People born in the 1960s and 1970s grew up in a Britain that felt less managed and more elective than today. That sentence is intentionally vague because lived experience then was messy and contradictory. Some children had full time togetherness with parents and neighbours. Others lived through economic shocks and parental absence. The point is not nostalgia. The point is causation. That generation learned certain habits by accident and necessity and those habits pushed many into adulthood carrying more grit and, yes, more brittle armor than their children.
Not a single childhood but a cluster of pressures
Say you were born in 1963 and spent your first years in council housing near a factory. Your world smelled of engine oil and boiled cabbage. If you were born in 1975 in suburban Essex you had different smells and different freedoms. But across those micro worlds there were patterns. The welfare state was present but tightening. Women entered the workplace in larger numbers. Television offered middlebrow authority and then late night disruption. There were fewer safety regulations and far fewer adults hovering. Kids were expected to improvise and to repair social ties themselves.
Freedom with consequences
What kids gathered was not merely more playtime. They inherited an economy of responsibility. Learning to organise mates for a kickabout on a muddy patch taught negotiation. Fixing a puncture taught practical problem solving. Being trusted to return before tea taught time management without an app. Those lessons look quaint in a list but they matured into durable competence for many.
And competence is political. When institutions weaken people either turn inward or build private competence. Robert Putnam tracked a decline in the public organisations that bound people together and called it a collapse of social capital. His work traces how civic habits fray and what that means for interpersonal trust. That decline coincided with the childhoods of people born in the 60s and 70s. The result was an odd compound: self reliance plus diminished communal scaffolding.
There was less joining of all sorts PTAs churches fraternal groups less time with families less time with friends knowing neighbours less well giving less and trusting less. — Robert D Putnam Professor Emeritus Harvard University.
Work ethic without ceremony
Ask someone who started their first job in the early 1980s and they will tell you about shifts and apprenticeships not internships. You learned by doing not by being credentialled into a soft landing. This created adults who could get by in practical ways and who prioritised reliability over image.
That said reliability has a social price. When competence replaces community you can meet goals but you might not have people to celebrate with. The stoicism that ensured a mortgage got paid also made emotional openness rare. The adult who never learned to ask for help seems invincible until a crisis arrives.
Grit is passion and perseverance for very long term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future day in day out not just for the week
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