[graemep]

> Even without going that far back, I imagine it was easier when parents kicked the kids out of the house and told them not to come back until dinner time.

Did people ever do that with under-twos? Or under-fives?

The big difference in more recent times was community and extended family help, and at least one parent having more time at home.

[eszed]

I'm of an age to have grown up like that, and one of the real drags was having to take my 3-5 year-old sibling along on whatever activity the rest of us were up to. ("But mom, we're building a fort - do I have to?") The other kids with younger siblings did the same. As I recall, at five I wasn't to leave the yard by myself, but as a mixed-age group of ~3-11 year-olds, yeah: we ran around all over the place together. The older kids took on responsibility for the younger ones.

So, yeah, that's eighties suburbia, and my sister wasn't less than two. On the other hand, if there'd been a larger age difference (and, maybe if I'd been a girl? My mum was more progressive about gender roles than most of her contemporaries, but still) I expect she'd have been entrusted to me earlier. Starting at the age of ~4 I'd been left alone with my sister for up to an hour while she napped, with the instruction to run next door to get my mother if she woke up.

By the way, I think all of that was fine.

[graemep]

It was not like that in the London suburb I grew up in in the 80s. I think it was more common in smaller and poorer towns - maybe because people had less space at home. I agree the age gap probably affects it a lot. Keeping an eye on a younger child at home with help near by is very different from going out.

Kids spending a lot of time in front of the TV was already a concern in the 80s so screen time was definitely a problem back then. IIRC the average amount of time children spent watching TV a day was about five hours a day in the UK.

[eszed]

Of course. Regions and cultures and families varied all over the place - and still do today. I wasn't trying to make any kind of universal claim, just explaining how our social group handled the "but what do you do about younger kids?" question the GP asked.

Yah. Screen time (and, once I got older, specifically video games) caused a lot of parental angst amongst my peer-group's parents, too. My family didn't have a TV, so I read lots of books. Funnily enough, I (later) ran across Victorian-era think-pieces about how books were damaging to young people for all of the same reasons that people are (now, and back when we were kids) concerned about screens.

By the way, this same subject came up in another thread a few days ago, and I had this to say:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48599632

[jdsnape]

I don’t have hard evidence, but when I was a kid I enjoyed the children’s book ‘Five children and it’, written ~1900

The children cart their two year old sibling around with them everywhere (sans parents) and it’s totally unremarkable.

[amanaplanacanal]

Evidently there was quite a bit of handwringing in the 1950s that the "nuclear family" was bad for children and would lead to more divorce, since there were no longer grandparents and aunts and uncles around to help with childrearing.

[pmarreck]

They were not wrong.

I'm EXTREMELY jealous of my partner's older cousins who are now grandparents and specifically stipulate that their kids drop their grandkids off at their house every other weekend (!!!!) so that they can devote it to themselves.

If that's not a good-marriage hack, then I don't know what is! And their parents KNEW it! Because when that's NOT happening, the weekends are almost 100% kid-focused. It is absolutely overwhelming, even with breaks here and there.

[graemep]

Interesting. If so, they were right.

[expedition32]

In a lot of old pictures you can see a "big sister" carrying a toddler around. Older kids helped mom and dad.

Now? Good luck getting a teenager to clean out the dishwasher.