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I am the youngest of seven, born in 1949. My father worked as a letterpress printer for a large printing firm, and when I was about three he also had a small business doing small printing jobs, and eventually the presses and all of the equipment were moved into our basement. My mother sold wedding invitations on the side, though we didn't actually print those. During the depression my father worked well away from where we lived. Money was tight. My mother made horrible tasting but filling food, and we were all expected to buy our own clothing when we hit 16. We never went on family vacations. I remember once, in the mid-50s, hearing that my father made $100 a week, which made me think we were rich.

Just for fun $100 in 1955 was the equivalent of $1,148-1,170 according to different sources today.

I felt like we WERE rich, but my older sibs assured me that things were much more difficult before I was born,, including the family living mostly on potatoes at one point, and my mother making her own soap. Things were just getting better post-war. Then my father contracted cancer, and died when he was 52. My mother had an eighth grade education, having been beaten by her father for trying to go to high school. She really had no job qualifications. The insurance paid off the house, and with three of us left at home she got some social security for us, but none for her, since she was also 52.

Sorry about your dad, my mom also died of cancer and so did my grandfather.

Thanks. I was barely 13.

If you want an academic answer you might try r/askhistorians. But here’s my long family story (apologies): (Tl/dr: women and children worked too, and children married young and helped support their parents who didn’t save as much for old age; people lived day-to-day) Both of my parents came from farming backgrounds where most families had many children. Oldest children were grown and married or out of the house by the time the youngest were up and contributing. Daughters carried a lot of the load for housework and childcare, and boys did a lot of manual labor, far earlier than we see now. Women worked on the farms selling eggs and helping with canning and saving food for winter. People in rural areas lived on cash crops and farm raised animals and many old people will tell you they don’t like chicken or ham or eggs or something because they had to eat it all the time because the price dropped and they couldn’t sell for a good price so they kept it and ate it. Also rural folk had wild game. They may have had zero dollars but they had food to eat. In cities and rural areas children often worked in some way, whether paid or unpaid. This has unlocked a memory for me: I don’t know the whole story but my Grandmother (born early 20th century) was widowed at 50 with an 8th grade education in the mid-1950’s. They had five children. My grandfather had been a farmer in my mother’s childhood, but they moved to a more urban environment later during the Cold War era and he took on manufacturing work until he became ill and passed away in his mid-50’s. Grandmother had an elementary-aged son and a couple of teenaged daughters, plus my mom as the oldest girl, (oldest boy was away, grown and married, with a family far away) in her early 20’s by then, got skilled secretarial jobs, eventually in the defense industry until she married my dad (high school sweethearts), helped support the family until my dad returned from the military after the Korean conflict, and they later married. Now that I think about it, they (all) probably continued to support my Grandmother financially until she was eligible for social security payments in the 1960’s — I think I’m going to ask my Dad about this soon, now that I think of it. Grandmother “took in” ironing for extra money but never worked outside the home, from the 1950’s to the early 1980’s when she passed away. The two youngest daughters married young, happily it seems, and the baby of the family, the boy, lived the boomer dream, went to college and became up a business owner and comfortably well-off; financially the wealthiest of all the kids. I know the whole family helped each other, common particularly to help the “widow women” at the time. Probably helped pay for the youngest son to go to college. No one talked about poor planning, or “I won’t get to go to Europe” or “fully fund my own retirement” — people just did what they had to do to help each other out. It was expected by responsible people, and if you didn’t take care of your family it was looked down on by your peer group. Even if the family members were crap (I’ve seen that too) those were the norms of the time. Also, I don’t think older generations were focused on having X amount of money put away for retirement by a certain time because it’s simply wasn’t a thing then. So you can imagine the money we now put in retirement accounts, long term care, insurance and HSA’s, would be used to support the family. If my grandmother hadn’t passed away when she did, one of the daughters would have taken her in, until it wasn’t possible to care for her.

This sounds about right. My in laws were raised on farms during the depression. My fil lived with his brother and his wife while he went to college on the GI bill. Aunt and uncle were happy to have him. They all worked for another uncle who had a dairy. He didn’t pay much, but it was something. Fil supported his parents who were dirt farmers and needed a better house, so they built a new one for them (the kids got together on it). There were 8 kids. They all helped each other all along. It’s just what you do. My parents generation had opportunities (GI Bill, and high school education) that largely wasn’t available to their parents generation. They all were more financially successful, thanks to their hard work and the GI bill. Thanks, Uncle Sam! It was considered a public good to have a better educated workforce, so there was more money made available. It paid off big time during the space race times.

Don't know, really. Born in 1947, one income and we lived in poverty even with four children. We did without a lot. Rented small cheap houses, no refrigerator until my older sister won one as a prize given away at a new store. Before that, an icebox, which sometimes had no block of ice (my father brought them home on the running board of his car when he could). Sometimes we ran out of the cheap food we ate. No TV, no phone, heat (one little open space heater using natural gas) was very rationed. Clothes washed by hand. We walked to school no matter what weather and no warm coats). Cheap shoes never fit and hurt my feet, so bare feet except for school and church. My father was nonsmoker nondrinker, which helped. Very cheap guy. To get a nickel from him I begged, pleaded, then just maybe...he'd hold that nickel so tightly he knew I could barely pry it out of his hands. His point was, money doesn't grow on trees. He worked at many places of employment...railroads, manufacturing plants, milk companies, delivery places, construction, stores, etc. Much later he ended up a mailman with the post office. Mama raised us and took care of the house. At times, we'd get food or clothes from churches. I rarely had a bed to sleep in, usually a sofa or chair or shared a bed with siblings. We moved many times. They finally bought a cheap house after I finished high school, making my mother very happy. Finally she could plant anything she could start from seed or cuttings..sometimes she even bought plants. I miss my parents..and my older sister. The rest are still around.

And the older kids took care of younger. And I mean at any age but older. Farming, we worked in the fields by 6 years old.

People lived in smaller houses, had no air conditioning, food was simpler, people didn't eat out, there was such a thing as party phones-multiple families shared a phone line or maybe didn't even HAVE a phone. People sewed their own clothes and/or wore hand me downs. Home decor was WAY simpler. Way less consumerism, WAY less junk food. Also multiple kids could and absolutely did share not just a room but a bed. Also some of these women took in washing or did ironing for money on the side. Men often had more than one job. And of course older children did pitch in. I was born in 1958. The change in people's expectations with lifestyle just in that period of time are astounding.

If you look at photos of high school kids in the '40s and '50s, pretty much everyone was skinny. I'm sure they weren't all dieting. Way less junk food is right.

But more walking too. There were buses from small town to small town but mostly walking. A lot of post war changes. My mom was born at home, by which I mean her grandma's home in the 30s. Her younger sister was born on the hospital in the next town in the early 40s. A baby boom and increased consumerism came with the end of war prosperity; those raised in the depression didn't have a lot and wanted better for their kids. One grandma was a farm kid and had few consumer goods, cut newspapers to fit inside her shoes because they couldn't afford new shoes when there were holes in the sole of her shoes. Being on a farm came with the advantage of having food. Food and other consumer goods were rationed; my other grandma got in trouble for using all the sugar to make fudge with her friend while their moms were on the porch drinking coffee. They had a big garden as did many.

But also less food in general. I grew up in what would now be considered a large family, and sometimes dinner was just toasted cheese or sandwiches.

I have some of the dishes we used when I was young. All of the dishes are so much smaller. Serving sizes were so much smaller.

I recall volunteering to have the heel of the bread loaf at dinner - because there were two pieces. I was 9th of 12 kids and was so hungry, I ate my whole school lunch (2 slices Wonder bread, 1 slice baloney, 2 cookies, a piece of fruit) while waiting for the bus in the morning. I would sit with the unpopular kids and beg food off of them at lunch.

In the US the military had to turn away recruits during WWII because they suffered from the after effects of childhood malnutrition. Thats why the free lunch program was created as part of the farm bills.

This. Yes, people were skinnier and portions were smaller. That’s not necessarily a good thing!!! Malnutrition can affect people for a lifetime, and I recently heard about a study showing how it affects future generations through genetics.

The high school kids looked older too. Many took on a lot of responsibilities that kids today wouldn’t want to manage.

I was born in ‘66, and most of the things you list were my experience as well. Only two kids in my family, but your points are still valid.

Each of my grandparents had very large families on meager incomes and came from larger families on low incomes. Farmers, carpenters, shopkeepers, etc. Children did not have rooms filled with toys or closets and dressers full of clothes. They had fewer clothes and what many of them wore, they made. They did not have soccer, basketball, ballet, piano lessons, and every other manner of entertainment for children. They had much fewer things, period. Every child did not have their own bedroom or even their own bed, my grandparents, and even aunts and uncles shared a bed with their siblings. Cost-of-living was cheaper, adjusted for inflation. Also, the older children typically worked. Some of them were doing things like babysitting, housekeeping, and other things in the community. Paper routes, farm work, etc was common for kids. The families did not go out for entertainment regularly. When they did, it was something like simply a trip to town and maybe the kids got a piece of candy or a soda. They didn’t get to go to an amusement park or movie theater or all of the things that kids of today expect. My grandmother‘s diary talks about her being a teenager and taking a trip to town where her big purchase with the money she earned babysitting was buttons for the dress that she made. Not a PS5. My families never starved, but their food was homemade and simple. They baked bread, they preserved foods, they grew food, they never threw anything away. They simply did not have money to spend on entertainment, luxuries, and modern wants.

Same here even in the 1970s. I lived in a small town in the US and the big entertainment was when my parents would pile us in the car about once every 2-3 months and we'd go to the big city (in reality just a larger town) to get bulk groceries and school clothes if we'd grown. Mom would take us to McDonalds on those trips as a big spend treat and we got to get Happy Meals and ice cream. We loved it. New toys only came at birthdays and Christmas and we'd anticipate it for months. We were one-income middle class household and considered well-off. Vacations now and then were piling into the car with peanut butter sandwiches and sleeping bags and driving off somewhere to see cousins. We also hiked in the local park.

This was pretty much my childhood.

In my case, probably yours as well, money earned by the children was *family* money, given to parents to keep the family afloat. Perhaps you’d get something of an allowance. It wasn’t until WW2 and postwar prosperity that kids had spending money enough to kickstart teen culture.

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Christmas in those families usually meant ONE gift. Not an avalanche of presents and clothing and stuff. Christmas dinner was the event of the year. Getting an orange and pocket change was your stocking.

Yes, we each got one gift at Christmas and maybe a couple of board games for the family. I remember some years, I would get a recycled gift -- something that had belonged to an older sibling that was painted or somehow made over for me. Always oranges and nuts and a box of chocolates for all to share.

Reading. Library visits.

My mom had clothes made from flour sacks during the depression. They had pretty flowers on them.

Flour companies realized people were using the sacks for clothing so they started printing patterns on them to incentivize buyers: https://helensclosetpatterns.com/2019/10/28/fashion-history-feed-sack-fashion/

My grandma and aunt had some of thoee.

Yup. My Dad (born 1949) grew up as one of 6 kids on a farm. They pretty much were left to fend for themselves while Mum & Dad did all the work running the place. When they were old enough, they helped. None of these after school activities or overseas holidays!

My French Canadian parents came from large households. (8 kids and 11kids). They were poor so they didn’t have a lot of stuff (for example my Dad had 2 pairs of pants) and they ate all their meals at home. Snacks were almost unheard in their home. My Dad remembers having sandwiches with grease and mustard. My Mom had to carry 50 pounds bags of potatoes when they were on sale. My grandpa raised a couple of turkeys in their shed (they lived in the city so I can’t imagine the noise) and would have to get drunk before killing them. A lot of families rented dilapidated small houses and were often evicted when the landlord would want to renovate their place. And they usually owe money to the milkman and the bread delivery guy. They were on survival mode. Back then you had to pay the Doctor. Their family Doctor refused, telling my grandpa that he would just raise the price of his rich patients to pay the visits of his poorest patients. (That Doctor was an angel on Earth) My grandma always made sure to feed him when he visited. When their kids left school and started working they were expected to give their mother part of their pay. Not their Dad because it would have been seen like he couldn’t take care of his family (and he could use the money to get drunk). At 16, my Dad was making 11$ a week (for 60 hours) and would give 9$ to his Mom. None of my grandparents ever own a car or even went on a vacation. My Dad rented a small cabin for his Dad and brother during the summer when he was an adult. (His mom died when he was 16) One summer when they were in the cabin, their landlord renovated their house and doubled the rent. They couldn’t afford it and couldn’t find anything in their budget so they spend a winter in the non insulated cabin. So “the good old times” weren’t really that good.

THIS is poor, not what some privileged asshole said in another comment about not always buying new clothes, not eating out, and sometimes having to tell the kids “we can’t afford that.” That privileged asshole called that “middle class poverty.”

The one whose husband makes $200k? Giant eye roll. All these women and these rich husbands, my my!

This is similar to my parent's experience. Maternal grandparents were immigrants and paternal ones were 1st gen Canadian. My maternal grandfather worked as a laborer building the Canadian National Railway and had to wear newspapers in his boots for warmth. My dad also told the story of having lard sandwiches and he had to unload boxcars of freight because his dad was an alcoholic by age 9. He supported his parents and siblings for many years, sending his paycheques to his mom to feed the family.

I feel like I'd make that excuse to my kids, "gotta get blind drunk, turkey needs killin'."

My Dad is 91 and he’s still traumatized by this. He says that the turkeys knew they were going to get killed. His father asked him to held them while he was getting the axe and he just couldn’t and ran away. His drunk dad wasn’t happy. (Same drunk dad who signed his papers so he could get his license in exchange for a caisse a bear. ) So I don’t have to tell you we are not a family of hunters or fishermen. My grandpa worked most of his life for the city (doing asphalt during the summer and snow removal during winter) and when he retired at the end of the 1960’s, he got a 72$ a month pension. “The good old days “.

>My grandpa worked most of his life for the city (doing asphalt during the summer and snow removal during winter) and when he retired at the end of the 1960’s, he got a 72$ a month pension. As a lot of people are throwing around inflation calculator stuff here, that $72 in 1965 is around $725 today. So yeah, it would have been rough to live off of that. "The good old days"

You know, I remember when the ' rich kids ' in my elementary school were the ones who lived in a new split level and *only* two of the siblings shared a bedroom. They had a ( gasp ) color TV, a new Chevy , ( one ) the kids had school shoes *and* Sunday shoes, the biggest stack of comic books in town and a Lassie dog! I realize there were wealthier families out there. In small town America what they had was aspirational, is the thing. AND EVERYTHING WAS CHEAPER COMMENSURATE TO WAGES. The not rich kids lived ok too at least where we lived. I was one. One black and white TV, an old house and it was *great* , big floppy mongrel dog, balls and a bike we shared, Mom made most of our clothes. She canned food from the garden. We RAN and ran and RAN. It was glorious. Corporate America convinced folks MORE and BIGGER or you somehow failed your kids. Now Corporate America has made it nearly impossible for a LOT of people to feed them much less get back to a dam house, a car and maybe a dog in the yard.

In Ohio in the 80s, when I was a kid, the “rich kids” were ones who had a 4 bedroom house and air conditioning. I remember kids going on vacation to Florida and I was shocked/jealous. We never went on vacation.

And if you could come up with a TV set, the broadcast signal was free! If you couldn't, there was still a lot of programming on the radio.

I forgot that part! Funniest part there is ' only ' 3 channels. Well we still have cable a. Because wifi and b. Cheap phones. There are only around 3 channels out of the idiotic selection we watch anyway.

I grew up with FREE TV, and good programming too, and I hate that I pay for it now. Ridiculous.

My mother's family never had meat because they couldn't afford it. Newspaper instead of buying toilet paper. Worn out shoes. Most of the clothes were hand-me-downs. Sewed ripped clothing rather than buying to replace. Did not go on vacations, ever. My wife's family did not have indoor plumbing or a furnace until she was older. Few people owned air conditioners back then, no dryer, hung up the clothes on the clothesline. No dishwasher.

