Then and Now

This will not be an easy piece of writing. I am going to try and compare the time I lived through as a 1930s child with the time I live in now and what it must be like for present day children. Remembered thoughts from the time when I was about four come into my mind. This was the time when I was living in Highams Park. How different my childhood was to that of the child of today. I cannot say which was the best as constant change has been part of the human condition through the centuries, and it will go on that way as long as the human race exists. That is one thing we can be sure of.
Today’s children seem to be so much older than I did at all the different times of life, excluding, of course, babies and toddlers who have probably been much the same through the ages. I feel that today’s children have more to worry about, or is that not true? Is the reality just the fact that yesterday’s children had different worries? Let me have a ponder. How was it in the 1930s? There were many children who lived in the poorest of poor families whose parents struggled along as best as they could. They lived in unsuitable accommodation, wore hand-me-downs and probably did not eat enough. Filling up with bread and jam, or bread and dripping, was well known. To what extent these kids worried I do not really know. The average height of today’s children is taller that those of my childhood. I was taller than most but that was in my genes as would be said today. It must be said that I do not feel particularly tall these days as there are many more tall girls around. Is this because, on average, they have a more nourishing diet?
I think the worry about education must be very great now. Parents are frantic to get their sons and daughters into the best of schools. I am concerned that children whose parents manage to get the school of their choice receive a very good education and go on to university, and that the children who have to go to schools which are now considered very second rate leave school with not a great deal of hope for the future. These low grade schools seem to have many of the roughest and most unruly of children which makes an impossible situation for teachers and the more academically minded students. In the 30s many children left school at fourteen and started work at that much too early age as it would be considered today. Many must have been worthy of a better education than they got, though there were evening classes available to the truly enthusiastic. I think that the worry levels of today are probably much the same as they were during the Depression years of the 30s.
As for myself the possibility of war began to come into my mind as it must have done for many children. Although today there are many states of war in different parts of the world, at present there is not the immediate prospect of war in the EU.
I remember that when I was about twelve years old that there was a shop in Southend that for some reason unknown to me had a window full of shoes from the 1920s. These seemed most ridiculously old fashioned to me. Although the number of years back to the 1920s was comparatively small It seemed great to me. I must remember that today’s kids probably feel the same way about the 1980s. The 1930s must seem an impossible time ago.
Everything I think of is either before the war or after the war. I cannot stop thinking in that way. Childhood was before the war and adulthood after the war. In between was a period of growing up in a very unstable time.
In this year 2002 in London there seems to be constant noise, violence and pollution. A fair part of this feeling of mine must come from the fact that I grew up in an Essex village where noise was slight and not a great many people owned cars. There were tractors in the fields, but also there were cart horses still in use for ploughing, beautiful great creatures with flowing manes and huge hoofs covered with long hair. At certain times of the year a farm labourer would ride up my road when he had finished work for the day. He would be sitting sideways on the back of his horse. His trousers were tied in with string below his knees. I have seen four carthorses released into their field after working all day. They galloped round the field, rolled on their backs and had a wonderful time. Where would you see that today?
The local coalman had a magnificent cart horse to pull his wagon load of coal. There were occasions when he let me travel round the village with him, and hold the reins when he was delivering the coal. This period, of course, was at the very end of the delivery of goods by horse-drawn vehicles, and there were plenty of motors taking bread, milk etc. But there was still what might have been some of the atmosphere of a quieter but not necessarily a better era.
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These days there is an decidedly different attitude towards marriage than there was in the 30s. Young women who had babies outside marriage were not accepted by most people, though if their family supported them there was more chance for them to come through this experience and continue with their lives. I don’t know what proportion of these mothers kept their babies. I should think that most gave them up for adoption which was a sad state of affairs. Today there are many teenage girls who are not much more than children themselves having babies or abortions, which is by no means an ideal state of affairs, but at least they are not held in contempt to the extent that they were in pre WW2 DAYS.
When I was a young child I remember a girl a few years older then I who was being brought up by her grandparents. She was a friend of mine. Their daughter was not on the scene and I never remember seeing her, but at least I don’t think that the child was held in any contempt by the general community. She was always involved in the various fetes, dancing classes and so on that went on in the village.
I don’t think that I can say whether such happenings are more or less distressing now than they were then, but surely abortions, or even if the baby can be kept, it can never be an ideal thing to happen even in this free and easy era.
I am now having difficulty deciding whether this time or the 1930s was a better time for children to be born. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it is an impossible decision to make. People grow up in the time during which they were born, and usually, as they grow older, they don their rose coloured spectacles and wholeheartedly believe that their time was the best time. Or else some prefer to believe that the present day children have everything easy and should be thankful that they did not live in the ‘bad old days’! That is what it all comes down to, ‘the good old days’ or ‘the bad old days’.
What I should wish for all children of the world is enough to eat, a stable environment in which to grow up, and a chance to have an education that would enable them to become responsible adults able to make up their own minds on all matters of importance. Also, and I think this is important, a chance to play.
My good wishes go to all the children of this difficult world in which we live.