dusk. No one had any fucking clue where we were or what we were doing. And no one cared.

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willywagtail37@reddit

YES

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Maineamainea@reddit

It was easy to sneak out in the suburbs, especially if your parents were already asleep. No gps tracking phones alerting them and unless you were rich no alarm systems to set off.

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Sweet-Apricot8568@reddit

Yes, 80s was awesome for a kid.

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Responsible-Maybe289@reddit

Yep!!

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ExistingButton1@reddit

Yeah... and a lot of kids went missing back then

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Kain-rpg@reddit

Us being out of the house for 12 hours a day, is why our mothers where less prone to stress.

Now parents are expected to surveil their kids 24/7 and know where they are.

In 98, when i got up and i had breakfast, if i startd to sit in front of the Tv to watch Batman animated or Gargoyles, my mom would say she'd record it on the VCR and would kick my ass out of the house with some pocket money and just tell me to stay out of trouble and be back before the street lights goes On.

I would come back at 20h, with a bloody nose, a missing tooth, scraped knees, dirty clothes covered in dust and mud and she would ask me "did you have fun sweety?, now go wash up, dinner is ready and the movie will soon start" "whats on TV?" "There's a rerun of Robocop or that movie that came out earlier this year, Starship Troopers" 14yro me "SWEET!"

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gellshayngel@reddit

Well we ran up that hill...

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Prestigious-Emu5277@reddit

Miss those days, honestly. Just head out and dick around town until the sun went down.

Also sneaking out at night. Oh man, never felt freer than getting out, turning the corner and running to meet my delinquent friends after curfew.

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XComThrowawayAcct@reddit

My favorite current hypothesis is relative adult-child population.

Starting around the 90s, the ratio of children to adults in many communities fell below 1, meaning there were more adults than children. Previously, in most communities, there were more children than adult, sometimes many more. It was simply not possible for the adults to observe children at all times because there were too many of them. As fertility rates dropped, it became ever more feasible to “hover” or “helicopter” over children.

(This could be tested by comparatively analyzing Chinese, Japanese, and American cultures alongside those that still have higher child-to-adult ratios such as Brazil or India.)

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Familiar-Estate-4895@reddit

Seriously, my parents moved to a foreign country with us. they didn’t put us in school for various reasons. they’d leave for work at 8am and come back at 6pm. apparently it was too dangerous to let us stay at home alone all day so they just left us in our neighborhood streets, which were to be fair to them very nice, and gave us five dollars to get lunch. we were 8 and 5 years old. there was a hotel with a pool nearby where we stayed most of the day. at around 1pm, local kids would come home from school and come out and play with us. it was about 1985.

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Bottlecrate@reddit

You pretty much. This is why it was so important to learn to ride a bike as soon as possible.

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Bellatrix_Shimmers@reddit

Yeah but so do kids today they just choose to chill inside with screens more and of course they have tracking devices on them at all times so parents can just stalk you digitally which would have been a problem for me and I honestly think it is odd in some ways.

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Same_Bug5069@reddit

It was like that through the 90s and early 2000s.... I'm just an 80s baby but ran free as an adolescent.

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Furballprotector@reddit

I envy how everyone remembers the good free days. I was a girl in an ultra religious community. I couldn't do shit. I was as micromanaged as an office employee for fear that Satan or a boy would devalue me.

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memymomeddit@reddit

While yes, I had a time that I had to be home and there was hell to pay if I was late.

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rjisaok@reddit

Kinda.

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coffyrocket@reddit

It's very real to this day, year round, in so-called "developing" countries (without enough schools). Looking at you, "land of 7,000 islands."

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BrittaUnfiltered67@reddit

I wasn’t allowed outside, my 80s was different than yours.

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aubreypizza@reddit

Yes and it was amazing. I feel bad for kids these days and super thankful I was born before all this 💩

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Visual_Tale@reddit

I'm not a parent so I try not to judge but I am SO sad for kids these days who have no idea what it's like to go off in the summer time with a pack of other kids from the neighborhood and learn to solve problems, work together, build relationships, and navigate the world on our own. Not to mention the lifelong friendships and ability to just observe or focus our brains on our surroundings long enough to actually develop skills, something screens have stripped away from our kids.

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bio4m@reddit

Night was out the question. Grew up in a big city, needed to be home when it got dark (6 or 7PM depending on time of year)

But for a lot of young people it is incomprehensible that we had that much freedom.

A friend of mine (a fellow Xennial) doesnt leave her 10 year old alone *AT ALL*, the only time the kids without her parents is if shes over at a sleepover or something. I think thats a bit extreme, I feel bad for her kid

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swalabr@reddit

We didn’t let our kids go on sleepovers except a couple of times. We felt badly for them, because for some kids it’s a sort of hallmark of childhood, it’s development of relationships, and so forth. The problem is, we’ve learned that horrible things can and do happen to children in these situations. I would rather have them feel a little resentful for not being allowed a sleepover, than have them (and us parents) deal with something terrible. It was just one thing we weren’t willing to risk.

On the flip side, we weren’t helicopter parents and it wasn’t like we didn’t let them out of our sight. Even kids need some sense of agency, some autonomy, and third spaces (all appropriate to age) to develop in healthy ways. And yes, sometimes their friends and acquaintances would do some really crappy things in the absence of adults. This is nothing new under the sun, but what has changed is people talking about it.