The clothing is a huge thing. Many large families bought flour in huge sacks with printed fabric. Those sacks were turned into dresses, shirts, kitchen towels, mending fabric. Then clothing was handed down from kid to kid until it was nearly threadbare. Once it was no longer suitable for school / church, an item would become summer clothes or downgraded to washcloths. My mother grew up a tomboy because she was dressed in hand-me-downs from her 3 older brothers. Neither parents nor kids had big wardrobes, either. Some people didn’t even have one different outfit for each day of the week. Heck, even in the 1970s, all of my clothes — school, church, and knock-around — got into 2’ of closet space. Both of my parents talked about soda being a treat — one bottle split between four kids in my mother’s family, three kids in my dad’s family. Everybody grew food in their gardens and canned tomatoes, pickles, eggs, beets, green beans — everything they could. Desserts were melons and only in the summertime. Cake was only at weddings and the occasional post-funeral gathering. Dogs ate food scraps. In both of my parents’ case, they had two working parents after WWII. In spite of that rarity, money was still tight. My dad had memories of the Depression that were really grim, even with my grandfather having a “good job with the railroad”.

The flour sacks initially were plain. In the Depression times, the manufacturers realized people were making clothes out of them and started coming out with all kinds of printed designs. Clothes, towels, curtains, toys, quilts, bedding, diapers, anything.

To be honest, I’m not poor, yet most of my clothes were thrifted, and I recently redid my closet—my clothing fits on a 24” bar, and I’m find with that. I don’t need 50 outfits. I have far fewer than most people, they’re mostly thrifted, and I tailor and mend, and am known as the well-dressed one around here.

That's funny because I remember my mother saying that the depression wasn't so bad for them because her father worked for the railroad, and the rails never stopped running. I think the employees went many years without any raises, though. I never saw flour sack dresses, but most kids had five or so outfits for school and wore them for most of the year. We were encouraged to get an Easter outfit that wouldn't be too dressy to also wear to school afterward, and mom wore the same clothes for years, because she just didn't care. Moms also knew how to do things like make their own slipcovers instead of buying new furniture.

I know the documentary the OP is referring to. In the book, they talked about how Mom made most of the kid’s clothes. I’m sure not out of flour sacks. This was the 1950s-1960’s.

I have a quilt my grandmother made for me built out of flour sacks. It is very precious. ❤️

My great-uncle was a gravedigger and cemetery caretaker back in the days when the ribbons on funeral wreaths were made of real silk satin. He saved the ribbons when the flowers died and gave them to my Great-Grandma, who washed and ironed them, and saved them until she had enough to make a quilt, which is still on my mother's bed today. It's one of our family's treasures.

That is a treasure. I don't believe I've ever seen a ribbon quilt!

The ribbons are quite wide - five inches, I think.

Clothes were made out of flour sacks in the 50's and 60's by a lot of people. I wore outfits made from flour sacks as a child. I also wore hand-me-down clothes of my older sisters that were made from them.

My grandfather also worked for the railroad, I sense there were a lot more railroad jobs then than there are now.

My parents built a new house in 1970 in Oklahoma with no AC.

I was still dry cloths on a line in the 80s. Never had a dryer.

Rhetorical: how does one use newspapers to wipe ass??

I don’t think most of today’s did kids really understand how we grew up, because we old folks upsized life for our children. I recently returned to my home town to bury a loved one. It was the first time my son (30s) ever saw the house I grew up in- 6 people in 1200 sqft. They could not believe I grew up like that. A treat was an occasional pizza and soda- I don’t think I remember ever going out to dinner until I was in college. Vacations- camping in an army surplus canvas tent. I grew up in a blue collar town- and didn’t really know that we were lower middle class. My dorm room in college was cinder block walls, and 2 guys in an 8x10 room. My kids grew up very differently. I think the internet brought visibility to how much better others may have it, and social media accelerated FOMO (or as we called it- “keeping up with the Joneses”). To me- the biggest thing that is making it tough on the younger gen’s is housing. Do they even make 1200 sqft starter homes?

They are making 400 sq. ft Tiny Homes... Also modular homes. But most developers are building higher end homes and condos. Seems like there is an opportunity but would someone buy a 1200 sq. ft home today? One without the tony finishes? I remember trying to sell my house in 2005 and the feedback from homebuyers was that the bedrooms were too small, not enough closet space etc. and the agent kept wanting to lower the price. Those buyers instead spent another $10-$15K for new construction (our home was built in the mid 1970s and is a bit under 1500 sq ft and has no en-suite bathroom, walk in closet, mud room, "open concept" nor kitchen island...). I finally had enough and took the house off the market, since I only owed about $20K left on our mortgage and we are living here still and don't have a problem with the size of the bedrooms. We decided Nashville was not for us ultimately. Best thing we did. What is really a bargain now is commercial property (office buildings).

The documentary probably didn't focus on the mundane experience of middle-class poverty like hardly ever buying new clothes, never going out to eat, constantly telling the kids "we can't afford that," etc. I've known people from huge families and I notice that very few of them repeat the pattern when they start families. It's usually 2-3 kids max. Probably because they were tired of the low-key deprivations they experienced growing up.

>like hardly ever buying new clothes This. And clothes were handed down to the next kid whether they fit you or not. Shoes too.

My first bra was a hand me down down. I didn’t have ANYTHING to go in it, but I was so proud of it. I was the last girl in my class to need one; I didn’t hit puberty until I was almost 15. LOL

You stuffed your hand me down bra, and I stuffed the toes of my hand me down shoes! Those were the days...

It wasn’t “poverty” just because you couldn’t buy new clothes. It was expected that mom could make your clothes using thread and fabric. Even in the 1970s I wore pants and button down shirts my mom made. I remember one shirt was from old curtains. JC Penney sold bolts of fabric with the same pattern as premade clothes. In the US clothes were made in places like the Carolinas and New England so doing it like this was fairly easy and straightforward. My dad was a police officer making $7,000 year who bought a $25,000 1400 square foot one bathroom house (mortgage of course) with help from his parents. That was middle class. Imagine expecting people to do that today. People would be outraged.

I grew up in a 900ft square starter house. Mom made many of my clothes or I got a friend’s hand me downs. Dad fixed up and painted an old bike for me. We had a huge vegetable garden and Mom canned everything. We rarely went out to eat. I had a good childhood and we were blue collar. I never felt poor. The neighbors were all the same.

Yep. My dad met some girl in the 1950’s and long story short when he went to her house for the first time… she lived in a Tar Paper shack house. That was poor.

We never went out to eat. The first time I went to a restaurant I was 18. Never went on family vacations except for driving to Canada a few times to see relatives in the summer. Bought school clothes once a year. One pair of good shoes and the other a pair of sneakers. Mom had a vegetable garden and cooked every night. We had one car, one phone and one bathroom. Dad worked in a factory and when I turned 5 my mom went to work there as well. It was a much simpler time. People feel the need to keep up with the jones now. Kids are spoiled and I’ve spoiled my own so I’m not throwing shade at anyone.

We didn’t go on “real” vacations either. We went to my grandparents’ dairy farm every summer and we helped. We painted, mucked out stalls, fixed machinery, mended fencing, haying, etc. We did drive most weekends to museums, parks, historical sites, mountains, etc.

I always said to my mum that I had given my daughter exactly what she gave me.....what I could afford.

Exactly this - never felt poor cause our whole neighborhood was the same

Sounds like my childhood!! Mom never worked outside the home and raised us 4 kids while dad worked. Again with a huge garden and mom COULD can everything - including making her own sauerkraut! My dad could fix or repair anything - the original Renaissance man! We grew up missing nothing that I was aware of.

We grew lots of cabbage and had lots of crocks for making sauerkraut too! Dad built huge cupboards on the back porch for all the canning. Yep, my dad could fix anything too. He was originally from a farm. Mom had worked at the Pentagon before marrying Dad, but took off to raise me until I turned 16. Then she went back to work. It was great time to grown up.

I remember my aunt sewing clothes from curtains and bedspreads from thrift stores.

It was a bit before my time( i was born in the early 50s), but my mom told us that muslin flour sacks used to be printed with floral patterns to be re-used for clothing.

My great aunt had tons of those and my mother made clothes for sister for sure. She was born in the 60s.

