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70s childhood

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Gen X mom reenacts 'coming home from school in the 80s' and totally nails it

"This is why we're built different."

Photo credit: Canva

If you lived through an 80s childhood, this will send you back.

Generation X, made up of those born between 1965 and 1980, has many claims-to-fame in their younger years game. Gen X brought the world Prince and Kurt Cobain. We were The Goonies and The Breakfast Club.We took down the Berlin Wall while watching MTV.

But perhaps the most iconic thing about Gen X is our semi-feral childhoods of benign neglect. The standards of parenting and child rearing have shifted a lot in the past 40 to 50 years, as has the technological landscape that kids grow up in, so naturally, today's kids won't have the same childhoods previous generations had. But there's something particularly nostalgic about being a child of the 80s for those who lived it.

One mom nailed the experience with a video reenactment of what it was like to come home from school in the 80s. Elizabeth Stevens (@BennettPeach on YouTube) arrives at the front door in her backpack, then pulls out a house key on a string around her neck. (Ah, the "latchkey kid" era when children were expected to come home to an empty house and let themselves in.)

Then she goes into the kitchen in her Care Bears t-shirt and finds a handwritten note—in cursive, of course—on the back of an envelope. "Working late—make your own dinner, watch your brother and the dishes better be done when I get home from bowling. – Mom"

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

That's right. Mom wasn't just working late, she was also going bowling while her kids were home caring for themselves.

Then we see her washing the dishes despite barely being able to reach the faucet, even with a stool, and then her making a Gen X staple—the cinnamon-sugar and butter sandwich. On white bread, of course.

In just one minute, Stevens managed to capture the essence of so many Gen X memories, as commenters shared:

"The mom notes on an unopened bill is memories."

"Nailed it! The best thing about growing up in the '70s/'80's was being ALLOWED to grow up."

"Why this video made me almost cry?? How quiet it is inside the home. Lovely."

child doing dishes, 80s childhood, gen x childhoodKids did chores at home alone after school in the 80s. Photo credit: Canva

"Facts!!! No babysitter, go in the house, read the note, do the chores n not let anybody in!!!! I remember the homemade the 'cinnamon bun.'"

"70s and 80s … latch key kid here elementary, junior high and high school. we turned out self sufficient, independent and successful."

"Just so frickin on point!!! All of it from the clothes to the key on the necklace to the note. Even what you chose to do for a snack. Too good!!! The windbreaker that's memories. It's all coming back to me now lol thank you for this. You have brought a huge grin to both me and my inner child."

Ah, the 80s.Giphy

"I was met with a note everyday, too. On the back of an envelope, my daily chores would be listed. If I was in trouble, I would cry as soon as I saw the note....lolol Love you momma. How I wished I could have saved those notes! They were historical treasures."

Tons of people gushed over the nostalgia of remembering those "good old days" when they were given both freedom and responsibility, with many saying kids today have no idea. One thing that might surprise the younger generations was how young the theoretical kid in this video could have been. We're not talking about young teens here—kids as young as 5 or 6 could be latchkey kids, and kids any older than that were often given responsibility for looking after younger siblings. Even official babysitting jobs could start around age 11, or sometimes even younger.

Gen X kids had learned to take care of themselves early on, which has its pros and cons. The rose-colored glasses many Gen X adults view their childhoods through can sometimes cloud the parts that were not so great about growing up in the 70s and 80s. Sure, that benign neglect resulted in resilience and independence, but for some that came at the cost of parental relationships and a sense of safety and security. We have more knowledge now about things like mental health support, parent-child attachment, and healthy relationship dynamics, and some of that learning is reflected in shifting parenting practices.

As often happens, the pendulum may have swung too far from the absent parents of the 70s and 80s to the helicopter parents of the 90s and 2000s, of course, and the "right" approach (if there is one) probably lies somewhere in the middle. But it is still fun to look back on those iconic childhood experiences with joy and humor and appreciate that they helped us become who we are today.

