Even as a millennial, I’ve seen quite a few social norms slowly fade over time. It’s sad to say I can’t remember the last time I actually called someone just to say “Hi.” So it’s no surprise that older adults had a lot to say when redditor u/igotplans2 asked the r/AskOldPeople community to share the social norms from back in the day that would be considered rude today. Here are a few of the outdated behaviors they shared.
1.“Scolding someone else’s child. I remember getting corrected by strangers.”
2.“Possibly stopping in at a friend’s house unannounced. That used to be fairly common when everyone didn’t have a phone in their pocket.”
“You never knew who, or how many, would show up at your house on a Friday night for a game of Penny Ante poker or Yahtzee in the ’60s and ’70s.”
Solstock / Getty Images
3.“Touching strangers. So, for instance, if you were walking behind a woman and saw her tag out on her top or her collar rucked up, you would just reach out and fix it.”
4.“Smoking indoors.”
“I can recall the nurses at the triage in the hospital in my hometown smoking away while working. The ’80s, man, wild time.”
Pawel Wewiorski / Getty Images
5.“The big paddle that one of the teachers would possess that would be used on your hind quarters at their whim — no parental permission needed.”
6.“Bullying. Not only was it acceptable, but it was sometimes encouraged by teachers and parents because it would ‘toughen you up.’ I was a victim of extreme bullying. It gave me CPTSD, actually — and I think it contributed to some of my health problems as an adult. Yet, when my mom tried to get help for me at school and from the bullies’ parents, they told her that kids would be kids and she had to stop trying to fight my battles for me. Now? I asked my young cousin if there were anti-bullying rules at her school (middle school), and she said yes, but they didn’t really need the rule because nobody really bullied anyone anyway. She literally thinks that kids naturally don’t bully other kids because the rule worked! It’s mind-blowing to me. I wonder who I’d be if we’d had that rule.”
7.“Kissing, hugging, or being forced to dance with a creepy relative.”
“So revolting. I remember having to kiss old creepy great aunts who licked their lips and having to sit on the laps of creepy cadaverous uncles. My parents forced me, and I hated it. When I had kids, I told all my relatives, including my mother, that my kids wouldn’t be touched by anyone. I purposefully don’t hug my sisters’ kids or anyone else’s unless they ask.”
8.“I’ve been told that women were expected to wear ‘foundation garments’ at work, and if they didn’t, they might get reprimanded. I’m talking about longline bras and girdles. In the ’80s, one of my friends got sent to the office for not wearing a bra to high school.”
9.“Inviting the neighborhood children into your home in the ’60s and ’70s. On Halloween, some people would ask you to step into the house to show an older family member your costume. It was very awkward. We also had a very religious older woman across the street (empty nester married couple). She held Bible school every Wednesday after school for neighborhood kids to attend. We would go into her downstairs family room, and she would show a film strip, give a felt board presentation, and sing some songs. Then, we would make a craft project and have a snack.”
“Each week, we were given a Bible verse to memorize, and if you could recite it, you got a small prize. We were there for about an hour and a half. This woman really enjoyed doing this, and the parents didn’t seem to mind either. This would NEVER happen today.”
10.“This may be hard to believe, but when I started buying cigarettes in 1964 for 25 cents from a vending machine at the coin-operated laundromat, I often saw people, both men and women, quietly sitting in their underwear, reading magazines while their clothes were washing or drying. I do remember one guy in boxer shorts and shoes tap dancing.”
11.“Kids mixing alcoholic drinks for guests at home.”
“Or being sent to the store to buy cigarettes.”
12.“I was on a job interview in the ’70s. The man said, ‘Why should I hire you? I will train you, and then you will get married and have babies.’ I was a college student looking before graduating.”
“I was newly pregnant with my first child and applied at a fast food restaurant near where we lived. The first question the woman who interviewed me was, ‘Are you pregnant?’ This was in 1975. I lied and told her no, but later called her and confessed because I didn’t feel good about the lie. It didn’t even occur to me that it was an inappropriate question. It was legal then to refuse to hire pregnant women. Sheesh.”
Sdominick / Getty Images
13.“Strangers coming up to new mothers and saying, ‘What a cute baby! May I hold them?'”
14.“Riding in the bed of a pickup truck, usually on the tire hub. My mom’s Eagle didn’t have seatbelts in the early ’80s.”
15.“I worked as a temp a lot during the ’90s. There were many offices that specified that women were to wear dresses or skirts only, not pants. That would not fly nowadays.”
“I remember those times, too. The office women were finally allowed to wear pants, but only in the winter for warmth. And we were required to wear full pantyhose under them. We all felt so sly when we would secretly wear the knee-high nylons under pants.”
16.“Phoning someone without a heads-up text first. I text with my sons all day long, but if one of them calls me out of the blue, my anxiety goes sky-high — it has to be something awful.”
“I’m an ‘older millennial,’ and I sort of hate that I can’t just call my friends without a warning text lest they think I am calling them from a burning vehicle in need of immediate assistance or to tell them someone we know just died. When I was a kid, we just called out of the blue just to talk.”
Jena Ardell / Getty Images
17.“My childhood GP consistently made remarks to our mom about how my dad better get a stick to beat the boys back as my sister and I began to grow up. That kind of objectification was considered a ‘normal’ way to compliment young girls in the ’70s. To be fair, I’m not sure it’s over. In the ’90s, I was going down the throats of people who tried to make similar kinds of remarks about my son.”
18.“Cutting through our neighborhood backyards. We all did it until we got into high school, and cars became the norm. You might get hurt today.”
19.“‘Girlwatching’ — men used just to sit outside and stare at any young woman close enough to be visible, and they could spend hours doing nothing else. I have no idea if they thought the young women liked it or just didn’t care if the young women liked it.”
20.“All my parents’ friends used to give me a spanking each year on my birthday. Does anyone else remember this? Birthday spankings? So weird.”
“I’m only 34 and still experienced this as a child in the ’90s! We had to do this in sports when it was someone’s birthday. It’s so weird now that I think back on it. It made me uncomfortable at the time, and I dreaded when we had to do it, but I didn’t feel like I could say no.”
Pbnj Productions / Getty Images/Tetra images RF
Are there any outdated social norms you remember that would be considered rude today? Let us know in the comments or fill out this anonymous form.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Source Agencies