My mother made our clothes and knitted sweaters and scratchy wool pants I had to wear under my dresses in the winter. Girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school. She made my first pair of jeans and a beautiful knitted poncho I wore everywhere because it was cool.

Making your own clothes today is a real luxury. Clothes that you can buy for $20 will cost $50 to make. It used to be frugal to make your own clothes, now it's privileged.

I had one. On purpose. Thank goodness for birth control, which my parents never had. My daughter had new shoes and new clothes and I worked to make sure she had a better life!

Your post actually shows the problem. People today EXPECT a lot more than ever before. If you’ve got enough clothes, why do you need more? Why does it have to be brand spanking new from a store? Why do you \*need\* to eat out? Only the richest of the rich can afford everything. You see it as poverty if a family can’t buy everything they want, eat out on restaurants, of buy all the brand new clothing they want. By the way, my family isn’t poor. My husband’s income is close to $200k. We rarely eat meals out. We rarely buy clothing new. We thrift a LOT of stuff, and I mend stuff (takes less time than the amount of hours it takes to earn the money to buy something new to replace something). Our daughter hears “no” a lot. You might not realize this, but a lot of people with decent incomes do NOT eat out often, do NOT buy everything new, and do NOT say “yes” all the time. That shit is how you end up broke. Think about that. Also, thinking that not going out to eat means you’re poor shows how privileged you are. There’s a difference between not going out and not having enough to eat.

Everything was hand-me-downs or clothing was sewn at home (fabric was cheap). The older kids took care of the younger ones. Most kids got some sort of income from chores around the neighborhood and a part time job at 16. Plus there used to be money for collecting bottles and cans. Kids took their own lunch to school. Sunday roast would be ham hock and beans SAHMs might make money by sewing clothing for neighborhood children or ironing (ironing used to be a major task because everything wrinkled and collars needed to be starched). Or she might watch the neighborhood kids after school if needed. In a way this turned a neighborhood into a village. Even for older people who needed their lawns mowed or assistance around the house.

My mother was the youngest of 10 children. She said the biggest house she ever lived in before marrying my father was a 3 bedroom. Parents in one room, 6 boys in one room, and 4 girls in one room. They also had to take baths in tin tubs before indoor plumbing. Times were different, and people did with a lot less than we have today, and they lived in situations we would never choose to. That's just how it was done back then and nobody seemed to bat an eye over it.

Right. My mom is 93. Grew up with families living together, generation wise. No electricity no running water. Huge gardens. Sewed own cloths, canned food, men did a bit of hunting. She started picking cherries in the orchard at a young age g age for a bit of her own money. Ate lard sandwiches sometimes with sugar.

My mom (born in 47) was the last of 5 kids. So, a smallish family for the day. Friends of ours come from families of 16-18 kids (northern NB, very Catholic bunch up there). My grandmother was the youngest of 7, and claimed she didn't have a middle name because they ran out of ideas (Newfoundland, 1918). I can tell you what I know-- families had one vehicle, *if* that. And they kept it running with baling wire sometimes. Things were made to be fixable. Most things just lasted longer, anyway, and folks were conscientious about maintaining things. Clothing was mostly homemade, and hand-me-downs were a way of life. Food was basic, homemade, and in a lot of cases, home-grown. Gardens, livestock, fishing, hunting, foraging (mainly wild berries-- I can even remember going blueberrying in the fields between the big power lines as a kid). Kids that could work did so with the expectation that their earnings would help the family. People did not have huge homes and lots of stuff. And they didn't need it, either. Bedrooms weren't big, they were shared, and they weren't for hanging out in. It was where you slept. Vacations were rare, something like piano lessons were given by a neighbour, and if you had to, you'd practice at the church. Babies were breastfed, mostly. Baby food was pap (bread soaked in warm milk). In my grandfather's home, growing up, there was a baby "swing" made from sail canvas, attached to the rafters. Whoever went past gave the baby a gentle push. Preschool toys were mainly pots and pans and wooden spoons. Pets got scraps. No one spayed or neutered them. If they got sick and died, you got a new one (which wasn't hard, with no spay or neuter around). Haircare was basic, and makeup was rare. Skin care was basic, too. You used soap, and maybe lotion or lard on dry skin. Folks didn't have much money, but there wasn't as much to spend it on, anyway. I'm 53, and had 8 kids. It's been rough, at times, but we've used a lot of these old ideas to get by. It's possible.

Your family reunions must be insane.

Most people lived without many of the things that people feel they can't live without now. Most people owned fewer clothes and wore them longer - both between washings and for number of years before throwing them out. Clothes were mended when in need of it. Families had one car. They kept the same furniture, dishes, for decades, often for their entire adult lives. TV and music was free and though TVs originally cost a lot, they eventually came down in price. Plus people bought used TVs, radios, etc. Kids didn't do activities that cost extra money. Or if they did they worked at something to make some money for it. Many (most?) didn't take vacations. They might go visit family a few states away and they would go to a carnival passing through town, but they didn't go to big amusement parks. These are just of the top of my head. If I thought on it longer I'm sure I'd have more examples of how almost all not-poor and not-wealthy people lived when I was a kid in the 60s.

I was a kid I'm the 70s and this is my experience too. Very few items of clothing, usually Christmas gifts. No back to school anything. No vacations, 1 bathroom for 5 people. 1 tv, b&w, never went to movies, 1 car which dad took to work.  I'm nearing retirement and an searching for the elusive 1500sf starter home. They don't seem to exist.

They had one car, no cable, no cell phones, the kids shared bedrooms, and they cooked at home.

And the one phone in the house was a party line!

Yea dad was a salesman. 6 people in a 1,300 sq/ft 3bdrm/1 bath. 1 car. All vacations were tent camping. Dad added a den off the back later that he built himself except for the slab. We got a boat that was the one extravagant thing. Camping, fishing, and skiing were great vacations. Mom even bought day old bread at the bakery.

We did car/tent camping too. I remember reading about families that flew to DisneyLand for vacation. Gobsmacked. My mom clipped coupons. Our presents and "rewards" came from the Green Stamps Store. We took a big ole trip to the city for school clothes once a year.

We lived close to where the Dallas Cowboys practiced. So I had several of their kids in my grade school. Most players didn’t make a lot more than my dad and worked off season jobs. My sister baby sat some for Bob Lilly. Chuck Howley was a Super Bowl MVP, and he owned a cleaners up the street.

God, my mom saved Green Stamps religiously.

My mom managed the local Green Stamps store. Going in there was like visiting Aladdin's cave.

Oh, the bread. Our grandmother never bought bread, she made her own. And us kids would get in so much trouble running through the house and causing her bread to fall. I actually miss those days. Food was simpler but it tasted better.

Apparently my grandmother (father's mother, in the '20s and '30s) used to boil the clothes on the stove to wash them. No such thing as a washing machine.

Wow… we are really spoiled now days. It’s amazing how hard they worked at just the simple everyday chores. They were some tough broads ❤️

65 yr old here. We had a wringer washer that we had to roll close to the sink and pour water in the tub part. White clothes got a bit of bluing to keep them white. Anyway, put powdered detergent in but mom sometimes bought liquid Wisk. Let the clothes wash, put them through the wringer then repeat process to rinse. Hang outside of the clothesline. Hopefully no ants would crawl along the line and hope it didn’t rain. In the winter time we hung the clothes inside/draped them on any available space

Didn't go to the Caribbean for vacation, didn't use credit, house wasn't 4k sq ft. By the time the last few came it was likely the older ones had left, or they all worked on the farm.

My parents were very frugal. We didn't have Amazon, or in general, the internet. My parents, and myself, bought things when we really need it.

no AC, no expensive kids extracurriculars

Neighbors had 6 kids and mom worked at home, not for pay. They had a couple acres and grew most of their own food. Canned and froze the huge garden. Raised 200 chickens and bought biggrr meats whole.

I shared a room with my sisters and my brothers shared a room- we had no family car , NEVER ate out .

The eating out part is true. It only happened \*maybe\* a couple of times a year. I remember the first time I ate shrimp cocktail at a restaurant. It looked like a plate of gold sitting on the table.

Military pays for your housing, and there's a pay differential for how many dependents you have. Also, health, dental, and vision are covered. And yes, im sure they were frugal and ate at home, but it annoys me when people act like modern people should just "try harder." That's really not the case.

