What your parents tell or told you about your barefoot habits

i feel like you would notice it on the streets. now grassy parks are risky, and i've come very close at the beach a couple times.

 

My parents handled my case all wrong. They tried to force and pressure me into it, where the end result simply was that I just closed up for a number of years, for their attempts to disrespect my personal space and freedom of choice. I wasn't properly barefoot until in my late 20's.

 

Better late than never. Some parents at times have a way of really fucking a kid up. You were independent enough after a while to do your own thing.

 

You are SO right! I'm glad I never gave in to my parents' constant demands to put on shoes and socks, even in the house.

 

I don't know if I would really have to take a stand to be barefoot around others. It would likely be acceptable for the most part.

 

When I was a kid I had to give in at first. But later at the age of about 13 I understood that I just couldn't bare with any footwear inside the house and sometimes even outside. My feet wanted to be free! And I'm glad I started walking barefoot despite all their demands to put on shoes and socks.

 

Is it really a thing? I don't know anything about barefooting. I've seen people barefooted on occasion, but they always look neglected or homeless. I keep seeing this though. Threads about it... Maybe it's more prevalent in other parts of the United States. I am only familiar with Southern California, and you'd think with our climate that this would be the barefooting capital of America. I just haven't seen it that much.

Maybe it's more Australian. @GLENGLEN knows about this if I recall...

 

It’s not prevalent here in Western Pa. In fact I would say it’s non existent. I’ve talked to many people who claimed to be avid barefooters but had many exceptions. Which is their prerogative and I’m totally cool with that. In my lifetime so far I have only met one dude who is always barefoot. Passed him on the street a few times in town during summer and the dead of winter. People looked at us like we were nuts.

 

i see barefoot people sometimes. probably more often than i realize, because i really don't pay attention to people's feet. but i always assume that they're just people who decided not to put on shoes; i've never met one of those people who refuses to wear footwear no matter what and tries to start fights about it and all that stuff.

 

I hate having anything on my feet, and keep it to a minimum!

 

I cannot speak to the rest of the U.S., but here in the Eastern "Mid West" it was extremely common among children, not too uncommon with teens, and hardly unheard of among adults of all ages from the 1950s to the 80s. The Golden Age was the sixties and seventies, when malls didn't have dress codes. Actually, they did, but were ignored! I can't speak about earlier times, but evidence does suggest it went back to the earliest days of the country. In one of his last articles before his death, an Indianapolis Star editor, Wayne Guthrie, talks approvingly of bare footing in 1977 and mentions seeing older ladies barefoot in supermarkets. In a neighborhood in which I lived in the 1980s, young and not-so-young people were predominantly barefoot, myself included, at least around the neighborhood, all summer. It was most common among the working-class white and Hispanic populations. Part of this time was just before the AIDS epidemic and I had a number of gay male neighbors. I would say bare footing was close to 100% among them.

 

I also grew up in the eastern Mid West, same era too. There were many teens that went barefoot in my neighborhood during our however short summers. Seems like those no bare feet signs at McDonald's, those fancy Adidas waffle print sneakers and the AIDs epidemic of the early 80's killed the barefooting movement.

 

when I was a kid all kids ran around barefoot all summer long. We would take walks and have to sprint between shadows cast on the ground from trees to avoid the burning asphalt. That was fun
My mom only made me put on shoes when we went out in public

 

The rather short-lived but strong popularity of athletic sandals, Tevas, Adidas, Nike, etc. in the early 90s may have been the death knell. Even in the mid-90s, there was still a fair amount of barefooting, even in groceries and a few brave souls in malls, but once it lost the sense of being common and expected, seems like it never came back. I started following barefoot-friendly forums and websites around 1997, and I don't think they have moved the needle one micron in all these years, despite optimistic people who declare, "It is coming back!"

 

Nowadays people think why should I go barefoot when there's dozens upon dozens of different style of sandals I can wear. Times have changed.

 

so are we saying that people started wearing shoes to prevent AIDS?

 

Well, you could always accidentally step on a druggie's used needle.

 

yeah, that was the only possible explanation i could think of. seems like a stretch to me though.

 

I don't know about the U.S. but in England when I was a kid they started a thing where junkies could take used needles to GPs and exchange them for clean ones. Since then I don't think I ever saw a needle on the ground.

 

Me mam used to say " take them new shoes of before you go running round in all that glass and needles and stuff ! they cost a fortune "