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The_C0u5@reddit

I don't understand why anyone would downvote this reasonable take.

We feel pretty much the same, our 8 year old has only had a few sleepovers with trusted family.

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swalabr@reddit

I had a feeling it would go that way. I’m the bad guy, I guess.

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Captain_Desi_Pants@reddit

We were the same way with our kids. I felt terrible about being the parent that always said no to sleepovers, but I could never forgive myself if the worst happened to one of my kids.

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Esabettie@reddit

This is why this kind of posts are so funny to me: we are the parents of these kids wondering about this lack of freedom, like look around, kids really are not doing what we did, either because they are not allowed or don’t want to, besides the lack of space, all those woods are gone.

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evilca@reddit

A friend of mine asked if it was appropriate to leave her 12yo home alone while she went on a walk around the block.

By that age I was babysitting infants by myself until all hours of the night.

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csonnich@reddit

>By that age I was babysitting infants by myself until all hours of the night.

Literally. Babysitting was my pocket money starting in middle school. I can't imagine someone asking if I could be left home alone at that age.

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KellyAnn3106@reddit

Same! The Red Cross babysitting course was offered to kids 12 and up. There was so much demand for it that it was held at the local elementary school.

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Vasto_LordA@reddit

I mean i didnt have friends or anything growing up so if going outside and just going around was something I could do, I probably wouldn't do it anyway

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itsmurdockffs@reddit

I lived in the Deep South as a kid. We had a lot of land. No neighbors, except for some relatives who shared the land, and they also were not close. My parents would let us roam free, all throughout the woods, all day. We didn’t really go out at night, because it was really scary. But I remember one time we did go into the woods at night. We stayed maybe 30 minutes and went right back to the house.

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Ok_Percentage5157@reddit

Not all of us had this kind of freedom. While my brother and I could ride bikes to friends houses and such, our mom was wildly over protective and controlling. I had a 9 PM curfew for a while in high school.

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Ok-Pomegranate-9481@reddit

I'm amazed so many of you had that level of freedom as kids. I'm in my early 40s and I could barely leave the yard when I was a kid. The idea of just wandering off to play is very foreign to me. I lived about a mile from my best friend as a kid, but neither of us would ever have thought of just going out and meeting somewhere.

And this was a very safe and calm area, so I have no idea.

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kawyckoff@reddit

Greatest time to be a kid - ever! All the stories are true😎🥳

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brattybabyc@reddit

My dad lost me for an entire summer once.

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ApatheistHeretic@reddit

Not at night, we had to climb out of our windows for that..

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Deathoftheages@reddit

It changed when younger Boomers and gen X adults started having kids and owning homes and calling the cops on kids playing in their neighborhoods. If you want to find out why this happened look at who the parents were when the trend started.

It's like when boomers were making fun of participation trophies. It wasn't the kids getting them that made those a thing it was their parents generation demanding it.

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willie_Pfister@reddit

Yes, yes we did. Maybe my parents wanted me to get abducted?? Just wondering.

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Combat__Crayon@reddit

Yes. I'm sure some of the current trend is over parenting, but I can't even get my older kid (12) to leave the house under threat of force. He has no desire to roam the neighborhood.

Hell, he's trying to get a group of friends together to have me teach them D&D and they think they want to reserve a room at the library rather than having the kids just come over to the house. Granted, he's in a selective program and its not like his friends are all in the neighborhood, and the library is centrally located, but I'm like no get your friends over here, we have a basement or dining with the big table.

I still see gangs of youths roaming the streets, not as many as when I was a kid here, and they're on motorized things, but at least some of the kids are out.

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lakatos_intolerant@reddit

My dad, a Boomer, told me whenever he stayed with two of his best friends on a Friday night they would sneak out after their mom fell asleep to one of the late night shows (must have been very early '70s).

To my knowledge the "kids being out all hours of the day and night unsupervised" trope is embellished in a lot of ways considering he and my mom have told me stories about getting caught being out/ sneaking home late at night.

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gdg6@reddit

As long as we left a note before leaving

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RaphaelSolo@reddit

I mean I saw a report that someone had CPS called on them because their preteen kids were playing unsupervised in their own front yard. The amount of oversight required of parents is getting dumb. In the 80s my sister and I walked several blocks to school alone everyday. Folks would lose their minds ov r ist hat in th current era.

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VincentMac1984@reddit

Like feral animals until the street lights came on, and even then? Know what mean?

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TheDiabeT1c@reddit

Raised this way and left to our own devices by our parents. Grow up, have kids, monitor them, still surprised our parents don’t involve themselves with our kids either.

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TonkaLowby@reddit

Not the freedom, the expectation!

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serpentarienne@reddit

Not the kids of anxious parents. 😔 It makes me envious to see what everyone else’s experiences were!

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Top-Wolverine-8684@reddit

Not all of us had that kind of childhood. I certainly didn't and can't even imagine it. My mom didn't allow me to go to a friend's house unless I had A) a written invitation, B) their mom called my mom to invite me. And I never got up to anything at all as a teenager. If I wasn't at school, in my after-school extracurriculars, or at church activities with my parents, I was home with them.

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serpentarienne@reddit

We lived in a large urban area and my parents were convinced I would get shot if I played in the front yard. Definitely was a different introduction to the world.

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Quinalla@reddit

For a lot of folks, yes, it really is unthinkable. They even struggle with their high schoolers. I had kids late so my peer parents are solid millennials mostly and yeah it is unimaginable for them!

