People did not appear to be special needs because kids with special needs were removed from mainstream classrooms and put in a special ed classroom. Or they were removed from mainstream schools altogether. That's why parents in the 70s fought so hard *against* their kids being labeled. It is also why they have no effing clue why their adult children seek out labels for their own children so that they can receive services in the most inclusive setting.

My dad was in med school in the 70s and then in training. We never ate in restaurants. I never got new clothes unless my grandmother made them for me. We did not go on vacations except to visit other relatives. We had one car. It was old and broke down a lot. My dad walked to and from work. I walked to and from school. When things broke they did not get fixed or replaced. Even after my dad got a job and began to get paid well, my parents didn't know how to handle it and did not loosen up on the purse strings for years.

Anonymous wrote:Grew up in an upper middle class family, but can still relate to a lot of this...couponing with mom, cars that we drove until they died (and dad somehow managed to resurrect them time and time again before the final death) and most of all, hand me downs for everything! I was the oldest so my hand me downs came from the neighbors. Clothes, shoes, Halloween costumes (or else my mom made them out of bedsheets and felt scraps), bikes...my two favorite hand me down items were a bright yellow banana seat bike and a purple and white striped one piece romper that I wore all summer and then brought to school to use as my gym clothes.

This is my point. You did not have to be poor, people were just a lot more conservative.
Today, even if someone is going to make a Halloween costume, they start with a trip to Michael's.

Grew up in an upper middle class family, but can still relate to a lot of this...couponing with mom, cars that we drove until they died (and dad somehow managed to resurrect them time and time again before the final death) and most of all, hand me downs for everything! I was the oldest so my hand me downs came from the neighbors. Clothes, shoes, Halloween costumes (or else my mom made them out of bedsheets and felt scraps), bikes...my two favorite hand me down items were a bright yellow banana seat bike and a purple and white striped one piece romper that I wore all summer and then brought to school to use as my gym clothes.

Tutoring was what family members did in our circle. Maybe in dire cases, was a teacher recruited.

Regarding the poor who have a higher standard of living-yea and no. When the means for improving your financial lives such as education are increasingly out of reach, then the poor are more likely to stay poor, which is what is occurring now.

Anonymous wrote:Fried bologna - YES! And Velveeta Cheese! no candy! Rarely ate out and when we did were never allowed to order soda drinks ("complete waste of money!"). Did H&H Green Stamps. rolled pennies. Went through bags of quarters to separate the clad from the silver; made our own clothes; knitted. No one was SN, or appeared to be SN. No one was tutored unless they were totally flunking a class and then it was something to be ashamed of.

I knew kids on ADHD medications in the 70s. My brother received weekly tutoring for dyslexia in the 70s.

You just didn't know enough people.

Anonymous wrote:My mother clipped coupons that let kids under 12 into the movies for free. She'd drop us (sister and me) off for the first show around noon and tell us to watch the movie 3 times or sneak into the theatre then she'd pick us up at 6.

I was also yanked from day care on my 10th birthday and given a key to the house, which I promptly lost. It wasn't replaced. I just hung out in the neighborhood till they got home from work.

OMG!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is an interesting thread, though some of the memories of frugality are really about the '70s more than SES. I grew up in an affluent suburb of San Francisco in the '70s and my sisters and I all patched our jeans, made skirts out of jeans, and wore cut-offs. We were doctors' daughters and traveled to Europe in the summer, but the '70s were about not looking and acting like you were a rich girl. Think Patty Hearst; think Hall and Oates' "You're a Rich Girl". The sartorial tip-off that you had money was owning a pair of Frye boots. When I came east to go to college, my roommate, a college professor's daughter from the midwest, saw my boots and told everybody I was a debutante.

This. We ate Hamburger Helper, my mom made many of my clothes, cut-offs and cut-off skirts we're a fun project, patches all over the jeans, home haircuts for everyone, scotch tape and rubber bands on eyeglasses and my parent sent 2 girls through Sidwell and 2 boys through St. Albans. Try doing that now--it can't be done. Period.

Why can't it be done now? Social pressure?

Tuitions at schools like these have risen at rates far, far greater than the rate of inflation. Therefore in terms of percentage of household income, those tuitions are out of reach for people now in ways that they were not say, 40 years ago.

Along the same lines, I sometimes think of a family I knew growing up in our neighborhood. The dad was a HS history teacher and the mom was a SAHM. They lived modestly but comfortably, spent a week at the beach every summer. They raisesd four children in a house that today would sell for about $800,000. There is no way a family with that economic profile could buy that house today.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is an interesting thread, though some of the memories of frugality are really about the '70s more than SES. I grew up in an affluent suburb of San Francisco in the '70s and my sisters and I all patched our jeans, made skirts out of jeans, and wore cut-offs. We were doctors' daughters and traveled to Europe in the summer, but the '70s were about not looking and acting like you were a rich girl. Think Patty Hearst; think Hall and Oates' "You're a Rich Girl". The sartorial tip-off that you had money was owning a pair of Frye boots. When I came east to go to college, my roommate, a college professor's daughter from the midwest, saw my boots and told everybody I was a debutante.

This. We ate Hamburger Helper, my mom made many of my clothes, cut-offs and cut-off skirts we're a fun project, patches all over the jeans, home haircuts for everyone, scotch tape and rubber bands on eyeglasses and my parent sent 2 girls through Sidwell and 2 boys through St. Albans. Try doing that now--it can't be done. Period.

Why can't it be done now? Social pressure?

Anonymous wrote:We were relatively well off, but I remember taking broken appliances to the fix-it shop. I mentioned this to my kids recently and they said "wouldn't it just be cheaper to buy a new one?" I had to explain to them that things like hairdryers, portable TVs, record players, actually weren't that cheap to replace and that fixing things was commonplace. Times have changed!

Yes, this is what the outsourcing of US manufacturing and credit are debt has done to us. Really, most of us should still live this way but I stead we charge it...Why?

Can you say Lay Away? Remember the bargain basement at Woodies?

the hole in the back seat floor! Yes! '71 TBird

My mother clipped coupons that let kids under 12 into the movies for free. She'd drop us (sister and me) off for the first show around noon and tell us to watch the movie 3 times or sneak into the theatre then she'd pick us up at 6.

I was also yanked from day care on my 10th birthday and given a key to the house, which I promptly lost. It wasn't replaced. I just hung out in the neighborhood till they got home from work.

Anonymous wrote:Vacations were going camping in our beat-up Rambler and eating PB sandwiches at rest stops.

Went on vacay with a friend and they stopped at Denny's to eat and stayed in motels, which I thought was pure luxury.

My parents didn't have a car, so going to the drive in with my friend and her parents was a really big treat. And I got to eat drive in food that I didn't have to share with my 5 siblings! Heaven.

Fried bologna - YES! And Velveeta Cheese! no candy! Rarely ate out and when we did were never allowed to order soda drinks ("complete waste of money!"). Did H&H Green Stamps. rolled pennies. Went through bags of quarters to separate the clad from the silver; made our own clothes; knitted. No one was SN, or appeared to be SN. No one was tutored unless they were totally flunking a class and then it was something to be ashamed of.

The fact that we actually knew someone who bought a new car gave us kids bragging rights. and we would talk about it at the dinner table for a week.