10 Old-Fashioned Chores 60s & 70s Kids Did That Are Basically Obsolete With Younger Generations
Annie Spratt | Unsplash Household expectations and parenting styles are always changing. Things that were once the norm are now controversial, and parents are being criticized for things that used to be conveniences. Depending on your generation, you probably remember some old-fashioned chores that are now obsolete with younger generations.
For example, things like ironing clothing or washing cars by hand were weekly occurrences for kids in the 60s and 70s, usually without any kind of praise or compensation. They were expected to play a role in the household and family, even if they didn’t like it. Things have certainly changed.
60s and 70s kids did these old-fashioned chores that are basically obsolete today
1. Babysitting younger siblings
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Many kids and teenagers today still watch their siblings and serve as a makeshift babysitter when their parents leave or come home late from work. However, the reality of a boomer's childhood, where eldest children often grew into third parents, is long gone in most families.
In many ways, it’s a cultural shift. If you heard that an 8-year-old was watching their younger siblings, it would be more than controversial today. But a few decades ago, it was the norm.
2. Washing their parents’ cars by hand
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In an age of convenience, where it costs around $10 to go to a car wash and time is a serious currency, more people are foregoing the ritual of washing their cars by hand. Yes, many families still do it, and some kids are still tasked with the chore, but for the most part, it’s a rarity to see someone out washing their car with a bucket of soapy water.
Back in the 60s and 70s, though, the second a boomer child said “I’m bored,” they were filling a bucket and pulling their parents' car out of the garage to wash it.
3. Mowing the lawn
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Considering using an iron or walking home from school alone are going out of style with protective parenting styles, heavy machinery is a no-go. Parents don’t want their kids out alone, and they also don’t want them using a lawnmower or clipping the hedges.
For so many old-fashioned parents, this was a no-brainer. Their kids sometimes spent hours, if not an entire day, helping with lawn maintenance or keeping the yard up, even if it was the bane of their existence.
4. Setting the table
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Despite the joy and bonding opportunities that family dinners still have the chance to provide today, many families are missing out. Whether it’s busy schedules with big families or a lack of space, fewer kids are spending time regularly with their parents for meals.
So, it’s not surprising that they’re also not tasked with setting the table. Yes, they might help out on holidays or during family gatherings, but the regular, daily ritual of setting the table that kids from older generations experienced isn’t a formality anymore.
5. Running errands in town
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Especially with constant access to horror stories on their phones and past experiences they went through on their own as unsupervised children in the back of their minds, parents today are rightfully overprotective of their kids. They’re worried about safety, making old-fashioned chores like running to the store or walking home alone completely out of reach.
They’re not interested in putting their kids at risk, even if it’s convenient to have them grab milk from the store or could teach them something about adversity by going out in the world alone. Maybe the world is not as safe a place as it was in the 60s and 70s, or maybe times have just changed.
6. Washing and ironing clothes
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With the safety anxiety of an iron and the lack of free time to do it a second time, many parents take on household chores like laundry and ironing. If they don’t have the money to outsource it, they’re probably just doing it themselves, especially when one wrong wash will completely ruin low-quality clothing in the modern-day world.
Many older generations took on a lot of the chores that parents wouldn’t think to offload onto their kids growing up. With deep cleaning expectations on Saturday and all kinds of yard work they could do outside, they learned quickly not to complain about being bored unless they wanted some kind of tedious task around the house.
7. Cooking family meals
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Kids don’t often learn to cook by simply watching their parents at home, which is why older generations are pros at cooking from scratch, and it’s become somewhat of an obsolete skill in many younger generations. Every family is unique, but the collective expectation that kids cook dinner for the family or for their siblings is one kept to boomer and Gen X childhoods.
Now that we have a wave of Gen X parents who are overcompensating for their own freedom as kids with overprotective parenting styles, using a stove or chopping up vegetables is the last thing they want their kids to be doing.
8. Watering and weeding the garden
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With the influence of the garden movement and frugal mentalities in the 60s and 70s, it’s no surprise that chores like watering plants and weeding the garden are somewhat obsolete today among younger generations. But for boomers and some Gen X kids, they spent all week dreading the task.
Especially when so many kids are rarely getting time outdoors at all today, when they do, it’s not for a household chore like weeding a garden that their family doesn’t even maintain.
9. Washing the windows
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In the era of convenience, where everyone seems to be outsourcing labor and household work, kids who are doing the chores are doing more everyday tasks like washing the dishes or sweeping the floor. There’s no cleaning out the entire fridge or washing the windows on a Saturday morning, especially out of obligation.
With two working parents and less free time for most families, you’d assume that kids would be the ones stepping up, but most of the time, it’s mothers. They’re the ones burnt out by basic responsibilities and labor at home, so these time-consuming chores are on the back burner.
10. Cleaning and dusting china
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If you grew up in the 60s and 70s, you were well-acquainted with the most common family heirloom: the fine china cabinet. Especially around the holidays, when deep cleaning and preparing the house for family gatherings was another level of household labor for kids, having to dust and wash and set out the family china was a common, tedious task.
While Gen Zers and other younger generations are getting rid of these legacy heirlooms in their own homes, many never really touched the china their parents had. Most of the time, it stayed in their grandparents' house, and they only ever used it when they were celebrating holidays and eating fancy meals.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a senior editorial strategist with a bachelor’s degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
