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I’m basically asking what you guys noted/observed when being around adults and parents during the ninties and how they were, thanks for your responses.
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My parents were quite laid back and took care of my sister and me more than adequately. They didn’t hover over us and let us pretty much do what we wanted which led to a lot of playing outside and going on adventures wherever we pleased.
They both were very supportive and would push us to succeed in the endeavors we chose to pursue, but we were never forced to pursue them. If we wanted to stop doing something they would support that decision. Me, for instance, I quit playing football and focused on baseball and golf for a good long while before my interest shifted to skateboarding and playing guitar. They helped me buy my first skateboard and my first guitar and encouraged me to take guitar lessons, which I did. My sister played softball and they were at every game and supported her in that as well.
They must have done something right though because we were never really troublemakers and neither of us ever got into drugs or anything. They gave us a good moral compass but let us figure out how to use it well in the real world. Neither my mom or my dad were ever intimidating people. Sure we both occasionally did something goofy and we would get a talk or a lecture but for the most part we stayed out of trouble.
When we were little kids they would do things like take us to their bowling league on Thursdays. They would bowl and drink beer with their friends. The alley had a “nursery” where kids could play so we did that, but we also played arcade games and ran around the alley playing hide and seek, even in the bar. Everyone was fine with it and it created some great memories.
Overall it was just a fun upbringing with lots of family get togethers, traditions that we created like cutting down our own Christmas tree every year at the same tree farm, a vacation with extended family every year to the same place(the Outer Banks), my sister’s and my friends became sort of unofficial siblings in my family, and so much more. We didn’t have a lot for a while but eventually my parents both started making a pretty hefty amount of money but we were never spoiled. We would really only get the big items we wanted for birthday or Christmas, and that was usually stuff like super soakers, CDs, clothes or shoes, or a game console every once in awhile.
Sorry for rambling, in short I’d describe my parents as being really supportive and never harsh, always letting the both of us figure out things for ourselves, and being there when we needed guidance. Shoot, even when I was a teenager they didn’t worry about me staying out super late, and I think it’s because they knew I would make good decisions, and I did. I never wanted to let them down because of the love my family had for each other, so I would say that’s probably the most important thing.
Same here. This how a lot of parents were in my suburban neighborhood growing up in the 90s.
Bowling! Was it just me or did we all having bowling birthday parties in the 90s?
Montessori parenting. That’s how my wife and I essentially handle our young kids.
We guide how they guide themselves. Encourage positive endeavors and ideas, confront and discuss the stuff we’re not sure of.
We’re learning as we go, but I feel our kids or socially well-adjusted and understand how to think not what to think, give or take our parental veto.
Latch key kid. I basically was left to my own devices as long as I didn't get into trouble I got to have more freedom.
I had very traditional, Hispanic parents. They were very micromanaging, critical, and took advantage of me as the oldest to be a caretaker for my siblings and to handle most of the chores.
My dad had a side job as a handyman and I spent most weekends helping from when I was 11 to when I left at 18. I only said that I didn't want to go once. My dad laughed really hard for a min and told me to get my stupid ass in the truck.
I didn't have much of a childhood.
They all kept telling us we needed to go to college no matter what or we never would be able to have a decent career, despite the fact that most Boomers didn't go to college and those that did paid a ridiculously low amount of tuition for it. This directly correlates with why student debt for millennials is out of control.
Picture it from their point of view though, They peaked as high as they could possibly achieve and saw that the only peers that were surpassing them were the ones that had college education, and therefore, if you have a college education, you will get higher up in the company and make more money and do better in life and that’s what they wanted for their children.
The problem is that everyone wanted their children so everybody told their kids to go to college everyone did go to college and then there weren’t enough jobs afterwards because everybody started going to college.
This is also compounded by the fact that the Boomer generation is currently the longest-lived of any generation, a not insignificant percentage of them are still employed full time, and they are the personification of pulling the ladder up behind them. Can you tell the difference between corporate America or even Congress and a retirement home these days? Because I sure can't.