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Negative-Midnight681@reddit

Hahaha absolutely, born in 82.

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OneRub3234@reddit

gif

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Pearl-Internal81@reddit

I mean yeah we were a lot less available all the time. But that was literally everyone because cellphones, let alone smartphones, were barely a thing yet and were insanely expensive. Honestly I do miss some of that unavailable nowadays, but I also love modern technology so I take the good with the bad.

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therealRustyZA@reddit

We got chased outside and were not allowed back into the house until the sun went down.

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Candid_Koala_3602@reddit

It’s a blatant contrast to their own reality. The question is meant to have us ask ourselves how we got here, and why.

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Rhediix@reddit

So during high school, my friend and I would regularly meet about a 1/2 mile from each others houses at 1:00am. We both had bicycles and we'd just drive to a closed store/gas station, and just sit at the outdoor tables. There were times when we'd spend hours sitting there, smoking cigarettes, just talking. Then our watch alarms would go off; and I'd bike back to his house, stow the bikes in the garage and go to school on the bus.

Wasn't every night; but my mom knew where I'd went. We typically wouldn't do this during winter months. Home life was pretty unstable at this point. My dad was having a massive midlife crisis after my mom's cancer diagnosis and would regularly skip out whole months at a time because he didn't know how to deal with it. Meanwhile my half brother and I took care of her, and yet I somehow managed to do the homework I was assigned while also compiling a visual arts portfolio in senior year.

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Inevitable-While-577@reddit

This is the one thing in this sub I can't relate to. Maybe it's a cultural thing?

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Gian_Luck_Pickerd@reddit

Neither can I. I could only go as far as the yard

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Top-Wolverine-8684@reddit

You are my people. I can't relate to this at all. We couldn't leave our yard as kids. Being allowed to go to a friend's house was a special occasion and had to be coordinated between the parents. Even as teenagers, we were either at school, church, or home.

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EverybodyPanic81@reddit

I was 4 and riding my bike kilometres from home. As long as I was home by the time the street lights went on. Could have been murdered and nobody would report you missing until 6pm lol.

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No9No9No9No9@reddit

Yes. 90s, too.

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roadrunner00@reddit

I can tell I missed season 5. No idea who the black girl is. will, Mike, and 11 are missing

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NoQuarter641@reddit

I mean we didn't always have Permission, but yeah, we really did what we wanted pretty much.

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reaper1826@reddit

My friends and I had that kind of freedom in 2004 when we were like 10 or 11 as long as we were all back home before midnight, which most of the time we didn't get back till 1am

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MakingWaves24_7@reddit

Street lights came on it was tome to head home. Then played on our street til the parents screamed out the door for us to come in.

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BrattyTwilis@reddit

There was a lot more trust between parents and children. As long as you were back before dinner, things were fine

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Infinite_Pudding5058@reddit

Went out after breakfast and came back for dinner when the sun started setting/street lamps went on.

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dreddstorm82@reddit

You could be out all night if you were “sleeping” at a friends house . It’s a risk if they called over to check on you so there was always some danger involved.

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Gian_Luck_Pickerd@reddit

Even better if you used the "sleeping at a friend's house" excuse so you and your friends could go to a concert out of state. Just be careful you don't get the car stolen on the way

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MountainTomato9292@reddit

I feel like this warrants a follow-up story…

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Gian_Luck_Pickerd@reddit

https://youtu.be/_eqkmGoivl4?si=UFxAkAWTafCM1BgY

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pat1979@reddit

Yes

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firehawk2324@reddit

Freedom? Oh, no no no. They have it all wrong. We didn't have the choice, we were forced. Kicked out of the house after breakfast and told to come home when the street lights turned on.

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radiobottom@reddit

But man, if you didnt leave a note on the cutting board 😒

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absentlyric@reddit

I was raised by a crazy para military single dad who barely did any parenting.

His only rule when it came to that was "You better have your housekey, if you try breaking in at night, you'll get shot" this was my dad telling me this.

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MeatPopsicle10@reddit

I was allowed to roam my neighborhood and the connecting neighborhoods via bike. I was usually with a group of other kids.

But had to be back before sunset. I remember being able to tell time to an amazing accuracy based on the sun & light alone.

My kids are allowed to roam our neighborhood (at 11, 7, 4) and meet-up with friends; the 11 year old has to stay with the 4 year old.

The parents text to give little updates because none of the kids have a single device among them. But we parents try to stay out of their business. I do leave snacks & water outside when I know the pack is nearby, like I’m a zookeeper.

I’m trying to bring all the best parts of independent childhood with the new expectations of the modern parent.

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Three_Twenty-Three@reddit

As an adult, one of the things I've learned is that my parents knew where I was a lot more than I thought they did. I've driven through the old neighborhood, and the park I thought was beyond their reach was really only a block away. There was also a little network of neighbors with similarly aged kids, and we were almost always within sight of someone's house.

The only places we were truly out of reach were a different park on the other side of town and an empty stretch behind the Little League diamond where there were some great whoop-de-doos for biking.

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ElectrOPurist@reddit

We even had that freedom in the 90s. I never heard the word “playdate” until I was already an adult. I never remember the concept of a helicopter parent. The parents, usually one parent, would watch us play up until about age 6. Then we were just told when to come home.

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drawredraw@reddit

It’s more wild for me to think that kids do not have the freedom to run around all day and night.

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WaywardMind@reddit

Or until your parents started to call neighbours to find out where you were only to find out that half the neighborhood kids ended up at Matty's to check out his Nintendo Power Glove and wound up having supper there without remembering to call home first.

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ollie81578@reddit

I guess this is why so many of us wound up on milk cartons.

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muterabbit84@reddit

My parents just had the rule that I had to come home when the streetlights turned on, and ideally play where they could see me from the living room and kitchen windows. If I went to a neighbor kid’s house or “the dirt pile”, a vacant lot behind my neighbor’s house, I had to let them know. This was back in the late ‘80s to early ’90s.

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Useful_Tomato_409@reddit

Yes. “Go outside. Call when you get to someone’s house. Be back by sunset” basically.

“Mom, i’m riding my back downtown…i’ll be back later. “

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captainmidday@reddit

It was not strictly a good thing.

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Puzzleheaded_Cry_496@reddit

Yes. Yes we did.

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Aggravating_Bat3618@reddit

Sundown maybe.

We played baseball and football on the street and the crazy thing about it was we lived on a corner. You grew up learning how to use your ears and your eyes while still causing a racket

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Mediocre-Cobbler5744@reddit

When I was 15, I woke up my parents all the time coming in after midnight. They moved me to a room with an exterior door.

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Shiresire1565@reddit

Got home from school got on our bikes took off didn't see us until dinner time this was every day and on the weekends hell you might not see us at all after the morning cartoons

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17R3W@reddit

Free range kids are frowned upon these days. I'd love to raise free range kids.

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wildmaninid@reddit

We were quite literally kicked out of the house after eating breakfast. We were then free range and really only expected to show up by the time the street lights came on. During the summer though? My parents let the streetlight rule go. We would be roaming around into the night and early morning. 1-2 am the summer of 87 was a typical time I'd arrive home.

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Hippie_Starlord@reddit

It's not about it being unthinkable. It's that they literally can't because we have butthurt adults that will see kids playing and complain about them skateboarding on a sidewalk. Wanna go explore in the woods that no one sets foot on? Well Karen is here to let you know that it's private property that she doesn't even live on.

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LookItsDaphne@reddit

My last partner asked me to download an app so we could always see where the other is, and didn't understand my definitive "no." We're both xennial. I do not understand how we do this to kids, doing it to other adults seems pathological.

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Ava0401@reddit

The rule of thumb was when street lights come out, you come home.

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Traditional_Entry183@reddit

I did not lead this life at all. Even as a teenager in high school, my parents knew where I was and who I was with.

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jackfaire@reddit

Because the people who were kids then are calling CPS on parents now if they let their kids have any independence.

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Mac_A81@reddit

My mom was CPS. Because of the stuff she saw, I lived a very sheltered, overprotected life.

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astralchanterelle@reddit

This has me wondering why everyone these days seems to be punctuating their sentences with two periods.

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fourofkeys@reddit

i had to call to check in if i was out and get permission to be where i was. it wasn't total freedom.

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Mac_A81@reddit

Me too.

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Mac_A81@reddit

Everyone talks about having an unsupervised childhood and I just cannot relate. My parents were very overprotective (at least I thought they were at the time) and they always knew where I was. I was allowed to go out with friends but they always knew who I was with and where we were going, otherwise I wouldn’t have been allowed to go.

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Spear_Ritual@reddit

You have no idea. Out until street lights came on. Then you’d have to sneak out after your parents went to bed.

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PlantsNCaterpillars@reddit

I allow my kids to roam but it gives me anxiety because of how awful drivers in my area are.

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Chookz1983@reddit

Kind of

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WiseBaby9189@reddit

We had to be home before street light came on.

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ArtsyRabb1t@reddit

We all also have the scars to prove it

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armyofant@reddit

Kind of. We usually had to be home by the time the street lights came on. I think nowadays people are afraid their kids will get snatched up. We also live in a world where people are connected to their screens.

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WireNoob@reddit

Yes

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zombie_overlord@reddit

Something relevant I found about this yesterday. I was out in the garage yesterday and my son and I were just chatting, and he picks up my old Berenstain Bears book about the spooky old tree. So the bear kids went out at night with supplies to explore a spooky old tree and almost die several times. After narrowly escaping, they all run home, and mama bear is there waiting for them with a big warm smile. Wonder what time it was?

?

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rojoshow13@reddit

Me and my friends were usually supposed to check in and let our parents know where we were going. I'd be at my friend's house after school and that wasn't a problem, but if we were going somewhere else we would call and let someone know. We were expected to be home by a certain time. At a certain age those rules just naturally relaxed. My son just turned 17, and at some point about 2 years ago he just stopped asking me or telling me when he goes places. I don't need to know. He's a big boy. Well, he's average sized but you know what I mean.

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burjja@reddit

Ironically, the lack of smartphones is why are our parents didn't "care".

Imagine driving an hour without a phone in 1995 vs in 2026. You would be more anxious about doing it now even though you would be safer. If you can flag someone down, they are going to have a cellphone that you can call for help.

So while parents should feel safer with cell phones, it actually just makes them more paranoid. It has rewired our brains to where we are addicted to connectedness and fear any abscence of it.

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit

Now that younger people are learning the last thing they need to do is unplug from the Matrix

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Weird_Health_3715@reddit

I was born in 1980 and my parents expected to know where I was all the time. I was allowed to play with the neighborhood kids if my parents knew their parents. I was not allowed much television and we didn't have cable. There was a lot less "free range parenting" in my house, more like lots of reading, playing in the backyard with neighbor kids, and a heavy dose of boredom. I was never allowed to just roam the streets until nightfall, the way people make it sound.

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makes_peacock_noises@reddit

Yes, and fight demons.

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Kurigunde@reddit

Yes. I didn’t even have a curfew and often just walked out the door in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep and felt like going for a walk.

Us latchkey kids had it best.

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Overall-Scientist846@reddit

Pretty normal to be outside all day when it was nice. Would walk to a neighbor’s house or a friend’s house.

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Chunklob@reddit

My bedroom was in the basement,on the other side of the house as my parents' room, and right by the back door. I could come and go and they never had a clue I was gone.

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WolvesandTigers45@reddit

Cops would bring you home if you were out too late

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tillacat42@reddit

It's a mixed bag. We were terribly neglected, but also incredibly free.

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ParamedicLimp9310@reddit

It's unthinkable nowadays because we do have smartphones now and if you don't know exactly where your children are and what they're doing at all times then you'll be reported to CPS for child neglect. If you told another adult now that you aren't entirely sure where your kids are they would look at you like you're completely insane. If you said "somewhere outside" they'd call the cops, form a search party, and recommend you for a psych eval and an interrogation.

Our culture changed with the dawn of the internet as well. It's now more panicky and anxiety filled as well as less trusting. Kids can't explore anymore, in fact they're afraid to. And adults can't relax. So they literally don't understand how it could be considered generally safe to let your kids just go outside and do stuff unsupervised. It's no longer part of our culture.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I got to be part of the world before technology kinda ruined it. The complete 180 on how to care for children in such a relatively short amount of time boggles the mind.

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RonValhalla@reddit

Wait until you hear about the 70s.

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conspiracyeinstein@reddit

You know that video of the panda snacking in her cage then suddenly remembers she has a kid and looks around for it? Our parents were just the first half of that.

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ltsouthernbelle@reddit

Not to the extent that those kids did, streetlights were your guide. If they were on you better in the house or walking towards the house. The stranger things kids used the ‘sleeping at a friends’ cheat code and the parents never confirmed or checked. My mom ALWAYS talked to the parents even if it was my cousin.

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throwawaymumm@reddit

My sister and I were total latchkey kids. We spent the summers home alone all day and we lived in a lower working class neighborhood where some crime did exist. We would take the trolley for .10 a ride, down to the local public pool and swim all day. No sunscreen, no money for lunch, I don’t even remember if we brought a towel. Would come home and eat a TV dinner and watch whatever we could find on local channels because we didn’t have cable or a VCR. My mom would come home from work and find alive everyday. It was so normal back then and this was the mid to late 80s.

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Diggitydave76@reddit

They used to have public service announcements on TV that said it's 10pm do you know where hour children are?

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Dimplefrom-YA@reddit

yeah pretty much. plus we were able to sneak out of the house also

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Burlington-bloke@reddit

We didn't stay out all night as kids, but by grade 7 I was allowed to go to parties with my school chums. We would be running through the woods being silly. We did the Ouija board a lot at that age. Then we would dare each other to run through the old graveyard. I always won the graveyard challenge because I was a Taphophile and knew that graveyard like the back of my hand. We didn't actually walk over the graves, that would be disrespectful, we had to run down the old dirt driveway, grab a branch off the lilac tree and bring it back. I was actually more scared of being in the woods than the graveyard.

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FnordRanger_5@reddit

I the summer it wasn’t uncommon for me or neighborhood friends to just not come home for a day or two

We were all supposed to call and check in so somebody knew whose house we were sleeping at but that was sort of optional on our end, because the punishment was being kept home but they didn’t want that an more than we did 🤷‍♂️😂

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Brownie_0514@reddit

Yes we did but once those street lights came on, your butt better be home

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The_Widow_Son@reddit

Yeah my brothers and I had a lot of freedom but wasn't anywhere but across the street, next door or a couple houses down. No matter where we were there was always some old person that would call our parents if we were doing something we shouldn't be doing. Once we got in high school we had sports, jobs ect. so I could easily walk in the house after 12a even on a school night.

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SoTiredYouDig@reddit

I wonder, is this regional? I still like I still see lots of kids out and about, unsupervised. I live in a pretty safe area, though, and there’s lots of woods and parks and stuff.

However, I feel like it’s criminal how overextended and scheduled some kids lives seem today. I feel like the exploration and creating our own experiences was vital.

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_buffy_summers@reddit

I'm in agreement with you, but also uncertain about this. Growing up, my siblings and I were discouraged from anything that would result in our parents having to disrupt their routines. (I'm certain now that they are neurodivergent, given that a few of us 'kids' have been diagnosed in adulthood.) We all look back and wish we had been encouraged to do the things we enjoyed.

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syntheticassault@reddit

My 11 year old daughter is currently on a bike ride with her friends in the rain.

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intentionallybad@reddit

My nephews knocked on my door last weekend because they were biking around town and went by my house. Of course they both have cell phones so their parents know where they are. There are likely more helicopter parents, but a larger reason we see less kids running around unsupervised is that they are ridiculously over scheduled now a days. We can hardly find time to celebrate a kids birthday in my family with all the sports games and activities my nieces and nephews do. It's definitely more rare for kids to just do nothing all summer, now they have various camps and things, etc.

