Parent’s rules when you were growing up

We had the 30 minutes after eating rule before swimming also. I wonder if part of that was to give parents a 30-min break from supervising the pool/swimming? We had (and used) seatbelts - but they were only lap-belts back then and our child safety seats were rudimentary at best...my dad never wore his seatbelt but he did insist we wore ours. (He had been in an accident years before where he wasn't secured and the driver was - he was flung clear and survived, the driver stayed in the vehicle and went over the cliff with it and didn't make it - he knew he was the exception that proved the rule but ...).

I don't remember any other rules specifically but probably will as others share in this thread

well.. my dad installed seatbelts in our truck before they were required, and strapped babies in a cot before car seats..

mostly they did what was the norm at the time. 1950's.. into the 1960's. my mom was a nurse, so she gave us fluoride drops before they were in the water supply, kept us up to date on vaccinations, and so on.

we also learned about keeping it safe in the outdoors.. long before that was a thing. my dad was a climber.. so very focused on that.

We had the same no swimming for 30 minutes after a meal. And if you left your hair wet , it was instant pneumonia. Everything cold is bad for you… no AC and no fans. You caught colds from them

Would never let me mow or help with the farmwork in any meaningful way, but did let me drive my Mom's Thunderbird down our 1.2 mile road and back to get the mail.

(I crashed it when I was 14)

We lived about six miles outside of town. Before I had my driver’s license my moms’s rule was I had to call her before midnight if I wanted a ride home. Otherwise I was stuck in town for the night. Yeah…let’s strand a 15 year old in town where she may or may not be able to stay with a friend for a night.

No, but the car was totaled. Took out 3 tree saplings on the side of the road in the ditch. Found out years later that they were going to give it to me when I turned 16 

They weren't sure what they were going to do at that point, but my employer was selling his business car for cheap and I got that instead. Definitely would have rather had a silver sleek modern Thunderbird than the ford festiva rollerskate I got instead. lol

I remember taking out the trash to the burn barrel around 6ish probably. I can't imagine any mother giving their small child a paper grocery bag of daily trash and a box of stick matches to light afire in a barrel now a days.
We were pretty free range too.

I guess I remember as teens, we had to let our parents know where and with whom we were going, but we had no curfew. even when we tiptoed in at 3 in the morning, they would be awake and just say.. be sure the door is locked. if we had a situation.. my parents would always rescue us.. few questions asked. we were all mostly good kids.

we had to write down every mile we drove in the family car and then we were charged by the mile.. in theory to pay for maintenance and insurance in addition to gas.. and with a ledger in the car, there wasn't any joy riding. part of it was that the car insurance company did not charge for the third teen driving the family car. it was a 1958 truck.. so not too exciting.

It is crazy how free range (not wanted around, get rid of me) I was. Thankfully I had a sense of responsibility instilled by my beloved Grandmother.
Had I been irresponsible, a rebel, went down the wrong path....things could have quickly gone bad or I-my life could have turned out so differently.
I don't have children, but if I did, I would be a completely different type of Parent than my Mother was.
Life in the 70's and 80's was so different than it is these days. If a Parent was at work  they were out of contact for 8+ hours a day (unless there was an emergency...work calls were not allowed). When a Parent was out and about, there was rarely any contact. If a child or teenager was out and about for the day or evening....there was rarely any contact during that time frame.

As soon as we owned a vehicle with seatbelts, my father insisted we wear them, even though it was not yet a law in our state. However, at the exact same time, in the exact same vehicle, he'd allow a kid or two to sit in the "back-back" as we called it--the hatch door storage area. And we'd laugh our heads off if there was a bump or a sudden turn, and we'd go slipping around back there.

Meanwhile the kids in the actual back seat were belted in. Go figure.

My mother was the one who worried about the wait after eating.  My dad would let us eat while in the pool or lake if we wanted. He did insist, though, that every one of us have regular certified swimming lessons from as early as possible until we were 8 or 9ish.  How we early we started depended on what was available at the time each new kids came along.  So some of us had our first lessons at 3, some at 5, some as babies.

So it was as if in each situation they did something we would consider to make good sense, but then also something we now view as silly at best, dangerous at worst.

We, too, had the 30 minutes after eating to get back in the pool. Nobody in our family wore seatbelts when I was growing up. I started wearing them when I stayed with my Norwegian college housemate on a two-month solo trip to Europe, when I was 24. I learned about the strict laws there requiring seat belt use and drunk driving arrests. I started using seat belts from that point on (not so stringent on drunk driving until later).

We had this gigantic old bell from a train mounted on a pole that my parents rang at dinner time. When we heard the bell we had to get home. Otherwise we were out on our bikes all over the place, returning to someone's house for lunch and then back out for dinner. I hated going in when the streetlights came on, because the tiny baby toads came out then, scads of them, looking for bugs. I adored the tiny toads.

Once I went on a walkathon loosely organized by another friend's mother. I ended up alone, walked ALL over town, but somehow made it home. My mother said "Where WERE you?!"

In junior high, I was frequently late getting ready for school, probably because I was bullied on the bus. Bullying wasn't a thing back then, but then my mother heard them one day when she was getting the mail, and didn't do anything. My mother, thinking she was punishing me, made me walk the two miles to school, something I really enjoyed because I've always enjoyed walking in nature.

My parents divorced right as I entered HS (10th grade in my town) and my brother and I stayed with my dad. I got a car as soon as I turned 16. Dad was very preoccupied with being newly divorced, so we had little supervision, the only rule being we had to be home for dinner. So in addition to driving over the state line into Oklahoma to buy 3.2 beer, which we then drove around and drank. We drove to concerts in Little Rock, Tulsa, and Dallas. I would just take off on a Saturday afternoon (Dad was playing golf) and drive to Tulsa to look at stereo equipment I was hoping to buy when I had money saved.

My parents had long let my brother and me taste their alcoholic drinks when we went out to dinner, the idea being getting rid of the forbidden about drinking, but my father always had the rule that when we were of age, we should never drink alone. Once in HS, Dad was out on a date and I felt like having a glass of wine. Then left the empty glass on the counter. Grounded for two weeks--for drinking alone.

As for how it impacted parenting my son. We live in an area with 3-acre zoning, so no neighborhood full of kids like I had. No kids lived around us when DS was small. We had playgroups and playdates, supervised by parents. Once DS could drive himself, he didn't do much driving other than to required things like school and band practice. His addiction is video games, so he would rather have stayed home. He is a straight arrow (compared to his mother) and literally did not taste alcohol until the day he turned 21. Never went to parties, never drove drunk, never did drugs. He was really easy to parent.

No boys in bedroom. No phone calls from boys til age 15. No asking if friends can stay for dinner in front of friends. No phone calls after 9 pm. No swear words of any kind, including non swear words like fart, pissed off or crap. No skirts above where your hand at side ends. No ripped jeans to school. No makeup til 15. Boy I could go on and on.

However my Italian American parents allowed drinking wine with dinner for everyone at any age. (I hated wine.)