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5 things today's grandparents did or said that just aren't OK anymore
5 things today's grandparents did or said that just aren't OK anymore
Steven JohnJul 30, 2018, 21:57 IST
Hamilton Wright/AP Images
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Grandparents are notorious for believing that younger generations listen to horrible music, are irresponsible, and are overly sexualized.
Many of us have heard from older people about how things were better "back in the day."
However, there are certain things your grandparents did or said that are absolutely not OK today. Here's five of them.
More often than not, when a grandparent complains about how things were different "back in my day," the issue isn't so much that things have changed as that people change.
Our grandparents endured the same complaints about their rotten modern music when they were gyrating to Elvis or The Beatles as those jeers they now issue when they hear today's top 40 tunes. And while every generation of youngsters seems promiscuous to the older folks, teen birth rates are at an all-time low, revealing that perception and reality are often disparate.
The ways in which people relate to one another and in how they go about their daily lives are often similar from generation to generation. However, there are certain things today's grandparents were more likely to have said and done back in their day without a second thought that would be seen as violations of social standards today.
According to the US National Library of Medicine, experts were gathering evidence that smoking was bad for health as early as the 1930s, but smoking rates remained higher than they are today for much of the century.
Drinking and driving was a factor in more traffic accidents
Drunk driving may plague every generation until automated cars take over the roads, but it's a statistically less significant problem today than it was a few decades back.
When my grandparents were young, it was unremarkable to refer to people of color using inaccurate and offensive terms. Some older people still do today.
The continued use of insensitive and outdated language is still an issue, but awareness of how offensive and inappropriate it is has spread throughout society.
They weren't as careful during sex
Statistically, grandparents probably had a lot more sex than you did during the teenage years, and they were probably less safe about it, too.
In 2017, US teen birth rates fell to a historic low, at just over just under 19 births per every 1,000 women between 15 and 19, Vox reported. In 1960, that number was almost 90 per 1,000.
They bought homes on average incomes
OK, so this may not fall under the category of things grandparents did that they shouldn't have done, but it sure falls into the category of things that just aren't the same.
In 1940, you could buy a single-family residence for just under $3,000, which, when adjusted for inflation, is still less than $55,000 today. And CNBC reported that the "typical" homebuyer was 44 years old in 2016, while in 1981, it was usually people between the ages of 25 and 34 buying residences.
