How do you define "Children of the <blank> Decade"?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I was born in 1979. I’m a *child *of the 80s and a teen of the 90s. An alternateen if you would :slight_smile:

Were we in to any childrens’ stuff in the 90s? No. Were we into Pokemon? No. How about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers? Did we play with Beanie Babies or collect them? Paul Reubens was Pee Wee Herman who turned into a dirty old man, not just some dirty old man. Did we drive ourselves to Laser Tag or did our parents take us?

Nowadays we think of the 90s as our childhood, and the 80s too. Because we’re old :slight_smile: But in the 90s we considered the 80s our childhood. Toys were marketed to us in the 80s and music and MADD in the 90s. Nobody markets pop music to children.

22

I was born in 83. I remember things from the 80’s and have some fond memories, but the 90’s is where I’m from, in my mind. 1996, if I can pick a year.

23

Hell yeah, let’s pick a year. I pick 1986. That was the year I think I came of age. That is the year this boy I knew slipped a dub of a dub cassette tape in my hand of Boogie Down Productions’ Criminal Minded and told me to listen to it all the way through. Changed my life.

24

I was born in 1961 but no way would I consider myself a child of the 60s. Other than Captain Kangaroo and vague references to some group called Beatles, I don’t really have any memories of pop culture. The hippie movement was far removed from my reality.

My life really started in 1969 when I was 7 and my family moved to a different part of the country. The TV shows of my childhood were The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. My earliest musical influences were ELP and Alice Cooper. When I graduated high school in 1980, I considered myself no longer a child.

I was definitely a child of the 70s.

25

I think it also matters if you have an older sibling. I was born in 1976, but I still have lots of memories of listening to Duran Duran with my big sister, which would be a little young to actually participate in pop culture.

So, based on actually participating, I have two stages - my early coolness, which was when I got into Poison. It was just as “Open Up and Say Ahh” was released, so 1988. My next plateau was the first seasons of 90210, so 1992-ish.

I mostly lost contact with pop culture and went my own way in about 1994.

I guess I’m a child of 1988-1994, with those ages being 12-18. Which makes sense, since it is hard to be culturally defined by stuff that happened when you were too young to be a part of pop culture.

26

Suddenly, I feel VERY old. Very.

27

I was born in 71. The first “worldly” event I recall was reports of Elvis dying on the news. I was unsure who he was but my aunts and uncles were upset.

I think you have to remember that those sort of events that resonate dont happen very often. They have to affect the adults around you quite strongly.

I remember brown turtle necks and corduroy pants. I hated both… I cannot stand having my neck touched and I have a comforting gesture that involves touching my pants legs… corduroy just didnt feel right.

Musically I loved Blondie, Abba, and Boney M. I remember the excitement of the 80s starting. It was going to be a Brave New World, wasnt it?

28

You and me, both! My children are older than some of the posters.:smiley:

29

Yeah yeah, you feel old, whatever. Can you guys just get the hell off my lawn?

30

Born at the tail end of '70, I consider myself a child of the 80’s.

1970-1980, I was a kid, just learning the rules of civilization. I didn’t start learning how to be me until the 80’s.

Part of this may be the fact that we didn’t have a TV most of the time when I was a kid, so I wasn’t as influenced by the culture that was marketed to children. By the time the 80s rolled around, we’d gotten a (b/w) TV and so I had more connection to it.

31

If I had to choose a defining year, it would be 1988. The first part of that year I was 10 and living on the top of the world. I had the best of childhood freedom; I could go anywhere my bike could take me and where MARTA trains went. Didn’t have an allowance, but I didn’t need one because my basic desires were getting the high score on the Galaga arcade at the laundry mat across the street and buying candy. I could feed those habits plucking coins out between the seat cushions. I was in the fifth grade, which seemed damn-near close to adulthood in terms of elementary school. I hadn’t reached that awkward stage yet, but I wasn’t so cutesy-wootsy adorable that no one took me seriously. My memories of the 80s are the sharpest at this time as well. I remember every song that came out that year if it was Top 40. '88 was also when my school chorus got to sing at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta. It wasn’t my first introduction to politics (my mother had run for public office a few years before), but it was the first time I actually paid attention to who was going to be president.

The later part of the year, I was in the sixth grade. I was eleven and in the sixth grade, so naturally awkwardness had arrived. I was afraid of lockers so I carried all of my books around with me (I went through three or four K-Mart bookbags that year). The scales that the previous months had put over my eyes had fallen away, and I suddenly realized that Life Truly Sucks (sometimes). For the first time in my life, I had adult authority figures in charge of me who I really and truly hated. Suddenly there were such things as bullies, “being” cool, and fashions in clothing. I became aware of class and racial divisions at this age (especially the former). I also realized that things were just going to get harder in life, not easier.

So within one year my whole mind took a huge 270-degree turn.

I blame Bush I for this.

32

I too was born in 1961, and feel very much the same, with the difference being that my mother subscribed to MAD, so I knew about the hippies and the rest of the counterculture from that wonderful newsletter of the times.

But I’ve often thought I’m a child of the 70s as well, not only because I came of age in the late 70s (graduated HS 1980 as well), but I listened to more early 70s music than I did the majority of the 60s music (late 60s pop excepted, like the 5th Dimension, et al, but I did hear my share of other 60s stuff, like the Surfaris…gotta love Wipeout!). In fact, I’ve downloaded a lot of cheesy 70s music to my MP3 player for the gym (from Hot Butter’s “Popcorn” to “Come and Get Your Love” to “Low Rider” to the Hues Corporation’s “Rock the Boat”.

33

Those may be my grandchildren out there on your lawn!

34

I was born in 1972. For me that decade has a lot of washed out, faded filmstrip type memories to it. It seems that we saw a filmstrip every day that warned us about playing with fireworks, getting molested, whatever.

I lived in the UK from 1974-1978, and from 1981-1986. My Britain memories are much more vivid. We lived in Florida and West Texas and I just sort of remember school and friends. But culturally, the 1980s were a tidal wave of events. The music, of course. I was too young and too scared to be into punk in 1976, but I remember seeing kids with multicolored mohawks, riots in Brixton, etc. And of course the specter of the cold war - especially being a military brat - was very real, so I thought we’d be blown off the face of the earth by 1988 or so. So for me the pivotal events were:

1976 - Bicentennial (saw that star shaped logo everywhere)
1977 or so - Punk and the Queen’s silver jubilee, lots of protests
1981 - New Romantic music (Duran Duran on the telly every freakin’ day, girls screaming when Simon LeBon opened his mouth)
1982 or so - the docudramas “The Day After” and “Threads” about nuclear war
1984 - The Young Ones, lotsa politics and angry musicians (Paul Weller, Red Wedge, The Smiths)
1986 - Challenger, natch.
1989 - Berlin Wall falling and hope that the world was going to be a safer, more peaceful place. (Oops.)

A kid of the 80s will remember video game mania (Pac Man, Q*bert), Commodore 64s (or crap Atari 800s, BBC Micros, or ZX Spectrums), John Hughes movies, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, terrible fads like Cabbage Patch kids, cheesy folders with grids to look “futuristic,” Trapper Keepers, old men in the White House (Reagan, Bush), iron ladies on Downing Street, FRANKIE SAY shirts, Rubik’s Cubes, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, We Are The World, Band Aid, Bob Geldof yelling at the telly during LiveAid… that’s just for starters.

Oh - if you were a Black kid in the Southeast US in the late 70s you knew about the Atlanta child abductions and it scared you shitless.