This is for the older generation?

Question

Which era do you prefer to live in?
Now or the thirties?
Please state which era and give the reasons why. Thank you.

Answer 1

In the old days life was extremely hard if you were poor !
Today the middle classes are worse off than before!

People who had money had a very good time in all eras. Poor people are better off today than ever before because of the NHS and the welfare state in general, providing medical care and a stop gap in times of need.

In the 1930's being poor was abject misery and humiliation from cradle to the grave. Most people were employed working in factories with poor lighting, heating and ventilation for very meagre wages. Education was for the privileged and the wealthy.

Poor people have a better life today.

Very wealthy have not changed much they can still have what they want when they want it. They can afford to have homes abroad and avoid paying tax in UK.

The middle class professionals are the most disadvantaged today having to pay for most of what they have and tax wise; taxed to within an inch of their lives to pay for the poor.

Answer 2

I think I would prefer to live in the 1940s. Not because of anything advanced in that era, but just because of the quality of that era.

Family was so important during that time...Mom usually stayed at home and Dad worked. Mom was there when the kids got home from school.

Neighborhoods were friendly and children respected older people. There was a sense of security and peacefullness.

That is the era in which I'd like to raise my 9month old son.

Answer 3

Well I wasn't born in the thirties but my Mother was and although she struggles a bit with modern day living, the rudeness and unkind humour, the strong language and violent TV she still enjoys her life. Today living a life is perhaps more stressful but it is not such hard work physically. She says there is good from both periods of time and as time has moved on it is difficult to make a definitive choice.

Answer 4

I'm going to answer for two members of the older generation because I know them well enough to answer. Both of my paternal grandparents died in 2006, but I talked to them about this, and both were much happier now than they were as children/adolescents in the 1930s. My grandmother was the 4th oldest of 13 children who lived past infancy. They lived in 1 side of a duplex house with another large family (maybe only 6 children in that one) on the other side. Her father was a laborer who worked in construction and factory jobs, and he had a lot of trouble finding and keeping work during the Depression. They probably would have been poor anyway, but the Depression made it worse. One thing she always mentioned was that they had to go barefoot all summer so that their shoes would last longer for winter and could be passed down. They all wore hand-me-down clothes from inside and outside of the family. There was one bed for the girls and one for the boys. They supplemented the food they could buy by "finding" fruit and hunting for small game like squirrels and rabbits. Right at the end of the 30s, she finished 8th grade and could not go on because there was no high school within walking distance.

My grandfather's childhood was shaped by the sexual mores of the time. He was born to a young, unmarried woman in secret, so he was adopted by his grandparents and raised as if his mother was his much older sister. The tension caused a break-down in his family - his grandparents eventually divorced (which was considered shameful) and, after his mother died when he was a teenager in the 1930s, he was basically turned out on his own by his half-siblings. Poverty forced him to quit school after the 5th grade and begin working as a laborer, and his limited ability to read and write bothered him all his life. I don't know as much about his early life because he did not want to talk about it, but I know it was sad and harsh.

By the time they died in 2006, they were living comfortably in a 2 bedroom house they had bought and built additions onto with their wages as a railroad worker and a factory seamstress. They had a son and 3 grandchildren that they adored. They might not have chosen this era as the first choice of when to live, but I know they would have chosen the 1930s as their last choice.

Answer 5

Most of the answers I read yet prefer old times. I think they are not from the old generation.

I was born in 1940 and can tell you about my period. I think present times are better. Those days as kid we did not enjoy life as present kinds enjoy. Parents expected from their kids complete discipline. I did not sit and ate with my father till I entered the starting of new era.

There was no freedom. People were slave to the dogmas. If somebody died they had to spend monies which they did not have.

Older generation did not enjoy the health facilities which they enjoy today. People died of simple ailments like diabetes.

I personally like the life today.

Answer 6

I was born in 1942, and don't remember much before the late 1940s, early 1950s. So for anyone to remember much about the 1930s they would have to be in their late 70s or 80s!

Answer 7

Not old enough for the 30s, but despite today's world problems, I prefer the present to any time in the past.

Sure, I wish I were back in the "good old days" sometimes, but usually they weren't that good. We just remember the good and forget the bad.

Answer 8

good luck trying to find a 70 somthing person on yahoo answers. but, i may be surprised. as a nurse who works in a hospital and cares for that general population, i have asked that question to them. ALL of them have said that the years gone by have been better. Not that bad stuff (abuse, neglect.....) didnt happen back then, but you didnt have kids shooting kids at school, AIDS, murder, gangs, credit card debt etc etc etc. makes one wonder where we went wrong, huh?

Answer 9

Now. The thirties were a time of poverty and impending world war.