Have women become soft

It’s not just women.

We live in a society with trigger warnings and safe spaces so I can understand why younger people appear soft to her. Many children are infantilised to the extent that they become anxious young adults who struggle to function. The fact about brains not being fully developed until age 25 is used as an excuse by some to explain behaviour that should have been sorted as a teen.

I think that more people would cope with “harder” circumstances if they had to but in the UK we’ve had the luxury of no wars, no conscription etc which I’m grateful for. I’m grateful that I don’t have to handwash clothes and have gadgets like dishwashers and vacuum cleaners. I’m grateful for central heating and indoor loos too.

I think that women’s problems have changed. There was abuse and single parents in the past but today you can’t have children doing things like walk home from school and letting themselves in once they start school without getting into trouble with the police and social services. Women have to earn and work similar hours to men in order to keep the family afloat whether single or in a couple. Women are criticized for working, staying at home, having kids and not having kids. They are judged for earning more than men, longer hours than men or even leaving the kids with said man to travel for work. They are like several people in one body.

Yes, I thought this when I first read it. I imagine both when she was young and when she was raising her kids it was perfectly normal to give children a good walloping for misbehaviour. And of course children would have been caned in school.

My gran worked 3 jobs a day from 6am through to 8pm from the 1950s through to around 1988 when she retired, with only half an hour break between jobs, in which time she had to change uniform and get from one place to another.
She also cycled there and back to save money on car/bus.

She worked those jobs because they needed the money to survive, so they weren't thrown out onto the streets. My dad remembers eating basic food (think boiled potatoes level), and they grew as much as they could themselves.

She never had a washing machine, or hoover; everything was done by hand.

That's a pretty stark difference between then and now.

The 60s are now 55-65 years ago, but times have changed a huge amount.

I think things have changed a huge amount since my childhood in the 80s, and my childhood was vastly different to those in the 60s.

I think about what my mother (born in 1925) had to live through and I’m not so sure that we are soft so much as they had it hard and just had to get on with it. What I mean is it’s not a bad thing that some things are easier now (washing machines, food delivery, disposable nappies, our own bank accounts, etc etc). People do seem to get offended very easily now though and are very quick to say things ‘trigger’ them and so on.

You have not 'called me out' because I have done absolutely none of these things. You have merely made an unpleasant, generalised accusation with no back up data.

It's irritating to be called out. I didn't say every single boomer voted to pull up the ladder.

Ok, this is hearsay. You might know some people with those views. They are not necessarily boomers.
When did we vote on student grants? Tory policy? Never voted Tory in my life.
Evidence that boomers wanted to dissolve the welfare state? Never seen that one. Loony Reform voters possibly.
Dunno about Brexit, massive, absolutely massive lack of understand of the repercussions, I think.
Don’t like being credited with actions and viewpoints I absolutely do not hold.
please stop the generalisations, it’s irritating.

Evidence is readily available given how boomers voted for Brexit and the Tories in vast numbers over the years.

Voted happily to get rid off student grants, dissolve the welfare state, underfund the NHS and take us out of the EU with all the advantages that had. All the things they benefited from with their triple locked pensions.

Evidence please. I am not aware, ever, of having done so. I will admit I'm not a fan of huge housing developments but when I last looked, 64000 properties were standing empty in London alone.

Or the fact that they consistently voted to pull up the ladder.

Maybe but it’s largely luck and gov policy at the time.

Possibly because some of us had parents who lived then, so their experiences impacted on our lives. My mum was born pre WWI, my gran who I remember, was born in the 1870s. I was born 1940s, my kids 1970s, DGC are teens. Two generations before and after, and relevant to my life experience.

@SmoothRoads mentioned that women stayed in horrible relationships. I don’t know what went on in my father’s family, but I know his parents separated in the 1920s when he was a teenager, and he had to leave school and get a job to support his mother. His father had plenty of money, he owned a couple of shops and some flats. I heard she suffered badly with arthritis, probably had no skills other than being a wife. Women had little entitlement, men had so much power. Shame and respectability featured far more then too, and there were men who left their wives and children with nothing, that’s not new.

Welfare benefits and contraception have been game changers for women.

Thank god we now have contraception

In those days woman worked in domestic roles because often the men kept the money for alcohol.

My father's mother was a very tough strong woman but she had zero support with 11 DC from her DH. He was a chronic alcohol. She sold cakes at the weekend, worked in the hospital cleaning in the day.

My mother's mother, was softer, never worked, husband sent money often from working in the UK, he came home yearly to get her pregnant, 10 DC.

Haha- I lived without all of those bar central heating and a washing machine until about 8 years ago and I’ve never used Amazon Prime in my life. My nan had a microwave in the 80s I think.

Doesn't mean that she has any help with kids, house etc. my dad was born in 1939 and only saw his father twice before he was 7

@FedupofArsenalgamemy last post appears confrontational so I apologise because actually I think I agree with others that I don’t think it’s women who have become soft, it’s men. So many more women are doing the double shift like your grandmother and I, carrying the mental load, whilst their partners simply must go cycling or play golf.

So two incomes then.

In general, life in the UK is easier now than it was during and immediately after the war. I would have thought that was fairly obvious!

It doesn't mean that no-one at that time had an easy life or that no-one now has a hard life, we're talking at population level. My Nana smoked 40 a day and was fit and able into her late 80's, doesn't mean smoking is good for you does it?!

A lot of women had no choice but to be tough and resilient, dealing with feckless husbands and endless pregnancies, raising children, stretching meals, baking from scratch, doing domestic work for extra income, mending clothing and shoes, working age 13/14.

Thankfully life has become easier for many women, not all obviously.

In some instances yes, they definitely weren’t trying to work professional jobs with very young children. They got jobs when their children were in school. Their family finances weren’t dependent on their incomes. They didn’t breastfeed, expectations on child rearing were very different.

My grandmothers had children in the 60s, it wasn’t THAT long ago.

The be kind phrase was more about not bullying and not being nasty to people. Completely different to not being able to say no or not having boundaries.

Yes. All the “be kind” nonsense has left some women without boundaries or the resilience to say no or call out bullshit.

Multiple posts on here daily where people are unable to use their words to say no to someone or speak up.

Both men and women have without a doubt. It's getting worse too. Think 20 year olds filming themselves crying because they did a days work.

@peeweehill be interesting to see what she thinks about what men have become?
The men walk away and refuse to pay a penny towards their own children.

Or the men who judge women by their tits and willingness to shag them?

And what does she mean by soft? That women won't put up with a bit of sexual harassment, slap on the bottom from the boss at work, anymore?

Or to not wait on a grown man at home to make his life all easy whilst also working a full time job and still, in 2025, being expected to cover the lion's share of domestic and childrearing?

It would be beneficial for all women of all generations if there was less judgement between each other, but that's never going to happen.

So it depends on what her definition of "become soft" means. Losing your marbles over a broken nail or the doorbell going, or not putting up with you know just a touch of domestic violence at home. Big difference.