My kids (college age now) didn't have so much scheduled but we were dealing with chronic illness in myself and my son when they were little so we chose to cut back on activities.

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SoTiredYouDig@reddit

It’s the activities that get me. It’s like a new parenting metric - how much crap can we enroll our kid in! I tend to not generally remark on parenting; being a non-parent lends less legitimacy to what I have to say. But it just seems like too much. I feel like it’s setting up an expectation that every moment of our lives needs scheduling, an event, something to do, some event. But being busy doesn’t mean one’s being productive!

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WakeyWakeeWakie@reddit

We live someplace my kids could roam and always have. Creek, neighborhood, shopping center. Not too late into the dark but most of the day. Not everyone lets their kids though. I do like having cell phones to keep track of them.

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1block@reddit

My kids have been able to roam.

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hydrastix@reddit

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Ok_Researcher_9796@reddit

Day, yes. Night, no

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Alarmed_Pie_5033@reddit

Is it just me or do these kids look like they're doing a reboot of Firefly?

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throwawayfromPA1701@reddit

If I had kids they'd be free range (hopefully). Just attach an air tag to them or give them a phone with life360. Obviously, not at age 6.

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Mr_A_Rye@reddit

Because kids of the 90s were overparented and now with phones, kids can be reached 24/7.

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orangesfwr@reddit

"It's eleven o'clock. Do you know where YOUR children are?"

"I told you last night - no!"

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Adventurous-Chef8776@reddit

It's 10 PM. Do you know where your children ar

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Mind-of-Jaxon@reddit

Yes. Why is this asked every other hour.

We had freedoms. It was nice. We were expected to look after ourselves take care of ourselves and entertain ourselves.

We didn’t have the internet . We had video games. But we also had the freedom and desire to go outside and have unconstructed free time to explore learn and make friends .

Now everything is controlled and curated

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Regular-Table4242@reddit

Sunrise to Sunset, the streetlights were our alarm. Nobody knew where we were or what we were doing. The only time we got questioned was if we got injured and had to go to a doctor or if we came home wasted.

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knowsnothing316@reddit

I was to be home and check in before dark but was allowed to play hide and seek or kick the can in the neighborhood all night. Oh and flashlight tag.

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trailrider@reddit

Gen Xer here. Yea, pretty much. Like I wanted to go see one of the early Wrestlemania's when I was 13/14. I think it was the one where Hogan fought Andre the Giant. In anycase, I used my paper route money and got a ticket. Back then you had to go to someplace with a big screen to watch. In my case, the Pittsburgh Civic Center.

The day of, my mom drove me the \~30 or so minutes into Pittsburgh at like 5 or 6 PM, dropped me off, and told me to call when it was over. I went in and had a great time cheering, booing, and chatting with everyone around me. When it was over at like 10 or 11 PM, I did the collect call thing with my name being comegetme, hung up, and waited at the street corner until mom showed up and took me home.

And NO ONE thought that was weird back then. That a 13/14 yr old boy being at an event like that by himself and in downtown Pittsburgh that late at night was anything to be worried about. No one ever asked me who I was with or where my parents were. If they did think it was weird, they never said anything to me.

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pineapplejax@reddit

"its 10 O'Clock do you know where your kids are?" Wasn't a thing yet.

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bitwarrior80@reddit

Yeah, in the summer we were allowed to roam far and wide as long as we were back before dark, which was typical. The three places I lived growing up had a lot of natural spaces to explore, so we were always making forts and riding bikes. In high-school I did a lot of summer backyard "camping" with friends. Our property was 10 acres and we built a campsite far away from the house. That usually lead to midnight hijinx that happened miles away, especially when Zima was involved.

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MrPolymath@reddit

My parents were NOT like this in the 80s, much to my chagrin. They always wanted to know where I was going to be and who I would be with.

Looking back, it wasn't that bad though. I still could wander the neighborhood with my friends, usually on our bikes, as long as I gave my mom a basic rundown of where I would be.

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Careless-Ad-6328@reddit

Be home by the time the street lights came on. That was the main boundary growing up.

And while my parents didn't know exactly where we were, we lived in a neighborhood where everyone kept an eye and ear out for kids, and would intervene if there was trouble, and if we were misbehaving there would be a call to my parents. So they always knew about the big things, and we were generally kept safe by the collective neighborhood.

Today? Tell a kid that isn't yours not to punch you in the junk, and their parent will come flying at you screaming for daring to tell their little angel what to do. So now everyone keeps to themselves and ignores kids in the neighborhood. So now parents need cell phones to have any hope of keeping even minor tabs on their kids. They had a support net for this in previous generations, and they threw it away because we've become so intensely self-centered as a society.

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alphabetikalmarmoset@reddit

Surely there are still places where the old-school community vibe exists?

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EatLard@reddit

A lot of smaller towns and cities are still more like this. I can’t imagine our local PD or courts (city of ~220k) would charge someone for child neglect if their kids were playing in a park unsupervised as happens elsewhere.

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Careless-Ad-6328@reddit

There absolutely are still places like this, but they're increasingly uncommon as everyone shifts to a me-first approach to life.

