@wholf359For me, it's somewhat 'all of a piece.' One of the themes in my story is the idea of the do-over as a way to 'fix' things that went wrong. Tied into that is the idea of the first life being, on balance, a learning experience but not something to try to regain. Both to make that work, and to make it plausible, I needed maturity and reasonably detailed memories of what happened.
On the other hand, I've tried to apply the same standard to memories. If a character is decades away from the events of their current year, some things will still be vividly memorable, but other things are vague in various ways. They might well remember, say, that Chernobyl happened, and how, but when? On the other hand, remembering when Challenger happened (to a close approximation) is much easier.
For things like sports betting, business, etc, it's the same standard. I'm not writing a walking sports almanac, but many people remember a modest number of standout events from that age. Nor am I writing someone who memorized the stock market as a whole, but major events and big names may stand out enough to have 'future knowledge.'
I definitely wouldn't change a thing in that regard. It works for me and for the story I'm telling, and doing something else wouldn't.
The rest gets more and more 'off topic' - but relevant to the larger discussion.
I will definitely agree with the way childhood was in the 1980s. There were limits, at least in my experience - most parents would frown greatly on a couple going into a room and closing the door, for instance. Necessity is the mother of invention, and plenty of sex was happening, but there were constraints. On the other hand, 'I'm going to the mall - back tonight!' wasn't uncommon, and 'the mall' might well have meant 'the mall, three other stores, the park, the library, a friend's house, and a restaurant,' and the parent would have no idea (nor would they feel the kid had lied, even by omission).
For high school in the 1980s, though - and in my experience - teen pregnancy was very uncommon. When it did happen, it was hushed up. Perhaps the girl, or the whole family, 'moved away,' or perhaps there was an abortion.
Nowadays, there are daycares in all of the nearby high schools and many middle schools. Back then? Anyone admitting they were or had been pregnant would have been a complete pariah.
It's easy to tie the rise of cell phones to the decline in 'just be home by dark.' There's some truth to that, but it's much more complicated than that, I think. In theory, cell phones make it easier, not harder - you can track your kids and make contact on a whim.
It's much more an overall rise in risk-averse parenting. More than once I've mentioned an article I remember reading in Time decades ago (late 1990s, almost certainly). The author was in some sort of medicine and their thesis was 'There has been a huge drop in the number of kids with broken bones. This is a bad thing.'
The argument was that the decline was because parents forbade things like climbing trees, playing on pavement, and other behaviors that sometimes result in broken bones. The author believed (and I generally agree) that the short-term payoff in 'safety' was being achieved at the expense of kids developing risk-management skills. If you never put yourself at risk, you don't learn to assess it, you just reflexively avoid it.
I've also personally witnessed a parent charging across a playground screaming and scooping up their kid because there was roughly a 1% chance that another kid on a swing might possibly have bumped into their kid, then giving their kid a lecture. Or parents running to the aid of their kid with a very minor cut or abrasion and treating it nearly as a medical emergency.