So the very same people who encouraged us to go to college are the ones now holding us back from the careers we were promised would come with a college degree.
Oooh 😲 this right here👆
Go to college or end up working at McDonald's. College was pounded in your head as early as elementary school during that time .
And then when you couldn't get a job because of the shitty boomer-induced 2008 financial crisis, their response was "Oh, what? Are you too good to flip burgers at McDonald's? You millennials just want everything handed to you."
Even my parents, who are pretty open minded people, only recently started to realize that, yeah things were pretty shitty for my generation as we came of age.
There were commercials on tv that would come on at 10pm reminding you to check if your kids were home… and a lot of people needed that reminder
This was more of an 80s thing.
I remember we were supposedly the most coddled generation ever because we started having laws that protected us like: seatbelts and helmets.
It was a weird in between time.
People knew you shouldn't smoke around kids but they still did, they just felt a little bad about it. We still got piled in the back of a pick up truck with a dog to go down the road to the beach, we just only did it with the "cool" parents and had to duck from cops. My own parents knew we shouldn't drink from the garden hose bc of the lead but we still did because "just a little is fine, I'm sure."
We weren't quite as free as the kids before us, but sometimes we were slightly safer.
Yeah, it was in the time of 'smoking kills', but also still having smoking sections in restaurants haha.
I told you last night, no! Where is Bart? His dinner is getting all cold and eaten...
It could be my own rose-colored glasses (or my own limited perspective), but parents and authority figures felt stricter in the 90s. Not wildly so, but they seemed to command more of an authority. If my teacher got me in trouble at school, my parents didn't launch in to ask the teacher why I got in trouble, or ask them why my grades were bad. They assumed the teacher had a good reason for it and punished me in turn. There seemed to be more of a trust in teachers. Today there seems to be a trend of parents running into the school demanding why on earth little Billy earned an F instead of demanding more of the kid. Parents coming in to yell at teachers seems to be the norm now, but it didn't seem to be a thing when I was in school.
I was raised Catholic and my parents weren't super strict, but there were definitely clear boundaries and rules. Bedtime was at 8:30, no exceptions, and we prayed every night before bed (until I was maybe 9 or 10 or so). We went to church on Sundays and there was no tolerance for goofing around. We all sat down for dinner together. We ate what my parents served us--they might occasionally make accommodations like giving my sister a different bowl because she hated how ceramic bowls felt, but we ate what was in front of us. We played sports (soccer and softball) and it was expected that we do it, even if we didn't like it.
But on the flipside, my parents also didn't hover over us the way it feels like a lot of modern parents do. We played in the basement and had a lot of free reign and goofed off down there. We rode bikes with friends. Generally, my parents just expected to know where we were and to give them the phone numbers of our friends, but we'd generally just ride bikes over to their houses. My parents sometimes played board games with us but they never stooped down and did imaginary play with us. If I asked my mom to play a stupid game, she would simply say 'no, ask your sister'. Todays parents seem overwhelmed by constantly pleasing their kids in comparison.
My parents expected us to do well in school (getting As and Bs was overall good), but they didn't have insane extracurricular demands. They told us a lot of stories and took us places and taught us things.
Am I… a 90s parent?
Seriously though, I see kids running around screaming in cafes and restaurants. I keep a close eye on my son (nearly 8) and keep him in line.
Result: He can sit at a table and eat a meal without an iPad.
I dunno. I feel very strict when I tell him not to scream at the playground at a tone verging on ultrasound. Sure, have fun and be vocal. Yell if you want to but please don’t scream.
My parents were completely hands off. They were in their 40s when I was born and I wasn’t planned. I could pretty much watch anything, eat whatever, and run around the neighborhood alone. They did make sure I appeared clean and well dressed but the house was a mess and I was definitely neglected in many aspects. After my father passed, I had to get myself up for school and be by myself until my mom came home at night. Internet was new territory and completely unsupervised. I do remember my friends with younger parents being more strict, some completely overbearing. It was rare to be an only child and I had just one or two classmates during my entire schooling that I can remember who were as well. While I appreciate some of the freedom I got, I do wish my parents had stepped in more. I remember the early to mid 90s being really pleasant and nostalgic, even though I was very young.
