People born in the 1960s and 1970s often carry a particular tone in their voices when they tell certain stories. It is not nostalgia exactly. It is something tougher tempered by a quiet acceptance. Psychologists are noting what the rest of us have long suspected: that whole cohorts learned forms of resilience before the term was fashionable. This piece is not a hymn to the past. It is a look at how ordinary, sometimes unglamorous childhoods left mental habits that matter now.
The slow curriculum of an analog childhood
Imagine a childhood without instant answers. No maps that talk back. No notifications that calm the itch to know. For many children of the 60s and 70s the curriculum of life was slow and uncompromising. Waiting for a letter to arrive taught patience in a different register from streaming a series. Losing a football game taught repair in a different register from deleting a post. These repeated small exposures to friction were not designed as lessons. They were simply the background noise of everyday life, and yet they trained nervous systems.
Distress tolerance learned by accident
Psychologists use the phrase distress tolerance to describe the ability to remain present in discomfort without panicking. It used to be that distress tolerance was a byproduct of childhood logistics. You scraped a knee. You waited. You tried again. The modern consumer environment has replaced those micro workouts with service and substitution. That is convenient and often kinder. It has also removed many of the small, repeated trials that build the muscle of standing up to inconvenience.
This is not to idealise hardships. Hard experiences can injure rather than strengthen. Yet the pattern across many people born in these decades is clear enough to deserve attention. They are not uniformly stoic but they often show a capacity to outwait uncertainty. That ability shows up on a rainy commute. It shows up when plans fail and someone simply reshuffles without meltdown.
How boredom became an unexpected strength
We mistake boredom for uselessness. Yet researchers have shown that boredom opens a space for autonomous problem solving. When you cannot dial away a dull moment you invent a project, you tinker, you rehearse patience. Sandi Mann a psychologist at the University of Central Lancashire has described boredom as a generator of creative thought and of deeper attentional stamina. Her observations help explain why a generation raised without perpetual entertainment often learned to occupy themselves productively.
“Boredom is a really important emotion. When you are bored you tend to daydream and your mind wanders and this is a very very important part of the process and this is something we can apply to our day to day lives because if you find that you are stuck on a problem or you are really worried about something and you can not seem to find a way out just be bored and let your mind wander and you might just find that creative solution will pop into your head.”
— Sandi Mann Psychologist University of Central Lancashire
That quote is not a pep talk. It is clinical observation turned plain. The children who learned to sit in idle time developed a tolerance for internal friction which later showed up as steadiness. They could be alone without disintegrating. They could plan without immediate reinforcement. They could sustain low intensity effort for long enough that results eventually arrived.
Not all resilience is wholesome
There is a thin line between adaptive endurance and quiet damage. Resilience can mask wounds. A child told to be tough without care may learn to hide needs rather than process them. Gabor Maté has long argued that absence of attunement can lead to a hardened coping style that reads like resilience on the outside but costs in interior connection. The difference matters because it changes how people relate to others and themselves. Some who grew up in the 60s and 70s carried a capacity to weather storms and also a reticence to ask for help.
“Children don t get traumatized because they get hurt children get traumatized because they re alone with the hurt.”
— Gabor Maté MD Physician and Author
Maté s point complicates the flattering narrative. There is strength and there is a potential for emotional isolation. Both coexist in many lives from those years. Recognising that duality prevents the sentimentalisation of struggle.
Practical patterns that still pay off
When I talk to people in their fifties and sixties about work or relationships certain habits recur. There is an ease with delayed gratification. There is a readiness to physically try again rather than only seek digital tips. There is a reluctance to treat every setback as a permanent failure. And there is an expectation that people can be repaired rather than discarded. Those habits produce tangible advantages in long projects where heat and repetition rather than flash decides outcomes.
These are not quaint virtues. They are process skills. Someone who tolerates tedium is better at tedious tasks that matter. Someone who assumes plans will bend rather than break manages complex family or workplace systems with less drama. We could learn from that, even if we do not want to return to every social condition of the past.
What younger generations actually lose and gain
Young adults today have clearer safety nets in many ways. Mental health therapies are less shameful. Many emotional problems get named and treated instead of buried. That is enormous progress. The trade off is that modern convenience often removes repeated friction that previously honed patience. It leaves an appetite for immediate solution and a reduced tolerance for low level ambiguity. None of this is strictly good or bad. It is a redistribution of risk and comfort across time.
I insist on this nuance because facile generational moralising rarely helps. What matters are the honest patterns we take forward. We may borrow the useful bits from earlier norms while keeping the humane gains of modern life.
Why this matters now more than nostalgia suggests
Large scale problems require long horizons and steady attention. Climate adaptation complex care systems and long term civic projects reward people who can tolerate slow returns. If an entire workforce or electorate has been conditioned toward immediate feedback then collective problem solving becomes harder. The presence of older cohorts who still instinctively ride out inconvenience is a social asset that needs recognition not condescension.
At the same time we must not romanticise unnecessary suffering. The task is to recognise those resilient patterns that are worth imitating and figure out how to teach them without resurrecting the harsher forms of past life.
How to borrow what works
There are deliberate ways to recreate the small exposures to friction that build stamina. Intentionally leaving three minutes of your morning unfilled learning to tolerate a delayed reply to a message or practising low intensity patience during household tasks are mild exercises with outsized effect. They are not therapy. They are training. They are also eminently practical. You do not need an era to instil them you need habits and social permission to be unproductive for brief stretches.
Some will find that advice trite. That is okay. The key point here is not prescriptive. It is descriptive. There exists a set of ordinary life experiences that created transferable psychological habits. They can be understood and cultivated again if we choose to do so.
Summary table
| Observation | Why it mattered |
|---|---|
| Analog waiting and delayed feedback | Built patience and tolerance for uncertainty. |
| Boredom without screens | Encouraged self generated problem solving and creativity. |
| Public friction and unpadded experience | Created low level distress tolerance and practical improvisation skills. |
| Emotional self reliance without attunement | Produced outward resilience sometimes paired with interior isolation. |
Frequently asked questions
Did people born in the 1960s and 1970s have an easier or harder childhood than today
It depends on the metric you use. On certain physical safety measures and medical advances today is safer. In terms of social cushioning many aspects of modern life provide more emotional scaffolding. Historically however those decades often involved more unsupervised independence and fewer institutional supports which taught pragmatic problem solving. There is no uniform answer. Many people from that era report both hardships and formative strengths.
Is the resilience described the same as toughness
Not exactly. Toughness implies invulnerability. The resilience that emerged in ordinary lives is more about persistence and practical recovery. It is the capacity to stay involved and try again rather than to feel nothing. The distinction is important because the latter is adaptable while the former can lead to suppression of needs.
Can younger people learn these habits without recreating old harms
Yes. The core elements are repeated exposure to small frustrations and the practice of delayed gratification combined with supportive relationships. Those can be taught through structured habit work mentorship and community practices without returning to neglect. The modern advantage is that we can design practice with intention rather than leaving it to chance.
Are these observations backed by research or just anecdote
Both. There is empirical work on boredom creativity and distress tolerance and a growing literature on generational differences in stress perception and coping. Personal testimony and qualitative studies complement these findings. The picture is multifaceted and research continues to refine what exactly is cultural pattern and what is individual variance.
