The post 13 Things Boomer Parents Did That Would Get Them Judged Today first appeared on Crafting Your Home
Every generation of parents does the best they can with the information, products, and cultural norms available to them at the time. That’s worth remembering before diving into this list, because a lot of what was considered completely ordinary parenting in the 1960s through 1980s would raise serious eyebrows, or trigger a call to child protective services, if it happened today.
This isn’t about blaming boomer parents personally. It’s about how dramatically safety research, medical understanding, and cultural norms have shifted in just a few decades. Here are 13 practices that were once unremarkable and are now firmly off-limits.
Car and Street Safety Looked Completely Different
Riding without seatbelts or car seats.
For most of the 20th century, seatbelt use was optional rather than required, and car seats for infants and toddlers weren’t standardized or mandated. Today, all 50 states require child safety seats or booster seats by law.According to the National Safety Council,proper car seat use can reduce the risk of fatal injury for infants and toddlers by as much as 71%.
Riding in the front seat, or in the bed of a pickup truck.
Kids piling into the front passenger seat or riding loose in the back of a truck bed was common well into the 1980s. Modern child passenger safety laws and crash research have made both practices illegal and strongly discouraged in the majority of states.
Letting kids wander the neighborhood unsupervised until dark.
Sending kids out after breakfast with instructions to “be back by dinner” was standard practice for decades. Modern parenting places far more emphasis on supervision and constant communication, partly enabled by technology that simply didn’t exist at the time, like cell phones that let parents actually reach their kids.
Hitchhiking or letting kids hitchhike short distances.
This practice, once treated as a normal, low-stakes way to get around, would now be treated as a serious safety concern and, in many places, could trigger child endangerment questions.
Smoking and Secondhand Exposure Were Treated Very Differently
Smoking indoors and in cars with kids presents.
Indoor smoking, including children, was widely socially acceptable throughout the 20th century. According to the CDC, our understanding of secondhand smoke’s health risks has shifted dramatically since then, and that research has driven sweeping changes: indoor smoking bans, workplace restrictions, and, in at least 11 states today, laws specifically prohibiting smoking in a vehicle with a minor present.
Related: 10 Hidden Burdens Older Siblings Face That Can Quietly Affect You for Life
Sending kids to buy cigarettes for parents.
It wasn’t unusual for a parent to hand a child in cash and a note and send them into a corner store to pick up a pack of cigarettes. Age restrictions on tobacco purchases, now strictly enforced nationwide, make this essentially unthinkable today.
Discipline Looked Very Different Too
Spanking or physical punishment as the default response.
Corporal punishment at home was widely normalized for most of the 20th century, and it was legal in public schools in most states as well. Today, corporal punishment has been banned in public schools in most U.S. states, and modern parenting guidance from pediatric and psychological organizations emphasizes alternative discipline approaches instead.
“Because I said so,” with little explanation.
Parenting in earlier decades tended to emphasize authority and obedience over explanation. A child who asked “why” was often simply told to comply, not walked through the reasoning. Modern parenting guidance generally encourages explaining expectations rather than relying purely on unquestioned authority.
Related: Firstborn, Middle or Youngest? What a Large Study Found About Birth Order and Personality
Having your mouth washed out with soap for talking back.
This specific punishment, once a fairly common response to backtalk or swearing, is now broadly considered an outdated and inappropriate disciplinary method.
Everyday Safety Standards Were Much Looser
Playing with genuinely dangerous toys.
Lawn darts are probably the clearest example. The weighted, pointed yard game was popular throughout the 1970s and 80s until theU.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the sale of lawn darts in 1988 after a string of serious injuries and deaths, mostly involving children.
Playgrounds with little to no safety surfacing.
Metal slides, high monkey bars, and merry-go-rounds installed directly over asphalt or packed dirt were standard playground designs for decades. Modern playground safety standards require impact-absorbing surfaces and significantly revised equipment heights specifically to reduce injury risk.
Riding bikes without helmets.
Bike helmets were essentially nonexistent in everyday use through the 1970s and into the 80s. Safety campaigns and, eventually, helmet laws in many states shifted this dramatically, to the point where a helmetless kid on a bike now looks genuinely unusual rather than normal.
Related: 9 Things Only People with Siblings Truly Understand
Being left home alone for extended stretches at a young age.
It was common for children as young as six or seven to be left home alone for hours after school, a practice often referred to later as the “latchkey kid” era. Modern guidance from child development experts generally recommends waiting until kids are older and emphasize gradual, supervised independence rather than extended solo time at a young age.
Looking back at this list, what stands out isn’t that boomer parents were careless. It’s that an enormous amount of now-common knowledge, about car crash physics, secondhand smoke, childhood injury patterns, and child psychology, simply hadn’t been studied, published, or widely circulated yet. Parents did what seemed reasonable with the information and products available to them at the time. The fact that so much of it looks startling through a 2026 lens says less about any individual parent and a lot more about how far child safety research and public health knowledge have come in a single generation.
Other Stories You Might Like
- How Families Celebrated Thanksgiving in the 1950s
- 8 TV Theme Songs Every Boomer Can Still Sing by Heart
- 7 Things Smart Women Do in Relationships That Others Rarely Notice
If you like what you just read, then subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media.