My parents were 40 and I was unexpected but an only and had a different but similar experience. They were very hands on when I was young but teenage me was too much for people in their 50s so they kinda checked out.
I think the older boomer parents were very in touch keeping up appearances. I was dressed immaculately no matter what until I was a preteen and rebelled a bit. No matter what was going on in our lives we looked good and acted "right" but I noticed my friends w younger parents were allowed to be wild in public, wear cool grunge clothes, etc. Shit that would not fly with people who grew up in the 50s.
I think it makes a lot more sense that you noticed younger parents being more chill. My experience may have stemmed from going to Catholic school. Maybe not. My parents weren’t as religious as the others but the public school in our neighborhood was rough, so they chose private.
Also, I get what you mean about checking out. I’m not sure how you feel but I think my parents were exhausted, didn’t take care of themselves, set in their ways, etc and when I was born, they changed their lifestyle as little as possible. I always felt more like a roommate or a pal.
My parents were older than most of my friends’ parents, born in the mid 40s. Dad was in the military and a teacher, mom worked in the main office of a prestigious private school.
General manners: You were respectful to adults, Mr and Mrs until someone told you it was ok to use their first names. Please and thank you, no elbows on the table, excuse yourself when you needed to get up.
We didn’t have cable and I couldn’t have TV game consoles. I was allowed to do what I wanted and had some neighbor kids to play with until we got into our teens and that stopped (92-93).
Both of my parents went to college, dad has a bachelors and got a masters in the 90s when state rules changed. Mom had an associates. College was expected.
All the kitchens where themed in at least one of the following:
cows
chickens\roosters
old timey household goods(butter churns, etc)
blue & white curtain vaguely farmhouse
bonus points for Southwest style accents(pinkteal, coyotes howling, giant "Indian" pots with twigs in them)
edit: forgot pigs
You forgot geese, too 🪿
Hahahahahaha my mom had pigs and farm house-y shit 😂
And then for the bathrooms--soaps shaped like seashells and bowls of those blue marbles.
I have a lot more empathy for my parents now. They were just winging it and doing the best they could as 30-somethings with two kids. I am now the age my parents were in the 90s and I can barely keep plants alive and I can just Google anything I want on a smart phone. On the flip side, the early internet wasn’t going to deeply psychologically damage us the way parents have to monitor screen time today.
My mom was a little hard on me and my dad was a bully back then, my stepdad has a grudge against me. I wasn’t a very happy child.
watch Roseanne. like that lol
I’m now the age my parents were in the mid 90s. I definitely don’t feel as old as I thought they were.
I have been in the US for about a decade now but I am french and grew up in a little town in France. American culture was spreading wildly in Europe and even if there is big culture differencies, my childhood was very similar to american kids in the 90s.
My parents were very caring and hands on but at the same time, gave us a lot of freedom. Summer vacations were amazing. In France, during summer, the sun goes down late, around 10/10.30pm and so days are long. I remember they would let us ride our bikes all over town as long we were back for dinner. We also would have to call home if we ever played at someone's house. My kids are still very young but I don't know that, if they were older, I would feel confident letting them leave the house on their bikes. Internet, social media and 24hr news channel make you paranoid. Also, traffic nowadays is insane, growing up, there were a lot less cars in the streets.
In term of school and relation to teachers, I agree, if I got in trouble, they would assume I did something wrong and probably get scolded or in trouble at home.
Concerning my parents relationship with other adult/parents, I can't really compare to today, living in the US, as there may be a culture difference but my parents were very social and were friends with all the surrounding neighbors, they all had kids in the same age range as us so we were always playing together. We even created a neighborhood party that happend the first week-end of september, after school started. It was a whole day of celebration, eating and playing games, we would rotate every year at which house we would do it at. As I have experienced here, people might have been more in person social as we did not have social media. People in France like to party and socialize.
I am very nostalgic of the 90s, My perspective might be lacking as I was born in 86 and grew up in the 90s but it was a much simpler time.