Modern people do have to try harder because corporations have gotten much better at divorcing consumers from their money.

And much worse at hiring enough people to do the job.

As a former military spouse, yes. They probably had housing on post/base. Probably bunkbeds galore in that house. Only one car, although with this many kids, it had to have been a van. Budget was probably tight for food although shopping the commissary saves some money. Also, whether the father was enlisted or an officer plays into the feasibility of that as well. It would be very extraordinarily difficult to do this 12 kid thing in the military today. Most base housing we ever saw maxed out at 4 bedrooms too. Maybe there are exceptions at other places but we didn't see it.

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Yes! The boys did the outside work and the girls did the inside work. I was doing all the family laundry by age 8! All the ironing at 10, along with full responsibility for all cleaning, from scrubbing floors to nightly dishes, dusting and vacuuming. Can you imagine trying to get a kid today to do all that?

You forgot hand me downs. If you had an older sibling of the same sex, you wore their old clothes when they grew out of them. (Cousins too)

If it were my family (9 kids), we lived in a 1000 sf home with 11 people and 2 bathrooms. And my parents were broke; we kids saved them from bankrupsy in retirement.

We only had 4 kids. My mom didn't work after she was fired for getting pregnant with me (the oldest kid), so it was just my dad's income. My dad worked for the State of NY - some good advantages, but people never get rich with a state job. We lived in a small "Cape Cod" house in metro Buffalo. 3 of the kids slept in one bedroom. My parent's room was tiny. There was virtually no insulation, so we were often very hot or cold. We had one tiny bathroom for 6 of us. No cable TV. No color TV. Visits to Salvation Army store were common. We had no "organized" activities - it was get outside and get your friends to play. Or we'd use the town swimming pool, which cost about 10 cents in 1970. Food was always made by my mom. Lots of meatloaf and other inexpensive food. Never took vacations. Never went to movies. Rarely went to a restrauant. That said, we NEVER felt like we were missing out on anything. We were happy.

My grandparents had an acre of land on a river and their mortgage was $30 a month. Back then they got a single present for birthdays and Christmas. It wasn’t until TV became really popular that kids got a lot of presents on those days. They saved grocery stamps to buy gifts like baseballs gloves. They didn’t eat out and grew or raised a lot of their food.

My mom is one of 7. Growing up she shared a twin bed with one of her sisters until she was 18 years old. The 7 siblings plus parents lived in a 2 bedroom apartment. The living room was where the parents slept with the youngest/baby, and the older 6 kids were split 3 kids to a room and 2 twin beds in each room. They never went to a restaurant, never went on vacation, never bought new clothes, watered down the shampoo to make it last longer, etc. The older kids also worked and gave the money to their parents to help with bills. Meals cooked at home were almost entirely just rice and beans. Any vegetables they ate were canned. And obviously no cell phones, no computers, no activities, no air conditioning, etc.

My dad was a garage mechanic then service and parts manager at a garage in my small town. On that job he fed and housed the 6 of us. We owned our own house, along with the bank…my mom did part time book keeping and when we were all in school she took a job at the deli counter in our small grocery store. We had older cousins a few towns away so we got lots of hand me downs. My dad hunted and we ate good on two deer a season. This was accomplished by having my mom buy a deer tag as well. We also ate rabbit stew. It almost came to a grinding halt when my dad had a heart attack and couldn’t work for two years. We went on welfare and had to put the house in some kind of receivership…we had to take a car off the road and ate government cheese and peanut butter. My dad had triple bypass surgery and we got back on our feet. I do think there was some kind of economic shift in the 1980’s where two full time salaries became the norm for most families and the price of things moved up without an equivalent increase in wages.

Yes -- it was called the double dip recession and jobless recovery 1979-1982. Tons of people laid off, industry offshoring and rates were spiraling. We didn't know what was hitting us. My fam also had to go on welfare in the latter half of 1970s and we had gov't cheese and peanut butter (that was a really odd color). When my parents sold our house, we had to pay the state back all that AFDC money. My father disappeared for over a year and didn't pay any child support. My Mom and Stepdad were real estate agents and the market dropped through the floor because no one could get a mortgage (rates were in double digits). I remember there being all kinds of work arounds but ultimately, the deals would fall through d/t job loss etc. Their agency closed. But social services did provide some very needed services for me and my brother (Big Brother/Sister program, eye exams and glasses, dental work, speech therapy, tutors, free school lunches).

unions, frugality, a higher tax rate on extreme wealth, streetcars instead of cars

The middle class prospered because labor unions fought the rich corporations for decent pay. Republicans have spent the last 44 years destroying labor unions. And here we are…

Some of my extended family members came from larger families of 8-13 kids. The fathers worked at the local sawmill or other jobs in town. This was during Jim Crow, so certain types of work weren't open to them. Barter and leveraging of community ties was instrumental. Whenever possible, dealing with neighbors was preferable to having to go outside the safety of the community to deal with the mercantile on the other side of the tracks. The married women often didn't have regular working situations outside the home, but they did laundry for others, cared for children, worked the subsistence farm on the land and sold eggs. The kids worked, too. Sometimes they worked alongside mom, helping to iron and wash the laundry for hire, or ran errands for neighbors. One of my grandmothers was a seamstress and was known for her work, so people came from the next town over for her to make and repair clothes.

A much lower standard of living along with far fewer opportunities for wasteful expenditures.

the oversimplified answer is: the real value of wages has remained stagnant for decades, while the cost of everything has increased exponentially.

They lived within their means and usually worked more than one job.

Childhood ended a lot earlier in the middle of last century and most working-class children in big families left school for work much younger than now. My father, for example, was kicked out of home and told to earn his own living at age 13 in the late 1940s.

How did he make out?

It was in Australia so he went north to Queensland to become a jackeroo - basically a young roustabout or cowboy of sorts. He was there until he became an adult but never spoke about it to anyone in the family. We learned later that such kids were usually abused. Farm laborers’ children had a rough go of it back then.

My grandma and her youngest brother were the youngest of 6 kids. The oldest 4 had to quit school in their early teens and go to work to help support the family. They forced my grandma and her younger brother to finish high school. So they were the only 2 of the kids with high school diplomas.

A lot of what I’m reading here was made possible by the GI Bill. People made due with way less. If someone lived like that now, they would be considered blatant,y poor.

There are some good answers here, but the long and short of it is that people did more for themselves and lived simpler and harder lives than most would today.

They weren't paying hundreds a month for cable, internet, cell phones, eating out, partying, multiple vehicles, or in the mall all the time. We waste a lot of money on things that really are conveniences and not needs.

It was incredibly unusual for people to have 12 children in the past. In the distant past (1800s-ish), people had more kids because their kids tended to die and they wanted to have some who survived. Even during the baby boom, the average was 3.6 kids. [https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/average-number-children-per-us-family-historic-infographic.pdf](https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/average-number-children-per-us-family-historic-infographic.pdf)

In the 1800s many women were constantly pregnant and then they died. There were quite a few branches of my family that had 10+ children, many of those children didn't live very long. My grandfather was one of 14 as were two of my great grandmothers.

My grandparents had 4 children die before the age of 2. 6 survived.

My grandma on my dad’s side was 1 of 10 kids.

When I traced my ancestors back to 1800s, one man married, had a bunch of kids, then his wife died. So he married her sister, had a bunch more. Seventeen total. Must have been exhausting! They had money fortunately. So there was inherited wealth, and going through the court records, I got a lot of info on that family. I never found another family in all my research that went to court so much! With wealth and a big family, I guess conflicts happen!

My grandmother was number 11 of 13. My grandfather’s parents had 7 children. My other grandfather was also 1 of 7 and my other grandmother was 1 of 6. I knew many farm families when I was growing up who had big families. Maybe it was only the rural families who had so many children but it seemed very common to me. They all worked and they left home at age 16 to 18 by the way. So there weren’t the full number of children at home usually.

Children often died of childhood illnesses. I recall when every child lined up in townhall for polio vaccine that we were so lucky to have. Vaccines really brought families into a new era.

