Born in '78 so a child of the '80s to mid-90s. I grew up in Putnam county NY in a very blue-collar working-class town. Both my parents worked +60 hours per week so I was a latch-key kid which means my parents were not around and I was raised by a pack of wolves - my siblings when they were around. Most of my friends were latch-key kids too with parents in trades and construction. We played a lot of sports. We rode a lot of ATVs, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, and boats/watercraft. We spent a lot of time in the woods.
In high school, we partied A LOT, we smoked a lot of dope and drank a lot of 40s. If you didn't work you had no money, no auto insurance, and no car. Those with a father in a trade went to work early with their father. My first job was at 13 working for a friend's father who was a paver (OSHA and child labor laws - what are those?) I've had a job with no more than 2-weeks unemployed since I was 13. I thought everyone had HIV (it was drummed into our heads) yet we all had A LOT of unprotected sex. I have memories that remind me of Caligula. None of us took school all that seriously but we all did well enough and most of us went to college in the SUNY system. I put myself through college living at home delivering pizzas - I think my tuition was $3500 per year? We didn't have cell phones and once we could drive most of us spent most of our time out and about occasionally checking in at home. Parents never waited up on weekends. In spite of the partying, drugs, drinking, and sex just about every one of my friends and I got serious in college and we are now professionals - Doctors, dentists, a lot of engineers, a couple of people in finance, and A LOT of teachers.
Was it better? I don't know. I think most of us didn't have a meaningful relationship with our parents who were just busy getting by in life. We had A LOT MORE FREEDOM which in retrospect I enjoyed immensely but my friends and I could've gone "the other way". The only thing I can say definitively is our music was F'in awesome!