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Joy

70s and 80s kids are losing it at this confusing 'metal in microwave' warning sticker

We were lied to.

Photo credit: Canva

We were told this was an absolute no-no.

If you grew up in the 70s or 80s, there was one rule:

No metal in the microwave!

None. Nada. Don't do it, ever, under any conditions. If you put metal in the microwave, it would spark and explode. That was how science worked back then.

So you can imagine the surprise that Gen Xers and millennials who might have been browsing Reddit this week are feeling.

A Reddit user recently shared a confusing warning label on their microwave, seemingly encouraging them to leave a (presumably) metal spoon in any liquids while heating.

The illustrated sticker shows two cups of liquid. The plain cup — with only liquid inside — has an X crossing it out, as if to indicate you're not supposed to microwave a plain container of liquid. The allowed version, confusingly, has a spoon sticking out of it as the liquid bubbles! Last time I checked, most spoons are metal.

So what exactly is going on here?

Is the microwave manufacturer actually... encouraging us to microwave metal?

Some users were baffled and began questioning their entire existence:

"We grew up in the 70s being told to never put metal in a microwave. Hard to learn that," wrote u/dustin91.

"Growing up in the '70s, we were drilled to never put metal in the microwave. It's tough to shake that mindset," said u/GoodnessEmma_.

In fact, the OP was not the first person to be confused by this sticker on their microwave. Posts just like this one are surprisingly common.

Luckily, there's a simple explanation for this counterintuitive sticker: Sometimes, under certain circumstances, putting metal in the microwave is perfectly OK.

But before you go microwaving your whole silverware drawer, let's hear out the scientific explanation.

"[The] electromagnetic activity [in a microwave] can do a number on metal. The oscillation of the microwaves can produce a concentrated electric field at corners or an edge of a metallic object, ionizing the surrounding air," which creates popping, sparking, and arcs of electricity. That's according to a post on MIT's "Ask an Engineer."

However, when a metal object in the microwave is thick and or smooth, with no sharp edges, there's little risk of a fire breaking out.

A YouTuber named ElectroBOOM actually (and bravely) tested different metals in the microwave.

Smooth, thick metals (like spoons) did fine, even when he used two spoons close together or touching. Things with sharp edges (thin strips of foil, a fork) did not, and sparked or caught fire quickly.

It makes sense the more you think about it.

A lot of foods (like Hot Pockets) come with a metal or foil-lined tray to encourage heating. Your microwave may even have a metal shelf inside!

The confounding sticker suggests leaving a spoon in any liquids to prevent superheating — which can cause scalding hot water or other liquids to explode.

In some cases, microwaving a liquid can cause it to heat beyond its boiling point — without actually boiling. (This is especially likely if you were to heat a liquid without any "impurities," like distilled water.) When superheated liquid is disturbed (by sticking a spoon in, adding a sugar cube, or just sloshing it around) it can explode and scald you.

Mythbusters tested this scary idea many years ago — and confirmed that it can happen!

Leaving a spoon in the water creates "nucleation points," or opportunities for bubbles to form, rise to the surface, and release heat — which is how normal boiling is supposed to work.

It doesn't HAVE to be a metal spoon, of course. A wooden spoon or chopstick will have the same effect.

So now we know that some metal in the microwave is OK. But there are enough caveats that you really ought to know what you're doing before you try it.

Having done the research, I can see now why our parents and teachers figured it was just safer to tell us to never put any metal in the microwave under any circumstance.

We believed a lot of stuff we were told as kids in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Black belts in karate had to register their hands with the police as deadly weapons. People put razor blades in Halloween candy and apples all the time. We were very likely to encounter quicksand at some point. Acid rain would kill you. Fruit could grow in your stomach if you swallowed seeds. Alligators lived in the sewers.

Frankly, "never microwave any metal" was the least crazy thing we were told back then. The truth is a little more complicated, but it kept us safe at the time, right?

