SURVIVING THE PERILS OF CHILDHOOD IN THE 1950’s!

Looking back all those years ago it has to make one wonder how baby boomers survived their childhood.

Infant car seats were just metal frames that hooked over the back of the seat. No one heard of air bags or seatbelts. Kitchens and bathrooms had no child safety locks. Kids rode bikes without helmets and sometimes just barefoot. On a hot summer’s day we took turns drinking icy cold water from an old dirty garden hose. When it was raining the gutter on the street made a perfect stream for launching boats made out of popsicle sticks and paper. We drank Kool Aid made with cups and cups of sugar – a favorite I remember was lemon lime!

On weekends and all summer we were sent outside to play right after breakfast no matter the weather and only came in for a quick lunch and then back out again until dinner and our parents had no idea where we were, who we were with, or what we were doing. We could be in our own backyard or down the street in some friend’s yard or even wandering several blocks to the small neighborhood corner shop to buy a 5 cent candy bar – if we were lucky enough to have 5 cents that day!

Parents didn’t seem to worry about children wearing hazardous flammable pajamas as long as they were cute and colorful.

At the playground we played on such dangerous equipment such as the ‘Merry Go Round’.

We brought our own lunches to school and most times it was a peanut butter and jam sandwich and no one seemed to be worried about peanut allergies.

We played with dangerous toys many of which had tiny parts that could be easily swallowed. We played darts and other games long since banned,

Yet left to our own devices we somehow managed to make it through those ‘dangerous’ childhood years and into adulthood! The children of today sadly will never know the magic of those days while they stay glued to their computer screens and video games.

1950s - The Myth of Suburbia

My experience of growing up in the 1950s in a suburb of Vancouver, Canada strayed from the typical family life that magazines and ads wanted people to believe. My parents were divorced when I was a toddler and my mother moved into a house in a typical suburban neighborhood of Vancouver as a single parent with two toddlers. She definitely stood out and I was teased by other children in the neighborhood because I didn’t have a dad. Things definitely are so different nowadays with so many one parent families, same sex parents, and even grandparents raising their grandchildren as an example. Back in the 1950s though, that wasn’t the case, and my family stood out on that quiet tree-lined street.

I used to be so envious of friends and classmates having a ‘normal’ family with both mother and father and living the ‘surburban dream’. In reality though, I learned later that things were not what they seemed. Some of those perfect families had a far from perfect happy home life. One friend’s mother had a serious problem with an eating disorder, one friend’s father was an angry man who drank too much and was physically abusive and the list goes on. At the time though, appearances were everything and the dad would be out there mowing the perfect lawn on a Saturday morning and the mother would be in the house, cooking and cleaning. That’s what I saw and I was envious of my friends as my mother and my life was so different.

With no dad around it fell to my mother to take care of the lawn and home repairs although to be honest it seems my grandfather would come over to help her and do most of that. My mother had a difficult time being a single parent in such an environment and as such, was very unhappy and had trouble coping. In retrospect, I often wonder how much happier she would have been if she had been living in an environment where she was accepted and not made to feel different.

I love the 1950s but sometimes I do think about the darker side of that era and what it was like for people like my mother.