Recently, I did a post about Gen X'ers on Reddit sharing the bad parenting things boomers did to them growing up.
And the post really resonated with our Gen X readers, getting over 300 comments.
Well, I decided to roundup some of those comments and put together another post of Gen X'ers sharing some of the questionable parenting they experienced growing up in the '70s and '80s:
1.
"I grew up near the Smokey Mountains. My grandparents 'watched' me, but I was always exploring in the woods behind their house. The only rule was that I had to take the 20-gauge shotgun with me, LOL. I was 9."
2.
"One of my many childhood stories was my mom made us this cough syrup which was some of my father's Jameson's Irish Whiskey, honey, and peppermint sticks. It was so good we asked for more. What we didn't realize at the time is it did very little to help with our coughs, but it did knock us out so we weren't bothering our parents. >_>"
3.
"A thing that stands out in my mind about Gen X childhoods is that we LITERALLY never drank water! We were given Hi-C, soda, and various (highly sugared) juices, — but bottled water was rarely, if ever, offered."
4.
"Getting put in the trunk or camper bathroom to avoid ticket prices at drive-in movies, fairs, etc. There are also pictures of me in my 'travel crib' in the back of the station wagon with soda in my bottle because 'the water wasn’t safe to drink.' Also laying flat for a roundtrip drive from Nebraska to Florida with the cooler between my brother and I because 'we had to put the back seats down for more room.' I can’t fault my parents, though, because their intentions were 'good.'"
5.
"My friend’s dad would let us lay in the back of his station wagon, and he would jerk the wheel while driving, and we would roll back and forth. I remember loving this. 😂"
6.
"When I was 5, my parents took me to the drive-in with them to see... THE EXORCIST!!! They just figured I'd go to sleep in the backseat. Who does that?! They figured out I was awake when they got scared and popcorn went flying, and I laughed."
7.
"When I was 6, a neighbor kid was literally kidnapped at gunpoint by a stranger. And my dad would still kick us out of the house all day to 'play' and lock the door. Looking back once I put that together, I was shocked!
But when he came out with us, he’d tie the sled up to the back of the three-wheeler and pull us around the dirt roads. 😅 How am I alive?"
8.
"Summer of 1983, 10 years old, and my mom allowed me to babysit my 9-year-old brother and the neighbor's kids while their mom worked. One was 5; the other was 3. I made $40 per week and thought I was straight ballin', LOL."
9.
"We were never supervised. I never went to daycare, and both of my parents worked. We walked to school alone from kindergarten and walked home to an empty house. Sometimes, we walked to the store or McDonald's alone with money from the couch cushions. Oh, and no car seats past infancy."
10.
"My mom didn’t bother buying teething rings when I was a baby/toddler. She just let me suck on her cold Miller Lite cans (they were sealed though)."
11.
"When I was 8, my aunt took a bunch of us (me, sister, and cousins) to the drive-in to see a double feature of Fame and Coma; neither of those are kid movies! We were all really into dance so they thought it would be a good movie for us; we did love the dance parts, but the part where Coco gets assaulted was so scary, and then Coma?! I had nightmares for a while."
12.
"I went to a Catholic high school, and they still let us smoke in the parking lot, but juniors and seniors only — they had some standards, haha."
13.
"My brother and I would get home from school, and we'd hit the wood pile and start chopping wood. We were 7 and 8 years old at the time. Mom and dad wouldn't be home for a few hours, but we had to get the fire going because it was the only heat we had for the house. That's not just a Gen X story, that's a country Gen X story."
14.
"I got bullied in elementary school, and my dad's approach to remedying it was to train me how to sucker punch someone, then follow it up with ground and pound. He told me I needed to do that to my bully, and while I'd get spanked for it at school (which was a thing then), I wouldn't be in any trouble at home.
To be fair, though, I did it and never got bullied again...but I know that wouldn't be an option for every kid."
15.
"We lived near the beach, and in the summer, my twentysomething mom would take us to the beach, slather 'suntan lotion' on us, and plop down on a towel to talk to her best friend. We played in the waves pretty much unsupervised. More than once, I got in a situation that could have ended with me drowning. There were lifeguards, at least, but there were a lot of people for them to keep track of."
16.
"I remember sitting on my dad’s lap while he drove and helping him steer. And also, choking on my grandfather’s cheap cigar smoke in the car with the windows closed."
17.
"I was the youngest of three latchkey kids. When I was about 5, my mom was doing night classes so my dad would be left to watch us. His idea of parenting was to leave the house on a whim with the three of us to fend for ourselves. My siblings were about five years older than me, so in his mind, the kindergarten-age kid was properly supervised.
He cut that shit out real quick after he left us alone at home to go get a case of beer. In the half-hour he was gone, I’d managed to call and hang up on 911 because I’d just learned about it and wanted to make sure it worked. He pulled into the driveway behind a state trooper who wasted no time screaming at him about why he’d left us home alone."
18.
"When I was a baby, my dad was a single father. He would put me in my baby carrier, wedge me into the passenger side floorboard in his Cadillac, and drive me to the babysitters every day. When I think about how icy and dangerous our roads were in the winter, I cringe. Thankfully, he never got into a wreck when he was driving me like that. People would NEVER do that now!"
19.
And lastly: "When I was about 8 years old, my parents (for some unknown reason) had a U-Haul truck they rented. Me, my 7-year-old brother, and our three cousins, all around the same age, rode in the back. It was empty so we didn’t have to dodge a home’s worth of belongings, thankfully, but it was a little squirrelly nonetheless! At least we had empty paint buckets to sit on!!!"
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.