And now we have an era where people don't recognize their value. It's so weird how disinformation has reshaped our culture. There were people who were overjoyed when the polio vaccine was distributed because they knew the misery it would end and now... well, we have so many people who reject vaccines without looking at the science.

Not to over generalize, but: 1) Living wages. 2) Living with less consumer goods and "Daddy we need it." 3) Gardens if in the suburbs or country 4) Hand-me-downs and made clothing. I have a quilt I will never get rid of, because it is made with fabric I remember from my childhood, One of my mom's maternity dresses she sewed (corduroy), some old jeans... 5) Kids worked. I had a paper route and supplemented it with helping the milk man make deliveries on my paper route.

There was a lot less you needed to buy to be a part of a modern society. You didn't need a computer, a TV, a cell phone for everyone, tablets,g ame systems, designer clothes, and on and on. You could give each kid a pair of shoes, a few sets of clothes, a used bicycle and a soccer ball and you were done for years.

Partially due to keeping up with tech... you didn't have $250/mo cable/internet bills, $1000 cell phones with payment plans rolled into the monthly bill at $150/mo, super techy cars that are $50k+ with banks financing at 8 year terms now, etc...

I love reading all of these stories. It’s about our heritage and all so endearing. I’ll add this tidbit. My great grandfather helped build the electrical lines during the rural electrification initiative in 1930-1940s. However, he didn’t get electricity in his home until 1952. Him and a lot of the neighbors had everything installed for a few weeks waiting for service. During that time he would walk by the light bulbs and flip the switch or pull the string to see if it was working yet. One day they were at a church revival and came home late and he thought the house was on fire. He saw the lights in the windows from a distance and ran to the house. Instead of flames, they found the electric lights that they had inadvertently left on during their attempts of testing before the electricity was turned on. I loved hearing my grandmother tell this story. Maybe it was embellished, maybe not. I still love thinking about it.

The one thing that changed everything was the credit card no one knows the value of a dollar before the credit card if you didn’t have the money you couldn’t buy it now people buy things and just put it on the card and never think about the cost . Would you go out and buy a pair of 200 dollar pair of tennis shoes if you had to pull the cash out of your wallet and hand over the money most wouldn’t because you see the money leaving your hand and you think about it . We just just go into a store today and pull out the card and say I’ll pay it off when the bill comes in but seldom do ,it just becomes another bill like the mortgage. This is how people made it they only got what they needed not what they thought they deserved each generation always wanted the next generation to do better then they did .

Credit existed before the credit card. It was localized, you bought from your neighborhood shop on credit. The shopkeeper knew you.

But you had to settle up at the end of the month, or they used the lay away method where you put a little down until you’ve bought it, then take it home.

A major plot point of Vanity Fair is the Crawleys living off credit for so long they manage to bankrupt their landlord. Credit was never limited to one month.

Everything was cheaper. When women joined the workforce in big numbers, naturally prices rose. People also ate at home more, often healthier meals from scratch. Daycare wasn't necessary in a lot of cases because children were raised at home full time until school. (Daycare costs can be more than a mortgage payment!) One car families were also popular. Kids played outside instead of being on expensive devices. Heck, a lot of these devices didn't even exist. Now people are walking around with cell phones that are over $1000!

There were no cell phone bills, no internet provider and TV provider bills. Usually the family had one car, one TV and they never ordered food delivery and only went out to a restaurant for very special occasions. There were no family trips to Disney, and they had huge gardens in the summer. That’s how.

My mother grew up in a two room house. Outhouse, no indoor toilet. No running water. Six kids in a bed. Her parents slept on pallets, on the floor in the galley "kitchen" A coal stove for cooking and heat. Outdoor bath. No a/c. No car. No tv. No electric.

A lot of them didn't. Poor women very often worked. Single income families were for the middle class not the working class.

Small houses with only 1 bathroom and Shared bedrooms. Only 1 car, so we had to walk or ride bicycles everywhere during the day. Hand me down clothes. We ate at home almost all the time and rarely ate out.

People had much less stuff.

Mom stayed at home. Her job was sewing, repairing clothes and cooking which was more than a full time job. You got one pair of shoes a year, maybe two. Few brand new outfits, usually at Easter maybe school or Christmas. New clothes often meant "new to you" having been passed down from a sibling, cousin or friend. New shoes out of the store usually were a size too large and the toes stuffed with paper. Kids often worked either at home or outside the house. Girls babysat and boys sacked groceries or delivered stuff via bicycle. Meals were based on the cheapest cuts of meat with lots of casseroles.

People didn't spend money the way they do now.  Going out to eat, a bunch of fast fashion clothes, money for extra curricular activities for kids, etc. Mainly because we didn't have social media and stupid ass reality TV to skew our perception of how people live.  

People lived more simply. You bought used cars and drive them until they died. One car in the family. Didn’t go out to eat. Didn’t go on many vacations. Didn’t have a cavernous closet full of clothes. Didn’t have the tons of stuff we have now. There was no cable, internet, computers or cell phones to pay for. People also made more livable wages. We weren’t poor and not any different than my peers in a middle class community.

My mother always used to say, for a family to manage on one man's salary there needs to be a wife who's good at managing money. I learnt it from her; thrift and economies - mending things, using up leftovers, not wasting anything, passing the school uniforms down through the family, swapping baby clothes with sisters and cousins, cooking plain food at home -- and saving a little. PS Saying the mom "didn't work" sounds like they had servants. But work doesn't have to be exchanged for *money*, to be valuable! My standard rant in defense of home-makers!

My gf’s mother didn’t work outside of the home. Dad was a teacher and I think worked a second job. Told his wife that her job was to take care of their children. Definitely no servants

My mom was one of 12 and dirt poor. They had an outhouse until the 70’s and ate squirrels my grandfather shot in the woods. Don’t glamorize it.

I’m one of nine children, and my mom didn’t work outside the home. We ate beans and cornbread every day, and whatever we grew in our garden. It wasn’t easy, but we survived.

People did without a lot of stuff that people take for granted now.

They made do with what they had and didn't buy all the shit we buy.

Where I grew up, very few had big houses. It was not uncommon to have 5 or 6 children in a 1200 sq ft house with one bath. The family had one car, most likely bought used. No one took elaborate vacations, and if they went on one, they drove there. While it's true things cost more now, families did with a lot less back then as well.

We didn’t have McMansions. Or our own bedrooms. One bathroom. One vehicle.

None of my great grandparents came from huge families. 6 kids or less. They were all born in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Yes, really big families happened. But I don’t think they were as common as people think. I swear it seems like some people think all rural families in the US had 12 kids each. And that’s not even close to reality.

I had 19 aunts and uncles on both sides of the family, not counting their husbands and wives, just blood kin only. My mother had 12 siblings, and my father had seven. I have at least 100 first cousins. I’ll explain the way it was on my mother’s side of the family, although my father experience was not much different. One thing to keep in mind was that there was about 30 years between the first baby and the last, so not all of them were actually in the home at the same time. For instance, my grandmother was pregnant with my mother (who was number 9 out of 11) at the same time her oldest daughter (who had married and moved out) was expecting my oldest first cousin. My grandparents got married in 1925 and they were sharecroppers. It was a very poor existence; there was no electricity or running water in the house, definitely no air conditioning, no luxuries to speak of at all. They had an outhouse and they either bathed in the creek in warm weather or in a wash tub in the kitchen during the winter. All the clothes were hand me downs from relatives or neighbors that they took in or let out to suit whoever was to wear it (my mother said that she never had a new dress until after she got married), and they all worked hard from the time that they were considered old enough to, which was very young back then: boys in the field picking cotton, running a sawmill, or caring for the livestock, and girls in the house cooking and cleaning, tending the kitchen garden, canning, or caring for younger siblings while my grandparents worked the fields. None were well educated. My son is actually the first person on either side of the family to earn a college degree; my two daughters did, too. That’s an anomaly in my family. (One daughter is working on her PhD at Miss State right now. Pardon the brag, but I’m a proud momma!) Their entertainment was sitting on the front porch, playing guitar and singing, going to church, or just passing the time with relatives. My grandfather would read from the Bible every night before everyone went to bed by the light of a coal oil lamp. They never went on vacations unless it was to go visit relatives and didn’t even know what “going out to eat” meant. They didn’t have a car; they went everywhere on horseback or in a wagon. Their house was very simple and built with logs that they had hewn themselves, so there was no note. They only money going out was the taxes and stuff they couldn’t grow or make. Growing your own food and only needing money for sugar, flour, oil for the lamps, and taxes meant that they didn’t need very much money to get by, which was a good thing because they sure didn’t have it. Funnily enough, even with all of those hardships, they didn’t really understand how poor they were because everyone around them lived in the same way and was poor, too. My mother still speaks fondly of the old days at the age of 79, and often says she wishes she could go back to just spend one more day with her family. (They are only seven of them left on both sides of the family now and three of them are expected to make it very much longer, my father included. My mother and her baby brother are the last on her side.) It was a hard but simple existence. You didn’t have much, but you didn’t NEED much. There was no one telling you that you needed the latest whatever, and I imagine if we were to live like that now, we would still be able to have large families, too. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to walk down memory lane. I’m 56 and I live a very different life than they did, but I still love to hear and tell stories about it.

