14 And: Under -1973 Parents Guide-

The album Bat Out of Hell won’t drop until 1977, but the seeds are there. In 1973, kids are playing “Light My Fire” backward to hear secret messages.

Compromise on the hair. Fight on the shoes. A broken ankle in 1973 means a plaster cast for six weeks with no waterproof cover. You will be signing the cast with a Sharpie every night. Sex Education In 1973, most schools still separate boys and girls for a single 45-minute filmstrip titled “Becoming a Woman” or “The Wonder of Growth.” The filmstrip features a disembodied voice, a flute soundtrack, and a diagram of a uterus that looks like a pear. 14 and under -1973 parents guide-

To help you navigate this specific moment in history, we have assembled the unofficial . This guide covers the media, the medicine, the mobility, and the moral panics unique to the Nixon-era household. Part I: The Cultural Landscape of 1973 (What Your 14-Year-Old Actually Knows) In 1973, the concept of “age-appropriate” was a loose suggestion. Unlike today’s hyper-sanitized digital bubbles, kids in 1973 absorbed adult content through three powerful vectors: the evening news, the AM radio, and the paperback rack at the drugstore. The News is Not for Children, But They Watch It Anyway By the time a child turned 14 in 1973, they had already seen live footage of body bags from Vietnam, police dogs in Birmingham (even if that was a decade earlier, the reruns were brutal), and the Manson Family verdict. On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew resigned; three months later, the first allegations against President Nixon over the Watergate tapes hit the evening news with Walter Cronkite. The album Bat Out of Hell won’t drop

Everything. The older sibling of their best friend has a copy of The Joy of Sex hidden under a mattress. They have seen National Geographic magazines. And if you live in a city, they have seen hardcore pornography sold in brown wrappers at the gas station. Fight on the shoes

Read them The Giving Tree . Cry a little. Blame it on the news. This guide is a work of historical retrospection. No parents were actually this organized in 1973. Most were just trying to find their car keys and a tube of Pepsodent.

By: The Retro Parent Editorial Team