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Family

Those 'carefree' 70s and 80s childhoods weren't the utopia some make them out to be

Let's ditch the rose-colored glasses and acknowledge that Gen X childhoods included a lot of unspoken and unresolved trauma.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Gen X childhood wasn't as "carefree" as it seems.

Everywhere you turn these days, someone is celebrating the simple joys and freedoms of childhood in the 70s and 80s. Indeed, in some ways, Gen X childhood was glorious compared to how kids grow up today. We went outside and rode our bikes without helmets. We went to the park, climbed trees and risked our lives on questionable play equipment. We knocked on our friends’ doors without calling first and spent endless hours in play and adventure without supervision.

We had television and video games, but what we could do with them was limited by the technology itself. We didn’t have social media or cyberbullying or sextortion to worry about. We didn’t have doom and gloom news blasted in our faces 24/7. No cell phones, no GPS tracking, no Life 360. Our parents only had a vague idea of where we were and what we were doing most of the time. And despite staring into the faces of missing children on milk cartons at the breakfast table every morning, we just accepted that benign neglect was a normal aspect of childhood.

But did we, really? As much as Gen Xers love to reminisce about simplicity of our 80s childhoods, evidence suggests it wasn't quite the free-roaming utopia many make it out to be. After all, a lot of Gen Xers turned into “helicopter parents”—the polar opposite of the way they were raised. There's a reason for that.

Maybe it’s time to ditch the rose-colored glasses and acknowledge that the “carefree” childhood Gen X enjoyed actually included a lot of unspoken and unresolved trauma.

Anyone who has read “Lord of the Flies” knows what can happen when kids are left to their own devices, so let’s start with some of the unsavory things that happened during all those hours Gen X kids spent unsupervised. If you were lucky enough to have a peer group with decent heads on their shoulders, you may have fared okay, even with some ill-advised youthful shenanigans under your belt. But not every Gen X kid was so lucky.

A lot of people came away from those 80s childhoods with experiences no one should have. Bullying was a huge problem, but awareness about bullying was lacking, and if you weren't the type to fight back, you basically just put up with regular abuse. Sexual harassment and assault were common when we were growing up as well, but they weren't talked about in a way that led to support or empowerment of victims. Gen X didn’t have a “Me too” movement before or during their formative years like young people today have. Our generation was left on its own to figure out how to handle those things.

We were left on our own to figure out how to handle a lot of things. That’s likely what made us the resilient, independent adults we are, but that doesn’t mean our generation acquired those traits in a healthy way. Some of us did, but for some of us, independence and resilience were a trauma response.

How about the fact that Gen X grew up during the peak in divorce rates? Or the less talked about reality that millions of Gen Xers were raised by Vietnam vets, some of whom lived with untreated PTSD and who themselves were children of traumatized WWII vets? Or the fact that two-parent working households were new and no one had figured out how to do that without the kids feeling neglected in some way?

As a 2004 study concluded, "Generation X went through its all-important formative years as one of the least parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history."

That's…not great.

I know I’m painting Gen Xers with a broad brush here. Not everything here applies to everyone, me included, but these are all things I've witnessed in my peers. The reality is a lot of Gen Xers grew up feeling unsafe and devoid of parental guidance a lot of the time, which is probably what prompted so many of us to lean so far into safety and connection with our own kids.

On the one hand, yes, the pendulum may have swung too far the other way into overparenting instead of underparenting. On the other hand, Gen X's own kids have grown up in the safest era for kids America has ever seen. That's not bad. It also appears that Gen X, at least anecdotally, has a closer relationship with their kids than they had with their parents. That's also not bad. We have a lot more research about what helps and harms kids when it comes to parenting, so despite raising our own children in the uncharted territory of the age, we at least have some psychosocial tools in our tool belts that previous generations of parents didn't have.

It's not a bad thing to want to give our kids some of the outdoor play and simple, non-screen-oriented joys we experienced as kids. But in advocating for such things, let's not pretend that our 70s and 80s childhoods were ideal when, in many was, they were anything but.

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