Posted on 03/15/2025 12:11:33 PM PDT by DallasBiff
Coming home to an empty house, managing homework without reminders, and making your own snacks wasn’t just part of the routine—it was the training ground for life. Boomer latchkey kids didn’t have helicopter parents hovering over every decision, which meant they developed character traits that today’s hyper-scheduled kids might never experience. Independence wasn’t a choice; it was the default setting.
While some might call it “neglect,” those solo afternoons shaped resilient, resourceful adults with a unique blend of grit, adaptability, and unshakable confidence.
(Excerpt) Read more at retirely.co ...
Damn, you must have grown up in my neck of the woods. That describes my growing up to a tee.
Ya. I was in -again- the New York suburbs as a baby boomer
No one was coming home from school to an empty house microwaving anything
That’s all
Ummmm, no. Boomer here.
Mom was mostly home running cub scouts and girl scouts. No latch keys at all. Dad came home for dinner every night and ran boy scout troops, little league and fishing trips. Set routines on homework, tv viewing and outside play. Come in when it’s dark, otherwise, roam the neighborhood with pick up kick ball games IN THE STREET, climb trees, catch frogs and tad poles, build forts out of cardboard boxes, expected to join school clubs and athletics, few outside paid for clubs..... Bike or walk to school, stop at the 7/11 for snacks... Good times...
I know the economic climate in Texas and California were very different back in the 80s.
It was hard times in Texas due to oil bust. Even the shuttle blowing up impacted the Houston area.
California was the opposite. It was booming and clean and fun! I wish my kids could have seen Silicon Valley back then. Now, Texas is booming and California is busting.
A lot of people had neither until the 80s.
Seriously, we had a color TV in the late 60's, but that was in the living room, which we didn't get to watch much. Had a B/W 9" tv in the rec room for years after. They had vacuum tube's, which seemed like they had to be replaced often.
Years later, I think I took my son to every one of his baseball practices, and of course to all the games. When I was young we rode our banana seat bikes to a vacant lot to play ball. Usually with one bat that was nailed and taped because of a crack, and a ball that was missing stitches, and part of the wool string inside was unwinding. It just now reminded me how excited we were when somebody had a rubber-coated ball.
I also seem to remember that as we switched sides during an inning, some of us would throw our glove to someone on the other team because not everyone owned a baseball glove.
If only the latch key kids had known that the same door that leads to the couch and TV, can also lead to the great wilds of the outdoors and endless adventures, whether one lives in the city, or the suburbs, or rural areas.
Exactly!
you were a latch key kid in highschool. Not unusual even with boomers.
“There is such a thing as too much independence.”
Yes, it’s called feral.
By the way, the use of microwave was meant to represent their home junk food type stuff in general, it wasn’t meant to be about specifically microwave ovens.
Our first color tv was something to see. Giant flags of aluminum foil hanging from the rabbit ears. The channel knob was a T shaped thing sticking out the front and didnt quite bring in the station clearly even at that when it was in its default position. We had an old knit afghan that we hooked on the dial to put the right amount of tension on the knob to hold it in place. Finding which hole offered the right amount of weight hanging the right way was the trick to watching that one.
We never had a car growing up. We were about the only family on the street that didn’t have one.
~
AND any family that had TWO cars were really “RICH!”
I was a latchkey kid from about the fifth grade on that would have been 1964-65 when my Mother was enrolled in Berry College.
My brother and I certainly did. Every kid in the neighborhood did the same, and everyone played together, whether friends or otherwise.
A drainage ditch split the neighborhood, with 20 yards on each side of the ditch. We had dirt clod battles, one side against the other.
Boomers were not latch key kids.
That was Gen-X.
Gen-X was not raised by Boomers. They were raised by Depression and War Babies.
Boomers raised the Millennials.
Gen-X raised Gen-Z.
There is some cross over of course but most people seem to think everyone born before 1990 was a Boomer.
They were not.
“Didn’t you guys play with each other outside and ride bikes, hunt for snapping turtles and shoot BB guns and throw rocks and play baseball and football with each other and have rock fights, play marbles and trade baseball cards and coins out of your coin collections and climb trees and swim wherever there was water, play army?”
My boomer life.
“Idiotic Boomers trying to remake themselves as Gen X. “
I’ve got your Boomer hanging.
The mothers in the 70s did not keep junk food. They couldn’t afford it with all those kids and staying home, they knew it wasn’t food, and if they did have it every kid on the bus knew where it was. They’d swarm
” The Babies were the most coddled and mothered generation in human history, resulting in their eternal infantilization.”
Yeah, then there was that whole draft thing. Dipshit.
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