A child’s life today is much different than 100 years ago.
A 100 years in the past sounds like another world ago. When you compare a child’s life today to one a hundred years ago, it feels like you’re talking about the dinosaurs. Attempting to explain contemporary fads like Tik Tok, Fortnite, and video games would be like trying to teach your dog calculus.
As vastly different as the world may be from only one hundred years ago, it's clear from this colorized photo comparison that things haven't changed as much as we think. Technology may have changed the world irrevocably, but the color version of this photo looks like it could have been taken today (albeit in a neighborhood where every kid is reading).
Young people are always going to be looking for something new and exciting, that never changes. However, what they find to be new and exciting changes with every generation.
On the flip side, if you tried to share what life was like for kids 100 years ago with youth today, they’d think you were lying or attempting to scare them. They’ve certainly never considered the possibility of working a coal mine or walking eight miles to school. Obviously, a century is a long time but it’s hard to argue that anything in 100 years has changed more than the life of a child.
Games look just a little different
Back in the 1900s, a piece of chalk ranked in the top three of children’s toys. Today, you’d have a hard time talking a kid into using one. Sure you might find some hastily drawn hopscotch squares in your neighborhood today but for this generation, the excitement doesn’t last quite as long. The youth of the early 1900s would use chalk for everything from art to vandalism. Geez, they probably tried to eat it at one point just out of sheer boredom. It was a lot easier to wash off some graffiti back in the day.
Siblings were your playmate
If you asked a woman today if she’d like to raise nine kids, she’d look at you as if you had just grown another head. However, in the early 20th century, a family with six to nine little ones running around was considered normal and what you should do. Unlike today, where a child represents a difficult financial burden, kids were looked at as a financial asset around the turn of the century.
You also have to remember in those days a woman's place was considered to be in the home. Here’s a quote from a newspaper article that exemplifies that archaic ideal, “Woman is set in the household and man is sent out into the world.” It went on to say even a woman of modest means should “be happy in the love of her husband, her home, and its beautiful duties without asking the world for its smiles and favors.” Therefore, if you were a kid, your mom would be pregnant most of the time and chores would start from the day you could walk.
There were no nannies
Obviously, if a woman had seven rug rats running around, she’d have to get creative with how to watch after any fledgling infants. You might be thinking they hired nannies or charged the older children with watching after the newborn. Those are solid guesses but nannies were only for the rich and kids were often out making each other eat weird things or working. Therefore, the mothers of the 1900s came up with an unorthodox plan: cages.
Yes, you read that right, cages. The man who invented these child pens also thought it vital to "air" your toddler so he or she may "renew and purify the blood." Perhaps the thought was if you were tiny, these cages would seem like little penthouses, dangling over traffic. What fun!
School looked like church
School wasn’t compulsory back then. But the forward thinking parents who did send their kids for an education probably went to church in the same building. Undoubtedly, the teacher would use a yardstick or much worse as a form of punishment and a version of the dunce cap may have been in vogue.
Obviously, schools were segregated and often only for whites. The youth back then often traveled many miles for their schooling and as your grandfather might have told you, they walked both ways uphill. And if you hated your school uniform, trust us, it was a whole lot better than the 5 layers of wool given to kids back in the day.
Work was more important than school
Unfortunately, for many kids school wasn’t even an option. Families often needed money and since school was optional, kids often went to work long before their voices changed. Even worse, since kids were kids and wouldn’t argue with adults, they often got short-changed with the worst possible job. Yes, you might not enjoy your algebra homework but would you rather work in a coal mine? If you were lucky, your parents thought enough of you and the importance of education to send you to night school after a long day’s work. Oh joy!
Heroin for everyone
source: wikimedia commons
In fairness, medicine for everyone was pretty terrible back then. Doctors of the 1900s prescribed leeches, for heaven’s sake! Clearly, we’ve come a long way in 100 years but you’d like to think that even back then, we could look at leech and say “No, that’s not going to help.” Evidently, doctors back then were trusted to an incredible bloodletting degree.
Still, if you were lucky enough to avoid the leeches during your childhood, you still probably received quite a few doses of heroin. Yes, that’s right, heroin was considered a perfectly normal prescription for just about every malady under the sun from teething to a headache. How we all aren’t heroin addicts, thanks to our ancestors, is a miracle.
There were multiple days for dressing up
source: library of congress
Plainly, there weren’t a lot of upsides for kids back in the day. You might have earned a cage with a great, albeit death-defying view, many brothers and sisters, annual doses of heroin, and child labor but at least, you got to dress up! That’s because in those days on Thanksgiving you also got to wear wild and ridiculous costumes.
The costumes weren’t 10% as risque as the scantily clad ones we see today but at least, you got two shots at it. On the other hand, kids today have seemed to turn Halloween into a month long event. So we’ll have to take that back, there’s really nothing worse for kids today than 100 years ago. In fact, kids today live like Egyptian pharaohs compared to the youth of the early 1900s.
