Prejudice and the truth about the ‘good’ old days
PEOPLE like to talk about ‘the more innocent days of the Forties, Fifties and Sixties’ (Mail), but were these not the days when discrimination was not only rampant but allowed by law?
It was a time when society allowed cruelty to people because of race, sexual identity or mental illness.
We may never be fully rid of such prejudices, but they are certainly not tolerated as they were back then.
Many of the older generation speak of an age when family life was idyllic. But this was a time when domestic violence and child abuse frequently went unreported.
There may have been fewer teenage mothers, but let’s not pretend that they didn’t exist: pregnant girls were often sent away, and after the birth had their babies forcibly taken from them, never to be reunited.
Misfit children were disowned and never discussed.
This is how the image of the wonderful family of the old days was really preserved.
It’s good that Michele Hanson has fond memories of her childhood, but I was born in 1988 and have equally fond memories of growing up in the Nineties.
There may have been more TV, but my friends and I still climbed trees, played with skipping ropes and rode bicycles. We knew what ‘play’ meant and so do most youngsters of today. Perhaps they have less freedom than their parents did when they were young, but having an Xbox or a Facebook account doesn’t mean they don’t ever go outside to engage in fun activities with others their age.
Nor does it mean that they can’t ‘string sentences together, spell and have proper conversations’.
People can say what they like about the (apparently) good old days, but there’s the image and there’s the reality.
I’m certainly grateful I wasn’t brought up in a time when parents and teachers were free to beat the daylights out of kids with impunity.
EMILIE LAMPLOUGH, Trowbridge, Wiltshire.