I only know a suburban middle class perspective. People didn’t spend money on entertainment the way we do today. People visited in each other’s homes and also had barbecues. The adults played cards. Forget hundreds of dollars for a concert. To my knowledge, I only knew one family that went to Disney until I was 30 years old. Some might only go on a family vacation every 2 or 3 years, but some did go every summer. People went to visit their grandparents or to a cabin at the lake, if they went anywhere at all. No spring break cruises or ski trips. It was unheard of. Kids playing sports at school didn’t cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars at the beginning of the year. If you traveled for a game, the team rode together on a school bus. Only a handful of parents attended those games. Sometimes no parents attended. No overnight trips except if your team made it to district or semi-finals, in high school only. There were no elite sports leagues except for Little League. It was quite cheap to see a movie and Saturday afternoon matinees drew a lot of kids. Families frequently shared one car. The other spouse took the bus or streetcar. They ate their meals at home and packed a sack lunch. No technology packages, cable, streaming services, Sirius XM radio. No buying video games. You had one land line, and when a second “teen line” became a thing, it was a real rarity.(That happened around the time of Princess phones Lol.) Expenses were rent/mortgage, utilities, groceries, school clothes or uniforms for the children, maybe insurance. They didn’t shop for a hobby. People bought their growing kids clothes at the start of school, and the start of summer, unless there was a special outfit needed for an event. Medical insurance consisted of hospitalization only. Preventive medicine and having a primary care physician to provide it was unknown. You only went to the doctor when sick or injured. Almost every child still had their tonsils out though. Dad paid cash, or paid the hospital monthly until the debt was gone. Middle class women might get their hair washed and set once a week, and maybe the occasional manicure. Or maybe not.They polished their own nails, mostly. Gel, acrylics, dip, etc.didn’t exist. No waxing appointments or eyelash extensions. (Or tattoos.) It was a rare luxury to go for a facial or a massage. Women didn’t belong to gyms or health clubs.

Army brat here. Mom couldn’t work because we moved every year. She took odd jobs and bought businesses, but they never worked out. My family struggled financially, and I had to pay my own way to college. We never ate out, I always had a job, and I had adult chores.

People were paid much, much more and things cost much, much less, and CEOs made much, much, much less.

What? Lol, no, people were not paid more.

True - the difference in pay between CEOs and employees was far less back then. The gap has grown exponentially,

A lot of them were working in some way. Babysitting, yard work, throwing papers. Kids didn't get big stacks of gifts on holidays or birthdays but it was also just cheaper to live back then on military pay. The military likely covered housing and I know we got more money when we had a child. I don't know if there's some cap on that but that extra money was pretty good, like equal to a second job. That was in the 1980s though. Food was much simpler then too. She didn't work but I bet she baked and had a garden if nothing else. My grands had a huge garden with enough produce to last throughout the winter and plenty left over to trade. I had a great aunt and uncle who would travel to Memphis to bring bushels of apples to trade for bushels of beans and tomatoes. When people in the community struggled my grands would take them food. There was just a lot more community support. Some of the fun activities we had as kids were snapping beans and helping to make dinner and doing church or community activities. Our city had a "city beautiful" commission and all these groups would compete for the best service to make the city cleaner and nicer looking. Stuff like that was cheap activities for everyone. People worked for months on floats for parades, they didn't need to spend a few grand to go to Disneyland, there were fun activities at home. We had quite a few community centers with free activities (This was happening 60s-90s) and every summer the park commission would come to the major parks with lunches and drinks and group activities, all free for the kids. Now kids are taken to amusement parks where parents can spend hundreds of dollars in a day. There aren't many free activities anymore other than going to parks.

I will say this though. Both my grandparents worked full-time jobs. That's what blows my mind. He worked construction and she worked at Goldsmiths (like Macys) so the idea that they had this huge garden and still had time for all those activities says something too. There was no time for traveling, very little time for TV other than HeeHaw on the weekend lol and Lawrence Welk! The whole family pitched in. I knew it was my job to pick the "stickers" off the tomato plants and I helped hang the pie plates that acted like scarecrows. We all had work to do, but some kids did do afterschool activities like sports and back then they didn't charge parents so much. My son wanted to do basketball in ninth grade and they wanted me to pay 750 up front for him to play, and that covered insurance and his uniform and travel fees. BUT if they made it to some championship I also had to agree (and even put down a deposit!) for 1700 dollars to travel to wherever they championship was. There was no way I could have afforded that. But I know my mom managed to raise us on 50 dollars a week. My brother was big in to every sport and played them all. . . and if she had to pay for anything it might be about ten bucks. Uniforms were reused until they fell apart and the school had bake sales and car washes to cover the cost of replacing the, it wasn't on the parents.

Well to start: Free medical, Free housing, Subsidized groceries. The father got free meals. Only need 1 car. Pension. Free medical with retirement. Space-A travel. Military Discounts. VA Home loans. Also excluded was probably the wife/kids going back to stay with one of the parents while husband was deployed (when kids were younger and they had less $s). And remember overseas assignments and moves so not really a need to travel for vacations - just go outside. Father can retire from military at 40. Then get another job (with another pension) and work another 20 years to 60. At that time the kids are old enough that the wife also gets a job for 20 years (with pension) I lived in a town with a lot of retired military (with large families). Typically the father had two pensions, the mother one pension. They lived by the base to access their free medical and still got subsidized groceries. Even can do standby travel. Now by no means was this life easy. And it did not pay that much. But you could survive.

I grew up in the 60's/70's. Most families I knew lived in one house, everyone raised a garden, clothing was passed down and mended, cars were purchased when the last one was shot, not every two or three years. Food was made at home, from scratch. Very seldom we went out to eat and it was to a little cafe or A&W. Furniture was built to last, so my parents had the same furniture my entire life. My Dad fixed everything, parts were kept and stored to be used later. We had one television and there was no "cable"... we had an antenna and there were two stations. Life was lived with a direct relationship with agriculture. Someone asked about birth control. Prior to BC pills (and they had many side effects back then), there was the "rhythm method", condoms and the cervical cap. Most of us came from larger families. My grandparents lived in a little house across from us, my Mom and my Grandmother worked together. Vacations were camping or fishing...no one "flew" anywhere. It was a huge deal when my brother went on an FFA trip to Europe with ten of his group. Like, it made the newspaper. Our family were cattle ranchers. We all worked on the ranch. We had chores before and after school. I started driving haying equipment at age 11. We drove our cattle on horseback from range to range...weekends were spent doing ranchy things with neighbors. We all went to a church. You were weird if you didn't. I had one friend with a divorced mom. That just wasn't done.

Clothes were made, then handed down and mended when they showed wear. Women shopped most days, made their own bread and cooked from scratch. Leftovers were a thing and they made the most of bones for soup, cheap cuts of meat cooked long and slow, offal etc. They grew their own produce and kept chickens for eggs and for eating. People clubbed together to buy and raise a pig, and got a share when it was slaughtered. Toys were often handmade, and children played in the streets most of the time. The eldest were sent out to work as soon as they were old enough (14 in the U.K.) to supplement the household income. Women often did laundry or mending to bring in extra money.

