In the 70s, children had no internet, cell phones, computers or video games. Most adults mowed the lawn on weekends, washed the car, hung out with their friends or rode bicycles without a helmet. Today, kids are overprotected by overzealous parents in a world where hand sanitizers and bicycle helmets are the norms. Nobody wore helmets in the 1970s. You would be bullied and ridiculed if you wore one for the rest of your childhood. Kids played real-life physical games instead of wasting their time on screens. Children stayed outside until the lights turned off in the summer or heard our parents screaming to come inside.
Kids were not labelled as ADHD, ADD, or Hyperactive. Nowadays, children are being medicated at alarming rates for what appears to be normal childhood behavior. Some children have legitimate behavioral issues, but the number is minimal, and medication cannot solve any of these problems. We mistakenly diagnose and label millions of children with attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) for common temper outbursts and disruptive behavior. If you transported a subset of 3-year-old children from 1970 into our current timeline, you would see not much has changed; however, how we treat them has.
Here are some stunning photos of Boston children enjoying their lives in the 1970s.
