Growing up in the 1960s meant you had some very unique concerns that would seem foreign to today’s kids. You had Cold War jitters about nuclear bombs, doctor’s visits may have been terrifying, and there just wasn’t that much you could do while away from home to stay in touch with your family. Some of your fears have gone away, others have simply transformed with technology and time.
1. Being Bitten by a Stray Dog
A stray dog may have appeared to be a cute animal, but children were advised to be cautious when playing near dogs with no known owner as rabies was a deadly disease. Once symptoms of rabies show up the disease is almost always fatal, so rabies was a serious topic. The process of receiving treatment after being bitten was also painful, but the story was something you wouldn’t want to have happened to you. The 19th-century treatment involved hundreds of injections in the stomach.
2. Nuclear Attacks and School Drills
Nuclear “warfare” was a terrifying reality for the childhoods of 1960s American children. Schools even conducted “duck and cover” drills where students would practice getting under their desk or protecting their heads if an attack was suspected. These drills taught them to associate terrible atom bombs with their daily lessons, and could be frightening in practice as well. Picture how odd it would be to be told to get under your desk and hide your head before going back to practicing simple math problems or reading. While nuclear annihilation hasn’t gone away, for many children today it’s only a historical curiosity.
3. Lost Without Phone
In the 1960s, children heading to parks, beaches, shopping malls, and amusement parks didn’t have smartphones. If they were missing from their parents, finding each other could be challenging without maps, GPS, instant messaging, and chat rooms. A child may have had to locate a police officer, ask an unknown adult for assistance, or head to a family meeting point. However, in today’s world, cell phones can help. Even though they are not guaranteed to help in every situation, they can certainly help reunite the family more easily than yesteryear, despite kids still getting lost.
Life after dinner looked very different for kids in the 1960s, with simple routines and activities that kept them busy long before smartphones and streaming existed.
4. Fear of Polio
Polio was an aggressive childhood disease that terrified families before most countries mass immunized their populations. Although there had been a polio vaccine since 1955, the decades older tales of devastating polio outbreaks meant the disease was fresh in the minds of children in the 1960s. Polio could result in paralysis, and those who contracted severe cases often relied on an iron lung to breathe. Children who remembered hearing about polio had much more reason to fear the disease.
5. Getting Paddled at School
Classroom discipline might have been far more physical in the 1960s than many children today have experienced. Teachers or principals in certain schools paddled children or hit their hands with a ruler if they misbehaved. The thought that you could be physically punished heightened the severity with which children considered getting into trouble. Others were worried that their parents might hit them over the head with a shoe or paddle when they returned home. School rules varied by place and school but many still accepted physical discipline. Rules vary by country and school today, and many schools now forbid using physical punishment.
6. Drafted Into the Vietnam War
In the late 1960s, boys who were coming of age had a real fear that the draft board was going to come knocking on their door when they turned 18. In the United States the draft board made the youth then eligible for, among other things, service in the United States armed forces. For the teenage boys, who during that time and era was beginning to speak out loudly against the Vietnam War, having to face turning 18 and possibly being sent overseas for combat was not something anyone wanted. America also ended the draft in 1973 and is now an all-volunteer military.
7. Running Out of Money at a Payphone
A child’s only resource to call home when out alone might have been a public payphone, prior to cell phones. Some kids kept coins in their pockets in case they needed to call home after school, or while hanging out with friends. Stepping on the coins, running out of change, or realizing that the payphone was out of order could turn the kid’s “small” problem into an emergency. A kid who stayed out late might not be able to easily explain what’s going on, in the age of instant communications that worry is less prevalent.
8. Quicksand Everywhere
When children in the 1960s watched adventure movies and television, they could come away believing that quicksand was a very real risk. In the 60s, wandering characters could find themselves trapped in it while traveling through a jungle or escaping from the wild – turning a relatively ordinary journey into a tense rescue. Tarzan movies, the traditional jungle hero, make dangerous surroundings into an exciting setting for adventure, and comic books and movies played on this idea too. But while quicksand is real, it is also not the hazard that entertainment media implied it to be.
The 1960s had plenty of everyday items and habits that have faded from modern life. Take a look at these forgotten things from the 1960s that may bring back memories.
9. The Mysterious Permanent Record
Growing up, teachers often told us that if we behaved badly, it would go on our “permanent record.” As kids, that was terrifying – a sort of file that we’d carry with us for the rest of our lives, ruining our future lives and careers. That forgotten assignment or goofy joke suddenly took on a whole new gravity, as a seemingly insignificant choice could have life-changing consequences. The myth is well-established in our schoolhouse mythos, even if the scary stakes teachers assigned are often total figments of fiction. While today’s kids still worry about school records and grades, that old trick doesn’t seem to be so effective anymore.
10. Missing a Favorite Television Show
It is a different world now. As it was in the 1960s, knowing what is on TV requires a bit of planning ahead. One tv watcher, especially a young one, may be catching a rerun on their mom’s or dad’s schedule if the recording devices were not yet standard fare in the household and if dinner, homework and family activities were getting in the way of watching, say, the Wizard of Oz or the latest episode of a favorite series. Kids these days can choose to replay shows via their computers.
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Conclusion
Moments when children in the 1960s worried about real issues in their time (and when they did): The first decades of the 20th century marked how the phrase “what a time to be alive” took on a new meaning. They had fears to grow old too, some abounding – nuclear drills, polio, corporal punishment, and the draft for Vietnam – and some – payphones, quicksand stories, and the TV Guide – small. Not all of those are completely gone, and other fears await children today.
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