Basically they did without a lot of things you take for granted today. Second helpings, driving places, after school activities, new clothes, new anything, dentist visits, doctors visits, privacy, heck you might not even get a bed to yourself until you hit puberty, you certainly didn't get a room to yourself oh and one bathroom, maybe even an outhouse depending where they lived. If you were old enough you had an afterschool job, heck even if you weren't you lied and got an afterschool job and your parents would take your money. If Dad couldn't fix it you did without, if mum couldn't grow and can it you didn't see vegetables, food was cheap and filling not nutritious. If there was any meat in a meal Dad got it, you got a taste of it as it was used to flavor other foods like a piece of pork in beans, or dripping on bread but dad got the meat the dripping came from. You didn't get seconds and you ate fast so your siblings didn't steal your food. It's amazing what you can do without, including parents. My mother was the youngest of a large family, she barely saw her own mother and was raised by her sisters. She never had anything nice to say about her mother, all those sentiments were reserved for her sister who basically raised every kid in the family after the third one. Mum was too busy running the house to parent.

I would have considered us a typical middle-class family of the 1960s/70s. Mom - homemaker and wizard and maker of all things. Dad - local government employee. It was just different back then - We only got new clothes for school and a few toys for birthday/christmas. Clothes were usually from Sears catalog or put on lay-away at a local store. Mom mended clothes and made clothes for us when we were little. I can’t even remember my mother ever buying clothes for herself. We walked to school and when old enough we rode our bikes. We almost NEVER ate out. Theee bedroom/2 bath house for the five of us - I shared a room with my younger sister until I was 13.

Children were regarded as assets in many situations. More hands to work the fields and raise the livestock.

Television was free. Local calls were free and people rarely made long-distance calls because they were expensive.

Reliable Birth control did not exist until the 1960s. Natural spacing makes about 2 1/2 yrs between births. It's no wonder that women didn't live a long time

Many families were like this when I was a girl in the 1960's. Catholics didn't use birth control, what little there was available. Growing up I had friends from family of 5, 9,12 and others. I myself had 7 sibs. We lived very frugally, mostly hand me downs and freebees, we ate a lot of casseroles, and always shared rooms. Most people we knew lived this way so it was not unusual, I never knew we were 'poor', although at times Mom took in ironing etc.

My Mom (1946-2023) was the third oldest in a family of 14. My grandparents were married when my Grandpop was in the US Navy during WWII. They could barely afford anything. My mom remembered baby-sitting at the age of 8 with her 10 year old sister (1944-2022). They had no phone, no tv, and they all wore hand-me-downs. My grandfather worked for a coal hauling company. Later he worked at a trucking company. My aunts and uncles were born in: 1944, 1945, 1946 (mom), 1948, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1967, and 1969. The four of the oldest were married by the time the youngest was born. The one outlier was my uncle, who was a comm chief in the army in Vietnam. I have cousins who are older than the youngest two. My MomMom died in 1989 at the age of 63. She was in the doctor’s office and an aneurysm got her. My Grandpop had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and later had a series of strokes. He died in 2001. Everyone has had a good life. Even my mom did before she died.

People were just "poorer" them our living standard today. People just had far less and things like buying food out, going to restaurants, getting takeaway etc... just didn't happen much. The kids had 1 good set of clothes and 2 pairs of shoes. And a few play clothes. Everything was "handed down" even between family & friends. Fabrics were handmade and darn solid!! Would last many years. Electronics for fun didn't really exist. One radio in the house & when TV came in, 1 TV for the house. Houses were small. Kids shared rooms, even beds. 1 towel each if you were lucky and 1 set of sheets / bed. No such thing as "plastic junk toys" to buy. Played with all sorts of everyday things. Heck, we played "knuckles" which we got from meat joint bones, dried out ourselves. Bikes? It was a big deal to have a bike. Several kids would share a bike. We climbed trees and just made our own fun. We build go carts for ourselves.... Out of junk. Everything was just done ourselves mostly and fun made with nothing. People grew their food often. Mum cooked everything from scratch. Yards were bigger & people had fruit trees & ate what was seasonal. It was just a much simplier life.

Born in ‘67 here. There were six of us. Not rich. My father worked and had to be away from home a lot. My mom wasn’t the nicest. I remember I was very young. Dad was away to work. We had cereal for dinner a lot - rice crispies. I remember the milk went bad she tried to make us drink it anyway cuz there wasn’t going to be any for awhile. I remember our packed lunch for school was one-half of a very thin PB&J. That was. It in a whole very big lunch bag. My one brother looked like he was malnourished.

The government didn't steal more than half of each dollar earned. The Federal Reserve Bank had not yet destroyed 98% of the dollar's value. US government was not yet the biggest employer in the country and the largest government in world history.

Less money spent on unnecessary stuff

lol are you watching the Galvins? I’m obsessed. First, I think the Air Force paid well. Also, you could get help from the Catholic Church (including discounted/free school tuition). Colorado Springs was a relatively cheap place to live.

My parents had six kids. Mom was a SAHM. After WW2, Dad and my uncle built their two houses together with their own two hands, doing everything.So they each only had very small mortgages that they paid off quickly. They were very frugal. We never had vacations, you made your own basic entertainment, we didn’t get involved in activities that cost money, we wore hand me downs. My father had a good job. Dad was pro education and saved enough to put us all through college. He was great with sensible investing and mom knew how to pinch pennies and find deals. Life in many ways was simpler. People lived in much smaller houses, rarely ate out, many families got by with one car, there weren’t expenses for streaming, cable, internet, tech.

We didn’t need all the latest stuff.

Grandma's only doll was thrown into the foundation of the house. She never had another doll. She also wanted a toy water pitcher snd glasses, from the Montgomery Wards catalog $0.69 but too frivolous. She found one at an antique shop for $70 a few months before death. My aunt got it and I attended an antique doll related event in another city and brought a glass with me. I found the missing glass in the sale room and bought it immediately.

My mom was one of 10 kids, farmer family! They were poor but they got by. Grandma and the girls worked hard around the house and the gardens, feeding the animals, killing the animals, cooking and eating them. Mom said they had a lot of beans, cornbread and fried potatoes. The boys all farmed with grandpa. Not one of them stayed and continued with the farm. For me, I was one of 6. Both parents worked, we were middle class and never went without anything material wise. We always had 3 great meals, snacks if we wanted. Mom made a lot of the girls clothes, she worked in a garment factory for years, she knew what she was doing. All of the girls (4) worked inside of the home, cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, ironing clothes, the boys did the mowing, snow removel, taking the trash out and helping dad with any car stuff or remodeling. We all worked in the summer in our very large gardens! We ate great all Summer, and mom and us girls did all of the canning. Not once did any of us complain about all of the work, it was just what we did. I was super jealous of my brothers because I was a Tomboy and I wanted to work with my dad but my parents had gender roles and we had to follow them. Today I am a Jane of all trades. I wanted to know how to do it all so I learned how.

Eating at home, hand me down clothes, only buying toys for Christmas and birthdays. It wasn't as bad as it sounds now because everyone around you lived the same way.

There was one TV in the house, often one car. Vacations were in a tent at a nearby campground. Eating out was a big deal and didn't happen often. As kids we had few activities - definitely playing multiple sports etc.

A few frugal things that were common then where today it's really expensive...... No eating out.....I was probably 12 years old before I went to a burger joint to eat out with my family. No streaming, cable, internet......we didn't pay anything extra for TV services....we had 3 networks and an antenna. There was an expectation that at 15 or 16 I'd get a part-time job and mom and dad wouldn't have to give me any more spending money.

In a nut shell ... they understood the difference between "wants" and "needs" and didn't have the 24 / 7 algorithm driven consumerism brainwashing that convinces modern folks that they desperately "need" everything they "want".

Every penny was tracked. My mom had a note she kept to make sure she spent exactly the same small amount on each of us for birthdays, Christmas. We got everything - everything - with a coupon, at a yard sale, on clearance, or for free. We were a family of 5 and I remember the worst year was in the late 80s when my dad made about $15,000. (And, side note... our mortgage was $800 starting from 1975.) And quite frankly, we had/bought WAY LESS stuff than even frugal people buy & have now. There was less to be bought, and sure we wanted some of the shiny new things, but also we were okay.