12 Common Gen X Childhood Experiences That Parents Today Don’t Think Are Normal At All
When Gen X was growing up, being a feral child was totally normal.
vladee / Shutterstock Gen X childhoods are virtually unrecognizable from the ones kids experience now. When they were growing up, Gen Xers were latchkey kids who came back from school to an empty house. Eating Chef Boyardee straight from the can while watching TV until sundown is just one of many common Gen X childhood experiences that parents today don’t think are normal at all.
Gen X kids made it to adulthood mostly in one piece. They now stand firmly in the 44-to-59 year old age range, many with kids of their own. Yet when millennial and Gen Z parents hear about the things their Gen X predecessors did when they were being raised, they don’t think their experiences make sense for kids at all.
Here are 12 common Gen X childhood experiences that parents today don’t think are normal at all
1. Unsupervised outdoor playtime
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Playing outside without any adult supervision was a common Gen X childhood experience that parents today don’t think is normal at all. The magic of a Gen X childhood came from the utter freedom kids had to explore the world around them.
As history professor Joel P. Rhodes points out, Gen X kids grew up as divorce rates doubled and the number of working moms tripled, which meant that four out of ten Gen X kids lived in a divorced, single-parent household, most often with a single working mother. This societal shift left Gen X essentially on their own once the school day ended. They roamed the woods along the edge of town or spent their entire allowance at the arcade. They hung out on playgrounds built with wildly dangerous, sharp metal structures, and they stayed until it got dark and the streetlights flickered on. They came home in time for dinner, tossing their bike on the lawn.
Today’s childhood experience stands in stark contrast to the Gen X’s unsupervised outdoor playtime. Responsive and present parenting has become the norm. Some parents have a more extreme take on supervision, tending toward the helicopter parenting style. In those cases, the pendulum swung as far from Gen X parenting as it could go, moving from absentee parenting to overprotective parenting.
Social worker Cheryl Gerson posed a question highlighting the pitfalls of being an overprotective parent, asking, “Have we gone too far in protecting our children from any feeling that causes them frustration, worry, or anxiety? Have we started protecting them to the point that we are now undermining their emotional resilience?”
“Kids need to realize getting what you want doesn't always come easily. That's the best way to raise an emotionally resilient child,” she explained, making a case for stepping back so kids can foster a sense of autonomy.
“That doesn't mean we throw our children to the wolves. Instead, we need to walk by their side as they learn just how strong they can be,” Gerson concluded.
2. Riding in cars without seatbelts and carseats
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Another common Gen X childhood experience that parents today don’t think is normal at all is the lack of car seats and seatbelts. The rules and regulations around safety were literally of a different era, in that they barely existed at all. Gen X kids rode in the front seat at such a young age, their feet didn’t touch the floor. It was totally normal to ride in the bed of a pickup truck or sit in those collapsible seats in the trunk of a car, facing backwards, so they could make faces at the drivers behind them.
In 1984, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration required that all new cars be built with seatbelts. The first child passenger safety laws were passed in 1985, which meant kids under a certain age had to use a car seat. Airbags were introduced by the late ‘80s, and by the ‘90s, seatbelt use across the U.S. was at 80%.
Research has shown that properly installed child restraints, like cars seats and booster seats, can reduce mortality rates among child passengers by 70 to 80%. Parents today pay way more attention to their kids’ physical security than Gen X kids experienced, and advances in technology have made transit safer than ever.
3. Adults smoked everywhere
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Seeing adults smoking everywhere was a common Gen X childhood experience that parents today don’t think is normal at all. Smoking was allowed in restaurants, bars, and airplanes, and it was a normal occurrence for parents to smoke inside their homes. There were non-smoking sections in public places, but they didn’t offer much in way of protection from secondhand smoke.
Congress prohibited smoking on domestic flights with a duration of under two hours in 1987, a regulation that took effect a year later. By 1989, they passed a bill that banned smoking on all domestic airlines. By 1998, California became the first state to ban smoking in bars.
Anti-smoking campaigns and lobbying efforts helped to influence public opinion and get legislation in place to limit smoking in public places across the U.S. Gen X’s smoke-filled childhood is truly a thing of the past, something parents today don’t think is normal at all.
4. Drinking from the garden hose
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Drinking water from the garden hose was a definitive Gen X childhood experience that parents today don’t think is normal at all. In the '70s, '80s, and '90s, chugging water from a hose was a perfectly adequate way to stay hydrated. There were no Stanley Cups to hold 40 ounces of water and declare your popularity for the whole middle school to see. Gen X kids drank straight from the source: The garden hose.
Gen X kids didn’t have time to run inside for water. They couldn’t risk missing the next epic round of Capture-The-Flag just because they were thirsty. So, they did what every rational, free-range Gen X kid would do. They unraveled the rubber hose and glugged that warm, metallic-tasting water until they’d had their fill.
While today’s parents send their kids into the world with eco-friendly water bottles, made from recycled tires, Gen X kids relied on their wits and any outdoor water source they could find.
5. Riding bikes without helmets
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Another common Gen X childhood experience that parents today don’t think was normal at all was riding a bike without wearing a helmet. Learning to ride a bike is a childhood right-of-passage, but learning to do it safely is an element of modern-day parenting. Wearing a helmet wasn’t a requirement for riding a bike or roller-blading or sledding, or any other high-impact activity kids wear helmets for now.