They were more concerned about appearances.
My dad let me and my friends smoke in the house. We were 13. He said he didn’t want the neighbors to see us.
There was literally a British comedy in the 90s called “keeping up appearances” about a suburban housewife trying to convince her neighbors she’s better off than she actually is.
Poor Richard...
I was Richard… for 10 years, now I’m Onslow and actually happy!
Loved Onslow! I'll go for a beer with you!
Agree. My friends parents caught me and my buddies drinking one day at his house . My parents had to come pick me up . My dad didn't say anything about drinking he was just going on about how embarrassed he was having to come pick me up. All about appearance
This is definitely apparent in that "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality that they all seemed to have. Who gives a shit about nice throw pillows and fancy dishes? Not me. But I keep getting criticized about spending my money going on vacations or doing fun things rather than buying nicer versions of what I already have.
Materialism still exists, but I feel like our parents and their generation took it to a whole new level of greed and showiness.
I grew up in an upper middle classs/lower upper class environment.
Wanting a piece of candy or a cookie or wanting to watch tv was a moral failing. Being overweight or not looking a certain way was laziness. Mental illness was something that was somehow very very bad to take medication for - the undertones being that you were poisoning yourself.
My brother didn't go to college because he joined a band that opened for a LOT of famous bands. He toured all over the US for a most of the 90s, then got into real estate, so he's been financially and artistically successful ... but still is made to feel bad about not going to school.
And it wasn't just college - every less than perfect grade became "you're not going to make it in the real world." My mother was first convinced that I would never find a job because my words-per-minute rate with typing wasn't very high, so she made me take Mavis Beacon lessons. Then it was that I wasn’t going to succeed because even though I was typing, I wasn't using the Mavis Beacon method properly...
And money was weird. If I needed money to buy clothes, i had to pay my parents back. Once I was 18, I also had to pay interest. Dying your hair was a 'cry for attention'.
NO ONE WAS OUT, because parents just weren't open to the possibility. I can't stress this enough. Many, many people in my middle and high school were not straight or cis, but they couldn't do anything but conform until they were adults. There were no gay parents in the school's parents population - although quite a few moms who waited to come out until after their kids left home. I'm sure some of that is because of how many boomers gays were wiped out by AIDS & HIV, so there wasn't any normalized community.
I think most of what I think about it is that ( based on my parents mostly, but also my friends) is that parents didn't really enjoy spending time with their kids, it was more like they were working on assembling a product. My husband and I have kids now, and the only thing we ever want to do when we're not working is hang out with them. My parents wanted us as far away from them as possible most of the time.
My parents both worked days. My mom was a teacher and my dad was in insurance. Both got home from work early, rarely later than 5 PM. They did shit in between the time they got home and before dinner. They’d nap, go to the gym, balance their checkbooks. Then they’d tag team cooking dinner and cleanup. Then they’d go chill.
That all feels so foreign to me. My life and I get home and scramble to get dinner on the table and then the kids to bed. Then my wife logs back into work. My parents lived a pretty stress free home life and they still figured out a way to fuck it up.
Parents kind of had their own thing going and kids had their own thing going. Both parents worked and came home tried and didn’t want to be bothered with kids. Kids didn’t have much to do indoors so they played outside every day. I was actually talking to a friend about this a few weeks ago and we were saying we didn’t remember much interaction with our parents as kids. I also remember telling her that I don’t remember eating much, or even being hungry. I’d wake up and play outside until I got dark, and don’t recall eating breakfast before I left, or even going back home for lunch or something to drink. Parents and kids were more like roommates in the 90s.
I had about the same experience. I remember eating the chicken sandwich in the cafeteria. Other than that it was hacky sack for lunch
My parents drove me to every practice/game for multiple sports, multiple years, every season. They dropped everything they were doing to make sure I was on time. They also spent every single day throwing it in my face that they are slaves to my sports. When I didn't have sports that day, I was made to play outside and leave them alone. They also smoked a bunch of weed so they were pretty chill