What was objectively better "back in the day?"

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My parents pushed for me to get married when I got pregnant when I was in my 20s. We all know how that turned out. With my parents' religious beliefs, it might as well have been the 50s. They threatened to disown me and everything. Fun times.

I know what you mean. For me, the backstory helps me understand my family's craziness now. They were ideal candidates to join a cult.

It really complicates my feelings about relationships with people I've chosen to not have one with.

Do you mean relationships with specific family members?

Yeah.

I certainly know what that's like.

This is what I'd call a mic drop moment. Yeah, the guy saying that crap is repeating a fictional version of the past. John Wayne was a pretty awful person, and we know that now.

Also, anyone saying "music was better in the ___'s" -- we still have that music today and additional music. Its not objectively better. What we have today is a superset of what you had then.

However, an awful lot of the big acts of the past don't survive the #MeToo era, and I think that is an improvement. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith is getting sued for things he bragged about in his freaking biography. Thats a good thing, not a bad thing.

The murder rates were astonishing as well in the 60s and 70s. We are more aware of murders now, but your odds of being murdered have gone down by about 1/2.

Just pointing out, that's the birth rate and not necessarily the pregnancy rate. ^

I agree the birth rate has gone way down even in married women.
We'll never really know pregnancy rates but I can assume they're down too, across the board.

Access to abortion plays a role.

Very few people seemed to have food allergies
Like gluten, dairy and peanut allergies.

There wasn't the "safety" culture like there is now.
We did stuff like walking by ourselves to school,
Playing outside all day until dark,
Going places by ourselves on the weekend,
Climbing trees and adventuring by the riverbank,
And getting dirty.

well one thing that was better is that real estate prices for homes for first-time home buyers was a lot more affordable.

States like Florida didnt feel like 1930's Germany when I was a kid...

No more crank calls.Kids today will never know the joy of harassing someone over the phone.
Childhood would suck today.
We used to sneak into the neighbors pool when they were on vacation.The neighborhood was ours to explore on bikes.
I rarely even see a kid outside anymore in town.

Same here. Heck I was a 90's kid raised on video games cartoons and junk food and yet even my generation would go outside to play occasionally. Kids today never seem to play outside.

Nostalgia.

i disagree. I live in a compact neighborhood and the youngins are always playing on the weekends. not that they cause any mischief i know of.

Free Range Parenting
Bullying was often limited to school hours
Your screw-ups were not online for perpetuity.
When you bought a product it often lasted for decades.
Advertisers sold their products by telling you the name of the products and what they did, not by selling an attitude.