The first states began putting helmet laws into place in 1987, yet there's still no federal law regarding kids and helmet-use in existence. Today’s kids don’t even climb on a balance bike or get their hands on one of those tiny scooters without a helmet on, let alone tie a skateboard to a shopping cart so they can ride down a hill with the wind in their un-helmeted hair.
6. Learning phone etiquette (like waiting patiently for your turn to make a call)
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Learning proper phone etiquette was a common Gen X childhood experience that parents today don’t think is normal at all. Landline phones were a staple of every household, as smartphones wouldn't be invented until the mid-90s. Gen X kids memorized their own phone number, along with their bestie’s number and the number to the offices where their parents worked.
They were taught how to answer the phone, how to take and leave messages, and how to talk to someone’s parents in a polite tone of voice. They had to wait their turn to make a call and figure out how often to try back if they got a busy tone. Being raised with good manners around phone-use was an essential part of any Gen X childhood experience, but that’s completely disappeared, since everyone and their toddler has a cell phone today.
7. Walking to school alone
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Another common Gen X experience that parents today don't think is normal is letting kids walk to school alone, no matter how young they were. Kindergartners walked to school with their 5th-grade neighbors as their chaperones.
Sure, there were crossing guards and stop signs. Sure, the concept of “Stranger Danger” was drilled into every Gen X kid’s mind to a fault, but parents still had a fairly laissez-faire approach to allowing their kids to go out in public on their own, which parents today couldn't even imagine.
8. Being on the receiving end of a ‘tough love’ parenting style
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Being on the receiving end of a “tough love” approach to parenting was a common Gen X childhood experience that parents today don’t think is normal at all. The overarching attitude towards raising kids ran along the lines of, “If they’re in one piece at the end of the day, we’re doing a great job.”
For Gen X kids, having Boomer parents meant being told to “Just get over it” whenever they expressed painful emotions. Being an authoritarian parent was totally normal: rules were rules, and “Because I said so” was a completely common response to any question Gen X kids asked. Today’s parents take a more conscious approach. While having a gentle parenting style gets dragged by older generations a fair amount, there are significant benefits to validating how kids feel and helping them process difficult emotions.
While tough love parenting was socially acceptable when Gen X were kids, today’s parents don’t think it’s normal at all.
9. Saturday morning cartoons
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Watching Saturday morning cartoons was a common Gen X experience that parents today don’t think is normal at all. Gen X kids were raised on a steady diet of TV and VHS tapes. For Gen X, there was nothing better than waking up on Saturday morning, digging into a box of sugar cereal, and planting themselves two inches from the TV set to watch He-Man, She-Ra and The Smurfs for hours on end.
This Gen X routine was brain-rot in all its glory. This wasn’t 30 minutes of screentime on an iPad to watch one wonderful episode of Bluey. It was hours of consumption and it was totally essential for Gen X to feed their insatiable appetite for pop culture.
Today’s parents spend weekends shuttling their kids to soccer practice, violin lessons, and meetings with their math tutors, but back in the day, TV reigned every Saturday morning, just one more thing that made Gen X childhoods feel magical.
10. Spending hours at the mall
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Another common Gen X childhood experience that parents today don't think is normal at all is spending entire afternoons at the mall without any adult supervision. Mall culture was at its peak in the '80s and '90s, and there was literally nothing better than getting dropped off in your mom’s station wagon to walk in circles at the mall for hours.
The mall was the place to see and be seen. Gen X kids drank Orange Juliuses to their hearts content. They sat in the massage chairs at Brookstone until a disgruntled employee kicked them out. Being called a mall-rat was a badge of honor in certain social circles.
Today’s parents don’t think of going to the mall as a valid after-school activity, especially since online shopping dominates the market, but once upon a time, having teased hair was the epitome of style, the chemical smell of Aqua Net permeated the air, malls reigned supreme, and life was good.
11. Eating a snack-food diet
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A common Gen X childhood experience that parents today don’t think is normal at all is having a strict snack-food diet. Gen X kids mainlined pitchers of Hawaiian Punch and neon-colored Kool-Aid. They ate Twinkies and fruit roll-ups with zero fruit properties and finished off their feast with a roll of Bubble Tape gum.
Today’s parents are more conscientious and cautious about the food their kids eat, in part, due to the rise of food-related allergies. It’s more common for kids to eat a macrobiotic diet or go gluten-free than it is for them to eat SpaghettiO’s in between slices of Wonder Bread. While subsisting off processed junk food was a common Gen X childhood experience, today’s parents don’t think that’s normal at all.
12. Being virtually unreachable
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Being virtually unreachable was a common Gen X childhood experience that parents today don’t think is normal at all. If Gen X kids needed to call their parents, they found a dime wedged in the corner of their Trapper-Keeper and used a pay phone. Writing letters, by hand, using actual paper, was how kids kept in touch from summer camp.
Texting wasn’t even a concept. If Gen X kids didn’t want their parents to know where they were, there was no finding them. For Gen X kids, the sense of freedom and independence were intoxicating, but parents today don’t think that’s normal, at all.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.