76er here.  My memories of the 70s are faint and ghosty.  I kind of remember Carter/Reagan election.  Just images.  8 track player in my dad's orange van. 

But I identify as a child of the 80s.  STAR WARS is my usual litmus test;  I saw EMPIRE in a theater (1st movie I saw in a theater thanks to my older brother) and did not see STAR WARS until it aired much later on network TV.  I did not even suss out that they were interconnected until JEDI.

Tom Baker's Doctor on PBS.  Golden Age of Saturday morning cartoons.  Robert E. Howard CONAN novellas.  Watching the BENNY HILL SHOW on TV after parents went to bed.  Ah yeah.  The 80s.

Despite the many adventures that festoon the previous years -- three Atlantic crossings by liner before I was eight, almost losing my right leg to disease at 5, etc -- when I think of my childhood I seem most often to land in the latter part of 1958, some time after my 8th birthday. And, yes, I would most certainly agree that the world seemed "bigger" then. I was, of course, poised on the edge of a whirlwind of new experiences, all of which left a distinct impression on my young mind.

I was born in 1968 (today is my birthday).

   Being in a lower-middle class family at the tail end of the American Century had given me a sense that things were really much better than they are today, even if they were kind of rough years for my parents while I was a kid.  The only things about the 1970s economic woes which affected me directly were the prices of comics going up every other year, and my folks telling me that they wouldn't buy me a new toy or pair of sneakers that I wanted because they couldn't afford to do it.

   My best memories from that era (age 5 to 13) were discovering the "Bronze age" Marvel comics (including some of John Byrne's early works), the beginnings of the Star Wars franchise, World Wrestlng Federation shows on TV, VHF television channels with a rich selection of reruns, weekday afternoon cartoon shows, and Saturday monster movies (including all the best Godzilla films), and being in that gap between the psychedelic 60's rock and New Wave/hair metal bands.  I also remember seeing heavy thunderstorms, heavy snowfalls every winter, and having a puddle in the back yard which froze over every winter so that me and the neighborhood kids were often playing on it.

   In comics, I started out as a fan of the Avengers with George Perez and John Byrne as artist, the Hulk under Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema, Conan with Roy Thomas and John Buscema, and Spider-Man in the Ross Andru era.  The X-Men came towards the end of my childhood, and soon superceded them all.