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Cooper_Sharpy@reddit

We are also constantly having fear shoved down our throats when in reality we live in the safest time to be a child in human history. I wouldn’t trade my childhood for anything, days going fishing, hiking thru the woods, playing army with my buddy’s. Did some of us get hurt here and there? Sure. We were kids, we bounced right back and learned how to fail and pick ourselves back up without needing mommy or daddy. Kids today are in for it. The world is an ugly and unforgiving place. You are going to fail. That’s a guarantee. The lesson is perseverance and i think that’s lost on the generations after us.

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59apache01@reddit

Once the street lights came on, I had 10 minutes to get my ass home from wherever I was.

Gen Z (and even the second half of Gen Y) missed out on so much.

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100cpm@reddit

Before double income was the norm, there were a lot more adults around.

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catpaw1975@reddit

Yes yes we did It was not as hot at night as it was during the day

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evolutionxtinct@reddit

Newer generations really asking this question? Dang…. We truly have gotten worse….

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elenchusis@reddit

I feel like in the 80's all parents thought "well there's just no way someone would kidnap and/or harm TWO kids at once", so as long as I wasn't alone it didn't matter where I was.

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NoneOfThisMatters_XO@reddit

Parents have gotten paranoid

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Scrapla1@reddit

The street lights coming on was never a thing for me and my friends. We were allowed to stay out late but usually told to stay in the neighborhood and were usually home around 10-11.

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lochnesssmonsterr@reddit

“Why is this so unthinkable now”

lol I just came from another thread of people bitching angrily about kids playing in their neighbourhood because they left their bikes lying around on the sidewalks. Every single comment was one variety of “fucking kids how come their parents aren’t supervising them” and “I would throw every toy I see straight in the bin”.

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Long-Strike9408@reddit

Survival of the fittest.

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Captain_Desi_Pants@reddit

Not just the 80’s. I was 0-7 in the 80’s but lived in the middle of nowhere with a 2 lane road people drove crazy on & no kids around. Both neighborhoods were senior citizens.

In the early to mid 90’s for me. We moved to a real neighborhood & I got to experience this kind of childhood. Running around, cutting through backyards, building forts in the woods, playing in the creek, biking, crashing on bikes, etc..

Like all these old folks say, just had to be home by dark.

Now? I live in a similar spot to where I grew up in the 80’s. My kids had old people as neighbors, a street too dangerous to ride bikes on, etc.

But even if we moved had to a neighborhood like that while they were young, I wouldn’t have let the. Free range. The invention of the sex offender registry and good internet means I will always know what sex pests live close by. And there are always more than you think.

That and I don’t trust how people drive in neighborhoods. We had two kids get hit, one died, where my dad lives now. Kids don’t always pay attention, they should but they don’t, they’re kids. It’s a drivers responsibility to watch for pedestrians and drive a safe speed in a residential area, regardless of any stupid kids darting in and out of the road.

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bluekillgore@reddit

And I dont think its soo much we were given so much freedom i think its just our parents didnt have the same kind of crap to keep us occupied..... which is more dangerous being let go unsupervised in the community you live in or being left unsupervised with a device on the internet?

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water_bottle1776@reddit

I wish I could have given my kids the freedom to roam, but autism (both of them) made that a bad idea. Also, living in a city versus a small town makes a difference. Growing up in a small town, my parents knew that the only way I had to get around was riding my bike, and there's only so far that I could realistically go. Their only rules in the summer were to be home by the time they got home from work and don't go further than the next town over. My kids grew up in a city with mass transit. They could have gotten in waaaaaay more trouble than I ever could have.

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ckglle3lle@reddit

Kids still run around unsupervised

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kimsfantasyexploder@reddit

Haha. Yeah pretty much we could do whatever we wanted.

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bluekillgore@reddit

In the boonies NC we could just tell mom we were going "camping" and that would buy us atleast a day or two before they even bated an eye

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Accurate-Long-259@reddit

Unfortunately, I was the opposite. My mom was so afraid that I was gonna get kidnapped or stolen. I wasn’t able to do anything and I was just so afraid of getting caught doing anything bad. Because of this my kids have had a lot of freedom and my mom hates it, which makes me give them even more freedom.

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The-Stoic-Investor@reddit

We need to understand how this helped us develop and allow our own kids the same freedom

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soulguard03@reddit

Parents were working and then drunk or tired.

Who was watching us after school? Karen's didn't exist yet.

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PictureMaster512@reddit

I saw a billboard in my area that reminded parents to take away the kids screens and send them outside. And I laughed like a maniac because when we were little our parents got a commercial at 10pm reminding them to find us

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FlySecure5609@reddit

I always feel weird when I say this was not my experience.

I was allowed in my yard and the few peoples’ houses my mom was okay with in the neighbor, but I had to call and check in when I got there.

Like maybe my mom was just anxious but I can’t remember other kids I knew having the free roaming experience either.

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Empty-Raspberry-9018@reddit

Yep, came home when the sun was low and the streetlights were just turning on.

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Fine_Violinist5802@reddit

Home before dark was the rule. After dark you got a beating.

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Capt_accident@reddit

Same, I lived in the country, it was at dark. Or when your dad would holler your full government name off the front porch, and by god our dads could get distance out of that holler.

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CosmicMamaBear@reddit

I lived in the country and small towns. We snuck out a lot for moonlit walks.

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PatchworkGirl82@reddit

My neighborhood wasn't that safe, but I started babysitting when I was 10, got my first real job at 13 (at the local video store, which felt like winning the job lottery), and I spent my free time in the summer hanging out in my touristy little beach town, spending my money at the comic book shop.

