When you were a kid were adults assholes?

Yes, I as well remember this type of behavior from adults being much more common. (I’m now in my mid 30s). It’s weird and perhaps ironic: while I recall adults (and teens / kids?) being overall less self-absorbed when I was growing up, I also remember a lot more blatantly asshole-ish / bullying behavior that no one really called into question.

I was never abused or anything, but growing up in the 60s and 70s I do recall quite a number of very snarly adults. It made me think being an adult was somehow a miserable experience.

Yes! But only a select few. Most adults in my neighborhood—with the exception of a few uptight bitchy moms—were great. Almost all the dads were cool and seemed liked they didn’t mind having us running around.

I lived in a nice suburb with tons of kids and almost all our moms didn’t work. So it was like a huge extended family—with everyone bouncing in and out of homes.

Some teachers were true assholes—especially old maid teachers. There were teachers who hit kids..and didn’t get in trouble for it! I had a teacher in middle school who slammed a metal ruler on a kid’s hand. And this was in the early 80s!

Biggest difference between parents then v. now is that are parents took such a limited interest in our lives even when we were little. They typically had no idea where we were most of the time. It’s stunning that they’re weren't more child abductions back then. It would have been so easy.

It was the lead poisoning back then. I had mostly pleasant experiences with adults when I wasn't being a shithead. Born in 1992.

I can see why some of the people I grew up with are so overprotective of their kids now.

We were scared to death of the old guy who lived behind my house but I don’t recall ever even seeing him. But the words “Mr. Fletcher” made my blood run cold.

I attended elementary and middle school in the 90s. My 5th grade teacher was total asshole who bullied me and a few other kids. In middle school, there was a science teacher who bullied several kids.

There seemed to be more corporal punishment back in the day. My parents were also authoritarian. There was no talking back, no negotiating at all with them. The adults of my parents generation bossed us around quite a bit: "Go get me my _____." The worst part, though, was that they'd talk about us kids within earshot. Not positive stuff, it could be about someone's looks, etc.

Born in 1975 here. I wouldn’t say that adults were any more or less apt to be assholes when I was growing up. There was definitely more of a prevailing thought that kids should be seen & not heard in the company of adults back then. Nowadays it’s become so commonplace to indulge kids in whatever they want that simply telling them “No” or to “Be quiet” immediately brands an adult as a bully or something: the other thing that’s commonplace these days being a propensity to consider everyone a victim.

I was goaded by a neighbour’s son, who must have been between 18 and 20 years old. I was around seven or eight and he teased me until I was on the verge of tears. I told him to stop or I would hit him, which he found hilarious. He got in my face and dared me to do it.

So I punched him in the face as hard as I could, which he wasn’t expecting, and I broke part off of one of his front teeth.

[quote] When you were a kid were adults assholes?

Eternally

80s baby here. It was more that we weren’t allowed to care. There were some really nice adults, some okay ones, and some total assholes. But it was none of our business, except in an extreme case where they might be putting us in some sort of danger.

Yes, adults were assholes in the past.

Oh yeah, absolutely. There were multiple teachers who very clearly hated certain students, but you never really knew why, and they'd get violent about it. One of the two teachers I had like that just died last summer and I happened to find out about it a couple weeks ago, and I was in a pretty good mood the rest of the day.

[quote]Nowadays it’s become so commonplace to indulge kids in whatever they want that simply telling them “No” or to “Be quiet” immediately brands an adult as a bully or something

This is absolutely untrue. It's one of those "Datalounge truths" that, after years of trolling and crankery, has become accepted as truth on DL, but isn't actually true.

Yes. The adults who were nice stood out. Many asshole adults in school and camp. A lot of bitter teachers at my grammar school in the 1970s.

Where did you live??

Ha! When I was a kid not only did old white men hate blacks, Jews, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, they hate any long-haired hippy freak who was against the Vietnam war. Old white guys weren't prejudiced, they hated everyone 😠

The first job I had as a been the manager used to yell at us and insult us. If they did that to Gen Z they would be sued.

[quote] Old white guys weren't prejudiced, they hated everyone 😠

Yeah, right.

No.

OP, you have issues.

My Italian American mother and her three Irish American best friends (who were sisters) tormented and bullied the fuck out of us, according to today's standards. I was a total little flamer and the three sisters would say things like "here comes Hedda Hopper, the fag" about me and my mother would say things like "I can't believe you gave birth to that hideous monster to one of the sisters about her daughter, who truly was the ugliest child I've ever seen. But I turned up my nose at their mean comments and usually could be found with one of my grandparent's friends, having tea and talking about their fine china and antiques. I deserved the taunting and was that little HH fag. My sister and I were best friends with all three sisters' 7 children.

