To be confused by the two working parent set up

I can't help but think that in my mother's generation they had to do the same stuff as us, but with no work

When was this? I am in my 50s & my mum is in her 80s. My mum always worked - admittedly she was more unusual in having a full time profession rather than a part time 'job' but not a complete outlier. Women have pretty much always worked - apart from a small privileged number. When do you think they didn't?

Childcare was definitely no easier for many of the previous generation. Most women, including myself worked. I had young children in the mid 1980’s-90’s and no family nearby to help. There was very little in the way of nursery places and no before/after school clubs. Most relied on childminders. Nobody I knew had a cleaner, so housework had to be done on days off. We made our own ‘village’ by sharing childcare with other women. So on my days off (I worked in NHS,so worked shifts , including nights) , I might be looking after someone else’s child/children as well as my own, which to be honest was often easier as they would entertain each other. Those who were teachers would help out in school holidays. Contrary to popular belief among some of the younger generation, fathers did a lot of childcare too. However, it was easier to afford a decent sized house.

Women fought for equal rights but in many cases have just doubled their workload. If you break it down it is men that have benefitted.

I think we romanticise how easy it was

Your mum may have stayed at home but I don't think that was the norm. Mine was at home as far as I was concerned but she got up at 4am to clean, worked in chipper at nights and a shop on Saturdays.

A generation further back they were up threading hundreds of hooks onto lines for the fishing, then gutting the catch etc. It was a bloody hard life.
Others worked in the flax mill which employed just as many women as men.

I think there's a very short period for a very limited class of people where one wage was enough for a comfortable life.

I remember playing in the playground at school with the gates open waiting for parents to collect you with limited supervision. That is not allowed now.

My mother worked and had a few different jobs over my education years but they were always hours that allowed her to drop and collect us from school. I feel like those hours in jobs are few and far between now and it's difficult to get the balance right. It makes me quite frustrated that this is life now.

Remember that for a lot of women it wasn’t a ‘career break’ though, as most women didn’t get to HAVE careers. They had jobs, sure, but actual careers were much rarer. Going from a low level job, to a few years off being a mum, to back into a low level job, is easier than trying to get back into a professional career where things have moved on. I’m thinking about the kind of work women in my (working class) family did: cleaning, retail, piece work, that sort of thing. My kind of work (lawyer) was utterly unavailable to them.

It isn’t the parents working that has changed, it’s expectations of parenting.

In the past, smacking for compliance was commonplace and independence started years before it does now.

FWIW, I don’t think that’s ‘right’ but it did mean that the pressure wasn’t on parents, especially mothers.

We used to go to theme parks in the 80's and half the kids in the overpacked car, would be made to climb through the bit behind the middle rest thing you used to get in the middle of the back car seat (arm rest thing but we used to use it as a booster seat), into the boot until the parents had paid at the drive through gate and stay there until they parked up.

Same here, my mother always worked too. She even did evening work as an adult education teacher as well as school teaching in the daytime. That was back in the 70s and 80s! I remember my best friend's Mum (neighbour across the road) also worked. I think you have to go back a further generation to where Mum's didn't work, i.e. the post war years when the men returning from war were prioritised for jobs and women were encouraged to step back.

When women went to work in greater numbers (as we know, we have always worked), community is one of the 'domestic' things men failed to step up in. 'The village' was something women women facilitated so often course it's fallen by the wayside. In the 80s when I was growing up we lived on a naval estate so we were all there due to our dads jobs but it was 100% the women facilitating all of the domestic side of things whether they worked or not.

Not RTFT but i’m in my mid-50s and my mum was in paid employment, as were my friends’ mothers, as indeed were my grandmothers. Working class women have worked outside the home for millennia. It’s not new.

😂😂😂

OP: it's ok to not be "perfect". You can take shortcuts, as pp have said, with meals and household tasks, and you'll find a way to manage demands.
I think going down to 3 days sounds like a good solution, and then you've got 4 clear days.
Try to make time for neighbours, if you can, it really helps to build a community.

@EezyOozy thank you but don’t waste your time. Facts are irrelevant to feels 😆😆

It’s aggressive to reply to you?
Of course you can’t provide statistics for something that isn’t true.

I'm not interested in a slanging match. Find someone else.

🤔

I think this is a really excellent summary, and you've made some good points.
Perhaps, when you're in the midst of full on parenting, it's tempting to think that somehow things were better in the past.

It was rude, and incorrect.

@Clockyclockz stated that more mothers are working now. And she was correct.

• In April to June 2021, three in four mothers with dependent children (75.6%) were in work in the UK, reaching its highest level in the equivalent quarter over the last 20 years (66.5% in 2002).
• The employment rate was higher for mothers than either women or men without dependent children and has been since 2017.
• From 2020, in families where both parents are employed, it has become more common for both parents to work full-time, rather than a man working full-time with a partner working part-time.

No it wasn't.
I'm not interested in a slanging match. Find someone else.

Your response to the other poster was rude

I think you're looking at the past with rose tinted glasses.
I'm retired now, but growing up in the 50s and 60s, my mother always worked. The main difference is that her job in a factory would hardly be described as a career.
She worked in the evening, so was there when we got home, but left for work before my Dad came home, leaving us alone for an hour. This would be unheard of now.
We had no family nearby and this mythical 'village' where neighbours helped out, just did not exist.
Consequently, I dont think my parents ever went out on their own anywhere.
Without today's modern appliances, washing took all day, etc.
There was little convenience food, as we grew up without a fridge, let alone a freezer.
I do remember a local fish and chip shop (which we could only rarely afford), and Chinese takeaways started when I was an adult (so very little in the way of ready meals).
There was no wrap around care, and little in the way of after school clubs (apart from brownies, etc).
The main difference is that as children we were all left on our own a lot more.
We would play with school friends and other local children, in parks, woods, in the streets, entirely on our own. And apart from the first few weeks, went on our own to and from school. This would be unheard of today.