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Dear-Consideration27@reddit

Yes! And is probably why we keep more tabs on our kids now 😂

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ApprehensiveAnswer5@reddit

It’s only “unthinkable” among certain demographics I think.

I live in a major metro, and it’s still pretty common for city kids to be out and about by themselves. My kids and their friends certainly are.

I also taught in Title I schools my entire career and it’s very common in that demographic for kids to be alone a lot too.

Parents often have multiple jobs, or long hours at one, they often don’t have family support because older generations are still working too, can’t afford $20/hr babysitters, and so on.

So there are still a lot of cases where even younger elementary kids are home alone all evening and/or weekends fending for themselves.

Nights too. I have lots of students who’s parent work nights so they can be home for dinner and homework or activities and then put them to bed and go to work.

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Soulman682@reddit

Yup I did until it was dinner time and we knew we had to get back home by then or we didn’t eat.

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Lawrenceburntfish@reddit

My dad would stand on the front porch and bellow my name at the top of his lungs around dusk. Then I would race home because once he yelled my name I had minutes to respond.

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Harkonnen_Dog@reddit

Yes.

Kind of, but not fully as romanticized as the show makes it out to be.

The show should have placed more emphasis on the whole “sneaking out” being a big deal thing.

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RandolphCarter15@reddit

It's frustrating. My daughter rides her bike around on the weekends to find friends and they're all over booked. The parents cut off playdates to get to an activity the kids clearly don't want to do. A ground came over yesterday and her mom kept texting her the whole time

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poopdog316@reddit

Yes, 90's and early 2000's as well. No cellphones meant real freedom.

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sonsofthedesert@reddit

No we had to sneak out after hours

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taleofbenji@reddit

The movie Stand by Me is remarkable in this respect. The kids were gone for days unsupervised and it wasn't even a big deal.

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Delilah_Moon@reddit

We rode until the street lights came on. Once you were 11ish, you had more freedom and could ride at dark to and from friends’ houses. Of course Parent #1 usually called Parent #2 to let them know Jessica or Mike were on their way. Your parents knew exactly how many minutes it took you to ride home.

We rode our bikes all over our suburb. When I became a teen - I used my bike to sneak out. Total cliche style - out my bedroom window, down the tree with the tire swing. Grab my bike from behind the garage and book it to makeout with my boyfriend at the park.

All that said, kudos to the “mom network” or the 80s/90s. When you rolled up the driveway they always knew where you’d need and what you’d been up to.

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BobSki778@reddit

It’s seems to me that, before the constant connection of smart phones, people in general had a higher level of faith/trust that people would be where and when they said they would be and just didn’t worry about it (until they didn’t show). People were also more likely to stick to commitments about being where and when they said they would be. Also, a lot more waiting around checking out the scenery and other human beings while waiting for such rendezvous rather than scrolling in a smart phone.

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midnight-dour@reddit

I wasn’t even allowed to leave my front yard.

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Cisru711@reddit

My mom basically kicked us out of the house after lunch and got mad if we came back before dinner.

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cbih@reddit

Yes. There were commercials that asked parents "It's 10 pm. Do you know where your children are?"

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AshDogBucket@reddit

Its unthinkable nowadays because of how much we now know about child abuse.

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jakemg@reddit

For me it truly was all hours. I was born in 1980. There would be days in the summer during grade school that I’d leave home at 7am and spend the entire day and night with my friends. My mom would’ve never heard from me for 15+ hours. We also used to frequently use the trick of saying we were sleeping over at each others’ houses and stay out all night. Most of the time when I left the house my parents had no clue where I was for the entire day and it didn’t seem to bother them.

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spderweb@reddit

I have a question. Is it true that the current generation has forgotten what Google is? This question is so much, that there's probably a Wiki entry for it by now.

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SunshineInDetroit@reddit

It depends on the family. I had significantly more freedom that my wife's experience.

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MakingItUpAsWeGoOk@reddit

I’m probably gonna kill the vibe of this thread but yeah, that’s the way it was. I live/lived it statistically the safest place in the USA and still stuff happened to kids back then and I knew then and I definitely know now that if more adults were paying attention friends would have been protected. Sorry, not sorry that shit wasn’t gonna fly with my kids or their generation. Don’t care if we as parents get made fun of for having location tracking on my kid’s cell phone or if sleepovers were not allowed. So why is this so unthinkable nowadays? It’s pretty difficult for a generation of people growing up to believe that parents would be so cavalier with children’s safety when generations of child abuse survivors are so vocal now.

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eternallysantanasass@reddit

Not all hours of the night. We had to be home before the street lights came on

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mstermind@reddit

The simple answer is yes. I "ran around" in the late evenings and my parents had absolutely no clue where I was or what I was doing.

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ratpH1nk@reddit

Honestly it is because "younger", generally skewing to younger (non-xennial millennials) parents who may or may not have experienced this "free range kid" childhood are exceptionally fearful that I don't quite understand. I am a free range kid who raised free range kids (my kids took their bikes with the neighbor kids (total of about 4-5 kids like 12-14), rode their bikes to the local target hopped on a bus downtown and had fun came back.

I have friends who as hesitant to let their kids play outside by themselves at all, even in their own yard.

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Pistol514@reddit

There was a level of trust between our parents and us that we wouldn’t do anything stupid.

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wuh613@reddit

Not day and night. Just day.

Night = street lights = get home now.

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