Was it really the good old days?

I remember with nostalgia some of the happenings of my youth and I also miss some of them. But the present is what we have and the biggst difference I see is that when I was young I wanted to change bad things whereas now I hope the next generation will do things better than we did.

I think our memories are designed to block out bad things and remember the good things in vivid colours. I remember the good old days were not so good for everyone. In Canada there was the scare of polio for children especially in the summer when kids went swimming. Many children got polio and spent horrible time in socalled iron lungs. Also girls were steered into secretarial jobs because they were expected to get married and stay home to be supermoms and domestic goddesses. Remember "Leave it to Beaver". Divorce was frowned upon and many unhappy people stayed in miserable marriages. Many women stayed in abusive situations. I remember the sixties and how hard it was for us who embraced the women's liberation and asked mainly for equal pay for equal work. I am eternally grateful that this was achieved in some institutions and the Government which allowed me to raise my kids in decency and relative ease after becoming a single parent instead of in poverty. I have a friend in her middle eighties who gets a meager pension from the company where she worked for years because at the time only men could contribute to the company pension plan. On the other hand I think people had a lot fewer material posessions and were content with fewer things. Probably the youth of today will also think back to today in 50 or 60 years and fondly talk of the good old days.

i think people look back with nostalgia and because most people have selective memory, they only remember the good times and shut out the bad times of the past.

I was the eldest of 4, and there was very little good old days in that! I was babysitting as soon as I could feed myself, and without a doubt my teenage years were the worst time of my life. I grew up on a farm in the country and had no friends until I began walking 1.5 miles to school, (uphill both ways). Even today I have no friends! I so unsure of myself growing up, it was terrible. The teacher didn't like me, and told me to repeat the letters of the alphabet with each step going home, and I did it. The only fun I had as a teenager was being seduced by a woman twice my age.

Interesting topic, I've been thinking about this too. I can totally say that there were the good old days when things weren't as complicated and life was much more simple. I too am curious if the children today would say the same thing when they grow up. I remembered my friend say that he likes the 90s because he was a child then. Maybe everyone says the good old days because it reminds them of their care-free childhood days regardless of era.

When I think about the "good old days", it comes to mind that families have changed. It seems as though families used to stay closer together. Kids got jobs close to home, lived within a few miles of relatives and visited often. Now, young people leave the nest and move across the country or out of the country, and extended families become strangers. There is very little family support anymore. It seems as if everyone is on their own.

Hello Pose123, thanks for your interesting post.I am a young man, I think if every body tries to live a positive life and try to enjoy every moment of life, life automatically becomes exciting .When I was a child I had both good time and bad time, now I am grown up, now too life has good time and bad time and I try to enjoy every moment with a postive attitude and honesty and ready to face any situation mentally, also old is not always gold, we forget good old times but remember the hard old times or bad memories often,and I accept life as it comes infront of me and no I dont want to go back in the olden days of childhood, but I am grown up now and will try to face life as it comes. Thanks.

I would say that there are many fond memories in the good old days. Then again, not everyone's good old days are the same as a lot of us grow up in different times & eras

Many look at the past through rose colored glasses, but not me, I love flush toilet, running hot and cold water, instant this and that, no iron clothing, insulated houses, paved roads, the Internet for instant research and communication. and so many other modern things, I don't want to go back.

for me it went pretty okay...i mean there were bad times, worse times, and the good times...but generally i remember my childhood as something that went "okay". it wasn't perfect, in fact it was farrrrr from perfect. i think it took a lot of time for me to look at it this way - if i were asked the same question years ago, i would've said "disagree". but anyway, i remember the advantages of being a child, all innocent and shallow. i think the world seemed a smaller, safer, happier place then... i had wishes and dreams, but they were much simpler then... now that i'm a grown up all i think about is how to survive life and overcome the challenges out there... i think it was easier to be happy back then...

Hi Pose: I think that both parts are right. If you look back you have to realize that we have lost some of the values that existed in the past but at the same time we have seen many horrible things that has happened in the last decades or centuries. Every time in the human history has its positive and negative aspects. However, we usually see our childhood and teenage years as the beautiful times when we remembered them but of course there were bad things too. ALVARO