[quote] This is absolutely untrue. It's one of those "Datalounge truths" that, after years of trolling and crankery, has become accepted as truth on DL, but isn't actually true.

Beg pardon, R15, it is 100% true. What world have you been living in?

My 5th grade English teacher was the biggest bitch on the planet. He was a middle aged man but just a snarky snide little bitch. He spent most of his time making us read his shitty attempts at young adult fiction writing ( I doubt his book ever got published) and making snarky comments at the unpopular kids.

The real one, r23, and not the resentment-filled world you and half of DL lives in, where a constant stream of "back in my day" gripes fills your head every waking hour.

I think adults weren’t innately meaner but they were less bounded in their behavior. Adults gave feedback to children who weren’t theirs, which isn’t really so much a thing these days.

Lots of drunk adults around in the 1960s, including my parents who enjoyed a healthy cocktail hour every evening.

At that time how children behaved was the thing, and any adult could comment, correct and report the kid the parents. Parents would always believe the other adult. Fran Lebowitz talk about this once in her act, the audience thought it was quite funny.

I was a kid throughout the 50s. Back in those days adults weren't assholes, but they had a lot more power over the kids back then than they do now. Adults were rarely afraid to correct another person's child if the kid was acting up. These days you might get your ass beaten if you did that. But then most people these days rarely come into contact with other people's children because most children, when they're not in school, are hidden away in their bedrooms playing on their computers, terrified to come out into the light and actually speak to someone face to face.

I remember my parents encouraging other adults to correct us or scold us if we misbehaved. Child of the late 60's/early 70's.

No , OP, you are/were the problem. Every body hates you for reasons well known to you

The band director at my high school was an awful man. He routinely bullied kids in front of the entire band.

He was also notorious for sleeping with the drum majors.

When I was in second or third grade, circa 1964, there was an obnoxious male gym teacher who ridiculed a girl in my class. He left her out intentionally, made rude comments to her, ignored her when she spoke to him. I couldn't figure it out since she was a good athlete. Years later it dawned on me that she may have read "baby dyke" to him, and that was the reason he was abusive. Luckily he left me alone.

I cannot imagine such an asshole employed in that role today.

A neighbor whose elderly mother was a friend of my mother and grandmother. All-around homophobe, misogynist, and cheap bastard who would visit every so often for "company." He would inevitably pick on me for being feminine and my sister for being overweight, and he'd spew bile about whatever "bitch" he was dating at the moment. I never understood why my mom and grandma allowed the fucker into our home. After he got old he married a mail-order bride-cum-nurse from the Philippines. He was so cheap he would go to the local homeless kitchen to eat. (His older brother was gay—a French-literature scholar who committed suicide.)

I was hot bait. I was always on the lookout for a would-be rapist. My mom equipped me with a rape whistle.

^^I’m hot now too

My maternal grandparents were both really mean but in different ways. The things they would say to me when I was just a little kid, very destructive.

On the other hand, my dad's mother (my dad's father was dead before I was born) was really sweet. But we rarely saw her. When I did see her, I expected her head to do a 360 like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, then change into a mean grandma.

In Catholic school, we had a few nun teachers and some lay teachers, maybe 30% nuns. Anyway, two of the nuns were really grouchy and mean. My homeroom teacher in 5th grade was one of the mean nuns. That year, she went away for about 6 months to spend time with her family in somewhere like Maine. They replaced her (temporarily) with the nicest, most gentle woman teacher. I also expected this teacher's head to do a 360 and then have the teacher reveal her true self.

I had an abusive childhood, but i don't think in terms of numbers most adults I came across were assholes. My teachers generally seemed to like kids. Usual family types. A few angry lesbians when I got in junior high and high school, but most were good to us. The two lesbian drunks were nicer than the sober lesbians, but parents gossiped about the drunks more, which I felt was a shame. Why do you care about their demons if they do a good job? It's' not like a kid is going to go Ms. So-and-so likes her alcohol, so I'll do it too. Gossipy cunts.

My mom was considered both mean and strict by my friends. They were all terrified of her. She also didn’t have candy sodas or anything with sugar in the house. She was schooled in a convent.Her parents were both military people. I think she never recovered from those influences.

