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I would give anything to sit down with my Mom and Dad with a bowl of popcorn and watch the Rockford Files followed by Columbo! The 70’s were definitely better!
The 70s wasn't a paradise that many try to claim. America was just coming off of the civil rights movement. There were still some seeds of racial resentment. Detroit not only had riots in the 1960s, but the 70s too. Cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia were entering some very violent years in terms of crime (Philly had been inching in that direction going back to the 50s and 60s). Boston had race riots related to school busing in 1974 and 1976. The photo "The Soiling Of Old Glory", a photo of some racist thug in Boston trying to hit a Black man with a flag pole, that photo was taken in 1976. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soiling_of_Old_Glory
The next year the New York blackout riots took place.
The 70s also featured the Watergate Scandal, the oil crisis, and other crazy stuff.
So many factors influence our perception of what is going on at the time.
My oldest is 10 years older than my youngest. Didn't see much difference in how teachers taught or behaved during that 10 years but the difference in parents was notable. The evolution of the helicopter parent was obvious during that 10 years.
Side note --- participation trophies became more elaborate in the 80's and 90's but my husband played sports growing up and had his fair share --he was born in the 50's.
I was born in the 1980s, so I can't relate. I don't see what made the 1970s better.
The '70s were an odd time to be a kid because youth culture was still dominated by 1st-wave boomers approaching their 30s. Disco dominated pop music when I was 15, but culturally, the world of 30ish dandies boogying in polyester and gold chains, snorting coke, was about as far removed from my life as a high school student in Maine as was possible to be.
Even though the ‘80s-‘90’s should be my more formative years, covering my childhood through young adulthood, I much prefer the overall popular culture of the ‘70s in the US.
It was far less materialistic and rat-race economy and social structure than the ‘80s; a decent life for the working and middle clas could be had with affordable homes in nice, safe neighborhoods; more career options with decent paying jobs were still available for those for whom college was not a good fit; overall forward transitional social movements; and societal problems and solutions were internal (less subversive foreign interference).
All these conditions contributed to a better QOL, and provided more fertile ground for people to take more risks in life, thus return more rewards.
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