Really interesting topic. My 11yr-old is crazy about the show and told me that she wishes she could live in that show’s time period. As someone straddling Gen-X and Millenials by just sqeaking in before the 80’s I was only 4 in 1983. However, I remember riding a BMX bike everywhere, and it being a critical part of our identity. I remember unstructured, unsupervised analog play daily. Our entire street had sidewalks on both sides and all the back yards may had been one yard. We roamed freely every day, all day, the entire summer. We invented games, made forts, and solved problems. The dads on the street worked blue collar jobs and the moms were overwhelmingly home all day. The boomers, as parents, seemed carefree and grew up in quite possibly the most prosperous period in American history and were backed by their Silent-gen parents that had ample cash reserves. Everyone kept an eye on each other without hovering. That era, I believe, is gone, and the 80’s and early 90’s were the last chance to experience it. That’s why this is such a poignant period in particular. The end of an era, and that’s what we miss.

My kids rarely ride a bike anywhere and our once blue-collar town is now filled with high-end dual-income corporate executive households. These are households of structured play, planned playdates, nannies, au-pairs, and daycare. Add to that pervasive device use and screen time and before long we all wish for some 80’s culture.