I have a vivid and funny memory from childhood. In the mid 70s I was in a local production of “The Sound of Music.” It ran for 12 weeks. I was one of the kids. The show ran so long they cast 2 sets of kids a blonde set and a brunette set - that’s a lot of kids running around backstage and a lot of stage parents lurking around. Plus Nuns and Nazis. The funny part is the old pissy guy playing Uncle Max had a lavish pool party planned after the show one Saturday night. It was BYOB and had sign up sheets and the nuns brought their bathing suits. The big sign backstage hanging over the xeroxed maps to Uncle Max’s house. The sign said: THe VON TRAPP Children are absolutely NOT WELCOME to this party - NO exceptions!” I always wondered if they went into the hot tub nude that night!

R33 reads like a John Waters film from a story by Tennessee Williams. Gruesome and horribly watchable.

"When you were a kid were adults assholes?"

No. The were all white and suburban and dressed up to go the department store in the city and take me to lunch in the fancy department store restaurant and all sorts of Datalounge upper middle class bullshit.

Just kidding. I went to Catholic school. Lots of bitter nuns and pedophiles plus my parents were criminals.

For sure, I grew up in the late 90s and early to mid 00s and I knew a few adults who were assholes including my mum. If I was upset about something she would threaten to slam me against every wall in the house and would shout and scream at me, one of her best friends would often make jokes at my expense but treat her own kids like they were angels (her daughter ended up pregnant at 16 and her son is always in trouble with the law). My English teacher was a raging lesbian that hated any boys in her class but she seemed to take a particular dislike towards me, maybe because she was aware my mum would never give a damn, my pupil support teacher also hated me and I hated that bitch back. Fortunately there were a few good teachers who I did get on with, so the good far outweighed the bad.

I just told a coworker about this, two days ago; back in the early eighties, teachers said whatever they thought to kids. Mr. Radix asked Dwayne if his parents were brother and sister, because he is exceptionally stupid. Math teacher in 9th grade algebra walked around after a heinous amount of failures on a test, pointing to students who failed and telling them they were stupid. Kind of like Oprah and you get a car. No one shot up the school or any teachers; guess we had a good deal of self control back then.

It astonishes me that my mother had the confidence to lash out and hit me across the face til I was nearly 17, and it shames me to this day that I was so intimidate that I stood there and took it as I was expected to. I asked my cousin if his mother hit him, and he said she certainly did, as did our grandmother. i asked a friend and she said, 'Hit me? She hit my friend Susan as well!' I finally reacted when I was nearly 17 and pushed my mother hard after she slapped me. My father gave me a lecture as to how I was not allowed to do that. I told him that he could expect more of the same if she ever hit me, and as a result, she never did again.

It enrages me that I protected them instead of myself. When I was about 7, I told a neighbour that my mother didn't like her mother and the woman came over and confronted her. I was told that I was never, ever, EVER to repeat anything that went on in the house and I never did. When I was 18, I told some of it to my grandmother, and she cried.

But times were different then. Teachers could hit or cane students, although it was always the boys. At my husband's first job, his old school superior would throw heavy manuals at him and swear at him. When I heard about it, I insisted he put a stop to it. Another head of a medium sized company would throw chairs across the room.

I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in the border South and stereotypes were true. White people were incredibly racist and would use the n word and express negative views of racial minorities (usually Blacks) in causal conversation. Also all religious leaders were conservative bastards. I remember an old priest slapping a girl in catechism class because she said something “smart”. I didn’t hear what she said but she probably raised a question about some doctrine like “But how can a virgin have a baby?”

[quote]That year, she went away for about 6 months to spend time with her family in somewhere like Maine.

r36 you know she "went away" to birth, and then put up her baby for adoption. Sneaky nuns!

OP - there were a few but it wasn't the norm. I think you were unlucky. I grew up in a suburban paradise of sorts.

The first grade teacher was an evil, old cunt. She had long, pointed talons and routinely grabbed children and violently shook them.

I hated her. Prissy little queen that I was, I dramatically tore up the photo of herself she had given all the children. My mother found the shreds and laughted about it for years.

Then one day, I told her exactly how mean and cruel the old bitch teacher was to little kids.

Italian immigrants for whom the wooden spoon was more than just a cooking utensil, it was a disciplinary aid.

Neighbors, extended family and friends also thought nothing of scolding or slapping "disrespectful" children and was common practice in the 60s. Mad Men depicted this well.

R46, no she (Sister _____) was too old to have a baby. These long trips to Maine were apparently something she did every 4 years or so. In retrospect, she was probably only in her 40s, but when you're young, that seems old.

R15, that may not be true in your experience, but it has been my experience occasionally. I'm not the previous poster.

