How did we survive a world that no longer exists today?

We look at today's children, our children for those who had them, and we realize that the context in which live is probably born out of nowhere, no umbilical cord with that atmosphere and that reality in which the children of the 60s-70s lived.

The baby boom era brought with it hope for the future , the creation of the family as the primary goal of young people's lives , each with their own ideas, kidnapped or not by the ideals that permeated society in those twenty years, but with an intense and profound desire to live and do.

The children were, perhaps, also a form of redemption towards that painful post-war childhood, where economic resources were very limited and families struggled to collect a bit of serenity from their lives, in a difficult and poor social context.

The new children between the 60s and 70s of the last century, were born in a growing social context, where there was better stability work, a level of remuneration commensurate with the cost of living, with a new phase of collective sociality, which was also born in the urban areas that grew up where the industrialization of the country had made its demand for labor more felt.

Children were also imbued with a vitality that could be found in young people, men and women who had become independent through work, bringing their momentum to the inside your family.

A simple, authentic, collegial life, invented day by day, all together and with the desire to be outdoors, between football matches for the machos and the game of being a mother for the girls.

I am reminded of a writing by Coelho that described how the reality of that era was enormously different from that that today's children are experiencing:

- As children we drove cars that didn't have seat belts or airbag.

- We didn't wear a helmet when we went cycling.

- We drank water from the garden hose instead of the mineral water bottle ...

- We spent hours and hours building wheeled carts and the lucky ones who had downhill roads threw themselves and, halfway through the race, remembered they had no brakes. After several battles against the bushes, we learned how to solve the problem. Yes, we collided with bushes, not cars!

- We went out to play with the only obligation to return before sunset. We didn't have cell phones… so no one could track us. Unthinkable….

- The school lasted until the middle, then we went home for lunch with the whole family (yes, even with the father).

- We cut ourselves, we broke a bone, we lost a tooth, and no one was filing a report for these incidents. It was no one's fault but ourselves.

- We ate biscuits, bread, oil and salt, bread and butter, we drank sugary drinks and we never had problems with being overweight, because we were always playing around ...

- We did not have playstation, nintendo 64, x box, video games, cable television with 99 channels, video recorders, dolby surround, personal cell phones, computers, cartoons on the Internet … We had a lot of friends instead.

- We would go out, ride our bikes or walk to our friend's house, ring the bell or just go in without knocking and he was there and we went out to play.

- Some students weren't as brilliant as others and when they lost a year they would repeat it. Nobody went to the psychologist, they simply took a few smacks and repeated the year.

- We had freedom, failure, success, responsibility… and we learned to manage them.

The big question then is this: How did we survive?

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian