The '90s weren't that great

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

Today’s guest post is from the author of Cartoons Hate Her, a Substack about social dynamics (including parenting, marriage, sex and friendship) from the hybrid mind of a terminally online sicko and a normie liberal mom.

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There’s a quotation I often see floating around millennial and Gen Z corners of the Internet from Hunter S. Thompson, which they’ve decided is unambiguously accurate, “creepily prophetic” even:

The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th Century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what’s coming now. The party’s over, folks.

What I find most interesting about the reaction to this quote is it tends to come from people too young to be able to verify if it’s actually true—people who were children in the nineties, or weren’t born yet. But among these folks, there seems to be an agreement that the ‘90s were the zenith of prosperity and happiness. People even insist that sun and light presented differently back then, for reasons.

Sure, you’ve got the weird raw milk trad people yearning for the ‘50s, or even pre-industrial life, but most people know those time periods actually sucked. The ‘90s are seductive for more reasonable people, because we know that in the ‘90s we had modern medicine and most of the modern policies with which we agree today (civil rights, women’s lib, what have you.) But because of quips like the aforementioned Thompson quote, we’re also led to believe that everyone was having a massive party all the time, while affording a Home Alone style house on one income.

Part of the issue is that twenty-something people today are simply poorer than their parents were in their forties. Their childhoods were spent with memories of a backyard pool and frequent vacations—because they were ten and their parents were forty-five. These kids might have grown up considering themselves “middle class” when they were actually safely upper middle class. Their parents, not wanting to be unseemly, probably told them they were middle class. Twenty-somethings who grew up kinda rich probably don’t yet have the money their parents did, and this can be confusing if they were led to believe they had a modest upbringing. But while we’re on the topic of luxuries, there’s significantly more international travel today than in the ‘90s, and people go to restaurants more often too. Many things that were once considered luxuries are now available to more people than ever.

The ‘90s-trads are correct, however, about housing becoming less affordable. Housing prices have grown in a way that incomes haven’t, even though incomes have also grown over time (in 2023, the median household income in America was $83K. In 1995, it was $34K.) So for those nostalgic for the ‘90s, I will concede that they are correct when it comes to housing, but that has less to do with 9/11 or the War on Terrorism and a whole lot more do to with large municipalities not building enough homes to keep up with local job growth. Maybe millennials would be able to buy a house if they weren’t spending all their money on freedom fries!

Certain cities have become increasingly unaffordable because of highly educated young people, working in lucrative industries, moving there en masse after graduation for job opportunities, while the cities themselves do not build more housing to account for these people (see: San Francisco and the tech scene- I have experience with this myself.) Some conservatives will roll their eyes and say, “You want to buy a house? Look, I found a one-bedroom shack for $80K in rural Montana,” as if your average young person with zero friends or family in Montana has any reason to move there. People used to be able to afford houses more easily, but they weren’t catching diphtheria on the Oregon Trail to do it—they simply weren’t leaving their hometowns as often. Many of the people talking about how their parents were able to afford a much better quality of life would never want to live where their parents did.

College-educated young people moving farther away from their hometowns after graduation (especially for job opportunities) is perfectly understandable, but contributes to many of the issues that make modern day seem “worse” than the golden age of the ‘90s. Take childcare for example. As much as we like to bitch about our mother-in-law telling us to put socks on a baby who she witnessed ripping them off five minutes ago, the help of an extended family makes a huge difference when it comes to childcare—and we no longer live near our mother-in-laws for them to be able to help regularly.

Today, parents are living in a bit of an experiment. Both parents working outside the home is nothing new (as you can see, women’s labor rates were fairly similar in the ‘90s.) The difference is that parents are increasingly atomized. Childcare costs are less of an issue when you have grandparents willing to provide it for free. Of course, that would require living near your parents in suburban Ohio, and well, hanging out with them a lot. As I wrote about before, many parents who claim to want a “village” just want the part with the free childcare, not the part that involves caring for elderly relatives. And on the flip side, while I don’t have official data on this, I’ve interviewed many millennial parents whose own boomer parents show little to no interest in their grandkids at all.

But anyway, let’s talk about why we don’t want to return to the ‘90s, even if some components of that time were better (such as housing affordability.) For one, I take issue with the insistence that young people today enjoy a “lower quality of life than their parents,” as if quality of life is determined only by housing affordability.

Let’s start with a common misconception about how terrible modern life is: the dissolution of the family and the skyrocketing divorce rate. This is one of those things that just makes no sense to me, because while many of these misunderstandings can be boiled down to “vibes” I don’t even feel like the divorce rate is skyrocketing. Growing up in the ‘90s, many of my friends’ parents were divorced. At my child’s school in 2024, zero parents are divorced. And this stacks up in the data. The divorce rate is not, by any stretch of the imagination, “skyrocketing.” You could argue that the fertility crisis is a real thing, or that fewer people are getting married, but you cannot argue that we have a worsening problem with divorce.

And it’s not just divorce which people baselessly believe is getting worse—people also claim we are less safe than we’ve ever been.

I have heard countless people—especially parents—insist that life was safer for children in the ‘90s. They believe there was less crime, less gun violence, and fewer abductions. I had a panicked mother tell me “In the ‘90s, you didn’t have to worry that you’d be shot wherever you went.” And understandably, mass shootings (and the coverage of mass shootings) can easily convince us that we have a high risk of being shot every time we leave the house. And as an anti-gun lib with an anxiety disorder, I get it.

It’s easy to imagine that the ‘90s had less crime, less gun violence, and everyone was safer, especially if you were a child yourself during this time, obliviously munching on Dunkaroos. But arguably, the ‘80s and ‘90s were some of the most violent decades in recent history! When Hunter S. Thompson declared that the “party was over,” perhaps he was referring to the killing-people-themed party that was rocking and rolling from 1970 to, well…right around 9/11. Perhaps killing someone just doesn’t have the same ring to it when you have to think about it as “1/2,996 9/11s.”

But perhaps people see statistics like this and say it doesn’t apply to them, because those homicides were presumably gang-related or drug-related (as if those types of shootings don’t still make up the majority.) They’re thinking about their suburban families and their children, not people involved in organized crime or drug rings. They don’t feel like their children are safer than children in the ‘90s, and their proof is mostly “all the stuff I’m hearing” and “how things were when I was as kid.”

We are hardly living in a golden age of safety for kids—during the pandemic, there was a spike in crime, especially gun violence. But a big part of why gun violence became the biggest cause of deaths of people under 18 is partially because they were a lot less likely to die from other causes, notably motor vehicle accidents:

Of course, one death from any of these causes is too many, and I don’t intend to gloss over these tragedies. But if we’re comparing the ‘90s with today, it feels disingenuous to zero in on gun violence (especially the pandemic spike) without being honest about the context of cars becoming safer. Don’t take this as an endorsement of cars; I am 100% trainpilled. But if I had to be in a car, would I pick a car in 2024, or a car in 1994 (tacky wooden siding notwithstanding?)

The ‘80s and ‘90s were also peak serial killer decades, if anyone even cares.

I understand that parents today (myself included) don’t feel safe letting their kids run around and play in the streets the way parents used to. This is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Because parents perceive the world as less safe, and are more focused on safety, nobody lets their kids run around and play unattended. As a result, you don’t want to be the one parent sending their six-year-old to roam the streets alone because A.) if they’re the only kid doing it, it’s actually pretty unsafe and B.) even if it’s safe, some neighbor will call the cops. Many such cases.

But you know what? I actually understand why parents feel the world is less safe today. Sure, it might not be true, but it feels like it’s true, especially when social media is awash with stories of new and horrifying ways for children to be injured or die (before I had children, I never worried about children accidentally ingesting a deadly button battery in a light-up birthday card. Now, I can’t walk past birthday cards in CVS without thinking about this.)

What I don’t understand, however, are people who insist food was better in the ‘90s. With rising obesity rates, some have concluded that there are magic chemicals in our food today which weren’t there a few decades ago (cue scare image of a scientist injecting a tomato with “GMOs” in a literal syringe.) But not only have harmful ingredients like trans fats, among many others, been banned since the ‘90s, the standards for our nutrition have changed, probably for the better. Whether everyone follows these standards is another question, but our knowledge of nutrition has greatly improved!

The pinnacle of ‘90s nutrition

I grew up believing that the most important food group consisted of rice, pasta and bread, and it was on me to consume ungodly amounts of these things every day. For those of you who remember the ‘90s, we were terrified of fat. The belief was that eating fat made you fat. People ate fat-free chips that gave them explosive diarrhea. The fear of fat led to an increase in sugar in our food, which laid the groundwork for a sugar-heavy, ultra-processed diet that at the time was billed as healthy (at least we acknowledge the downsides of such foods today.) Even people who were children in the ‘90s probably remember the “healthy” snack options that conscientious parents might have given their children, like Juicy Juice or Nutri-Grain bars (both loaded with sugar.) For less “health conscious” families, we had…well, stuff like EZ Squirt. Thank goodness it’s the “funky purple” flavor. Can you imagine if it was “conventional purple?”

As I’ve addressed, a big part of the ‘90s nostalgia is just the fact that people remember their childhoods fondly. And that’s a good thing. My husband’s grandmother still felt nostalgic for the ‘40s, which objectively sucked ass (sorry, YiaYia.) But many of us take for granted the technology that makes our lives easier, which we didn’t have thirty years ago. One of the most traumatizing moments from my childhood was in the late nineties, when the babysitter who normally brought my brother home from preschool didn’t return home. My mother thought he had died in a car accident, and with no way to contact the babysitter (she didn’t have a cell phone) she had to contact every potential cafe where they might have stopped for a snack. Midway through this frenzy of calls, my mother remembered that my brother had an after-school activity that day at the community center. But for about an hour, my mother and I thought my brother was dead. (Yes, my anxiety is genetic.)

Today, this just wouldn’t have happened. My mom would have had a Google calendar with a reminder about the after-school activity. Even if she didn’t, she and the babysitter would have been able to exchange texts. And perhaps she’d even have an AirTag on my brother’s backpack, or location-sharing with the babysitter’s phone.

But I think another component is the technology that makes 2024 so much easier—the fact that we can easily look up a loved one’s location, the fact that we can work from home in our pajamas, or the fact that we have magical portals in our pockets that enable us to watch, read and view almost any content we want for free (and argue with monarchist teenagers on Twitter)—has also made us more isolated, angry, and scared, even if the world at large is getting better. This creates a weird paradox where technology that people ostensibly like, makes them less happy. But also, they’d be even more miserable transported to 1995 because they have the knowledge of all the technology that they would be missing.

Most people agree phones are bad. But we still use the phones because phones rule, actually. Much like our decision not to let our children wander the streets as they did in the good old days, giving up the phone only works if everyone else gives it up, and that’s not going to happen.

We no longer live in a society where it’s normal for you to pop over to a neighbor’s house. Kramer, by today’s standards, would be a toxic manipulator who repeatedly violated Jerry’s personal boundaries. A child having a playdate is no longer a matter of one kid showing up at the other kid’s house and crashing their family dinner, knowing the favor will be returned. It must be preceded by fraught texts between moms, repeatedly fizzling out because each of them is “going out of town” every other weekend, and the playdates will have to squeeze between soccer practice, gymnastics, and occupational therapy for awkward pencil-holding. Giving up my smartphone would mean giving up nearly all my friendships, which are long-distance and take place primarily over text. So yes, phones are making us more isolated, but you can’t really resolve the issue by throwing your phone away if nobody else is doing that. Living in 2024 without a smartphone would probably make someone even more isolated.

When people say the ‘90s was a golden age, it’s possible they’re just stupid, but I think it’s more likely that they remember a more connected and more social world than what exists today. They may not even remember it personally—maybe they’ve heard anecdotes from their parents or relatives, or maybe they’ve just seen photos of malls in the ‘90s decorated for Christmas. I’ll admit, this makes me feel pretty nostalgic too.

But why aren’t malls like that anymore? First of all, there are fewer malls in general, because it’s far more convenient to buy things online. Most of the bad societal trends that we notice are amalgamations of revealed preferences.

We cannot return to the ‘90s, and I don’t think we really want to. For one, I think that giving up the golden age of Nickelodeon and mystery blue Pop Tarts is a fair price to pay for a dramatic decrease in the rate of infant deaths.

But perhaps we can take the things that we like about the ‘90s—the increased social connection, the ability to drop by a friend’s house, or the fact that toys were simply much cuter, and bring a bit of that to the modern world.

One of my friends appears like a ‘90s mom transported to 2024. She’s pretty easygoing with her kids (I wouldn’t say she’s a “free range” parent, but she’s certainly not neurotic.) She also prioritizes social gatherings in a way that parents today generally don’t. She’s the only parent I know, other than myself, who actually throws parties at her home. Over the summer, she started scheduling weekly swim lessons for kids in the neighborhood at her apartment complex pool, which turned into weekly cookouts. Every time I went over, I thought to myself, “this is the kind of thing my parents would have done when I was a kid.” In a way, it felt insanely trad, like I was LARPing as a ‘90s mom, complete with my claw clip and oversized button-down shirt.

And if I want to keep that going—taking the great parts of the ‘90s, namely social connection and community—and bring it to modern day, I need to take the initiative myself. I need to throw parties at my house. I need to create routine around social gatherings, because nobody is going to do it for me. And I plan to. It helps that my in-laws are actually moving to my town. And it’s easier than ever to buy vintage ‘90s toys on Poshmark, as I did for my kids this Christmas (we are so fucking back.)

Hopefully, if we can isolate the specific parts of the ‘90s that we miss (or, for people too young to remember, the things we think we miss based on our memory of TV shows) we can make those things a reality. Because the more of us participate, the easier it is. Just the other day, I made gingerbread muffins, and my older child helped me hand them out to our neighbors. Initially, everyone was a bit shocked when they opened the door, after nervously checking their Ring cameras to make sure I wasn’t an intruder or grifter (I’m something much worse—a Substack writer.) But hopefully, when they opened the door and realized we were neighbors trying to create community, they realized they could do the same.

And maybe you just miss the ‘90s for the Gushers. Don’t worry, those are still available.