A lot of people who were very indulged as children don't take kindly to someone telling their kid no. I'm suprised you think this doesn't happen.

Bullying and abusing children was seen as acceptable in the lower classes.

As people became more exposed to other ways of life through TV and the internet, “American” culture became more middle class in its attitudes.

The middle class is more concerned with appearances and wouldn’t want to be “seen” as being out of control and abusing or bullying children.

It's was split, the elder teachers were cool but the younger (under 60) tended to be nightmares.

At the time, there were socioeconomic rivalrities.. the "rich" were discounted because they were agricultural save the a celeb or two, so it was moslty uppity middle class fraus and a few der der hurr that hated everyone else, too. . . especially those on the other side of thet racks. It would play out in school in various ways.... mostly they saw us as contaminated as if poverty was contagious

[quote]I had a teacher in grade one who actually used to say I was retarded to anyone who would listen.

Well, were you?

[quote] Bullying and abusing children was seen as acceptable in the lower classes.... The middle class is more concerned with appearances and wouldn’t want to be “seen” as being out of control and abusing or bullying children.

What? Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. Bullying is a behavior dynamic that crosses class lines.

Yes. We now know many of the people attracted to the teaching profession are predators looking for victims who will not fight back.

Looking for people who can be used as toilets and not understand that this is wrong, is: kids.

In the early 80s my kindergarten teacher shook me super hard out of frustration that I wasnt doing a project fast enough. That wouldnt fly today.

There was still corporal punishment at the school I attended in the early to mid 80s.

There was one little boy in my class who came from a poor family and he was bullied mercilessly. I remember my fifth grade teacher joined in the bullying. To this day, if I ever saw her, I would have to restrain myself from giving her a cunt punt

There is a recording of adults tormenting four year olds. The children were being punished by daycare staff for being bad.

I saw the recording and immediately asked myself what could a four year old do that warrants this punishment.

What did these kids do that was so awful?

Of course. But as a kid I tended to see adults either as horrible and mean-spirited, or as fantastic people, so much better than my parents. The land in between was practically uninhabited. The grey area is more typically an adult realm.

The thing that put me off done adults was a very hard edge. My parents were fairly old and done of their friends a generation older, and they measured everything against their hard parents and hardscrabble upbringing; they expected all young people to be assholes and always up to no good and lazy because that's what their asshole parents though of them. They never thought to break the chain that had not benefited them because no child should have an advantage that they didn't.

The kinder adults I adored took a rather opposite view that generosity was it's own reward, better children and better relations with them.

I hated adults who wanted to show off or impress upon me some stupid lesson. For that reason I'm maybe more patient with kids and let them present themselves in their own way.

No, because I was an obedient, respectful and quiet child.

You can be obedient and respectful and still be targeted for abuse.

Were adults' assholes what?

You can be an asshole and not be an abuser

[quote] I saw the recording and immediately asked myself what could a four year old do that warrants this punishment. What did these kids do that was so awful?

Sneak extra pineapple slices, for one thing.

No. I can't recall a single incident of an adult being harsh with me -- other than my parents, when I deserved it.

I even worked in a grocery store through high school and college in the 80s, in front-line service positions, and I only got yelled at one time by a customer -- and he later came back to apologize, realizing it wasn't my fault.

I think it's much worse for kids nowadays, so many adults have short fuses and/or mental illnesses.

I'm 54, and most adults were complete assholes when I was growing up. I remember teachers making fun of students with speech impairments, weight issues, poor grades, poor athletic performance, etc., all of the time. It was totally out in the open and parents not only didn't care, but if you complained they would somehow blame you. I remember a parent of a kid on my little league team who would berate kids for not swinging at the ball or catching it, his own kid for sure but others, too. No one said anything.

People were a lot meaner to kids in my day. Nowadays you'd get cancelled/fired for stuff like that and rightly so.

Recollections may vary. It seems to be heavily dependent on region and socio-economic station.

[quote]One of the two teachers I had like that just died last summer and I happened to find out about it a couple weeks ago, and I was in a pretty good mood the rest of the day.

And you're an actress, Morales!

There were lots of racist adults when I was a kid. Teachers were always singling out native students.

The volunteer coach said I wasn’t allowed on his little league (T ball didn’t exist) team because I was a little fag and he didn’t want fags around his kids. My dad asked what he meant. He asked me if I thought he was cute. I said, “sure.” And he was cute. My dad said he’d punch him, but the guy was a cop.

That was the end in my interest in sports. Our after-school sports were compulsory, so there would be years of me demanding bribes to deal with this bullshit.