To be confused by the two working parent set up

Who looked after their children?

Agreed

My mother worked, my grandmother worked.

I've done my family tree and for as far back as it goes the women worked.

The fashion of most married women being housewives really only occupied a relative short period in time and wasn't a luxury afforded to poorer families like my predecessors.

My mother only worked part time as she was dismissed from her civil service job when she became pregnant.

Grandmother and all those who came before had full time jobs.

My Mum is late 80s and this is what I remember.

She did work but it was low paid and very part time. I suspect she could have got away without working. Majority of Mums I knew were in same boat.

There’s no right or wrong. Some women had to work. Others didn’t. I think the complexity and demands of jobs today are much much higher.

I wonder if it's the case that while women worked, often they worked part time/shorter hours, and didn't have the demanding careers women have now?

I'm a solicitor and DH is in a similar demanding career that spills over 9-5 and the current setup does feel impossible. If there was one spouse with a big career and one spouse taking a back seat doing temp work and part time around the family, it would be more doable maybe.

@RecordBreakers

Agree. I mean it was several decades ago that we had a female Prime Minister who was married with children!

I think there are rose coloured glasses here, and remembering from a child’s perspective, not an adults.

I agree with this part

Several decades ago, when I was a child it was rare for any married woman to work let alone a woman with children

Like @Smoosha asked, I too would like to know what period you are referring to.
The OP's Mum is a similar age to me (OP's Mum being a few years older, like my siblings are). I suspect those of us that were adults at the time probably have a clearer picture of the world then than those who were looking at the World through the eyes of a child.

My Mum and Dad were born end of 20s / early 30s.
My Mum always WOTH - more patchy when we were babies as the childcare set up wasn't in existence like it is today - but what today's workforce would call 'bank' or 'supply' or 'agency' work. My Mum wasn't an outlier. I've been to funerals of quite a few of my parents friends over the last 6 or 7 years,, and heard of all sorts of jobs they did and so it wasn't just my Mum's profession either.
I started work in the 80s, and have worked all my life until I retired recently.
Obviously, there is an element of "if you are out at work, you'll see others who are out at work and if you are at home, you'll encounter other Mums at baby at toddler groups" so all of us are bound to see.

But I'm not sure when this 'several decades ago' was.

My mother and my grandmother worked outside the home. All the women in my family have done so. Finances required it.

Several decades ago, when I was a child it was rare for any married woman to work let alone a woman with children.

But when was this “several decades ago”? That’s what no one on here can agree on. It seems to vary wildly by location and class/finances not by year. It may have been common in your area/class for women not to work but possibly not for others.
My mother would have been 80 this year. So 45 years ago when she had me she worked. Admittedly she had a few years off until I was 3 I’m not denying that. But she worked up until her “maternity leave” started (not when she got married) and went back to work about 3 years later. This was late 70s to early 8s. We were quite a poor household growing up. Not skint, but couldn’t afford a car until I was older etc.

@HoppingPavlova I’d secretly love that. I wonder if I’m a closet tradwife. I’d love to think quietly all day while doing simple things!

I think there are rose coloured glasses here, and remembering from a child’s perspective, not an adults.

Several decades ago, when I was a child it was rare for any married woman to work let alone a woman with children. Looking back through an adult lens, that left a lot of woman in a dark place once their kids had gone to school. My mum had housework done by 10/11am, went grocery shopping once a week which filled in to lunchtime, and apart from that ………. That left the majority of the day to do nothing but watch soaps on tv while chain smoking until we got home from school. Dinners were simple affairs of meat and 3 veg (boiled) so the most she had to do was peel some spuds, carrots and do the peas or beans. Kids all went and played independently outside until streetlights came on so not really much to look after with kids after school either, my mum brought the washing in and did the ironing in this time. She did her gardening on weekends as there were no soaps on tv on weekends, and of course a roast on Sunday’s🤣.

While my mum escaped unscathed from this, many women were on Valium, depressed (who wouldn’t be with that groundhog day), turned to the bottle to escape the boredom and I even recall a lovely neighbour committed suicide. If they had an abusive DH, that was tough, financially they couldn’t really leave either. Most were also trapped without a car as the DH would take it to work, not required for school as kids just walked no matter how far. It was definitely not a life I wanted and I made sure I had a career.

The generations before this (i.e. my grandparents) were ‘easier’ on women I believe as everything was harder and took more time so they didn’t have time to get bored and depressed. Their bread was not delivered to doorstep every morning like when I was young. If they wanted bread they had to make it. There was no washing machine like in my mum’s day, it was wash by hand in big concrete tubs or get one of those ‘swish/expensive’ wash barrels with rollers which still took a lot of time. A lot more manual cleaning, as no Hoovers etc. No tv. It all kept them occupied until preparing the night meal basically. While, mentally, I think this was a lot better than my mum’s generation, it still doesn’t appeal to me and I’d choose a career any day over it.

That is exactly the set-up I had with my mum. I figured that she had raised me and my sister ok so that was good enough for me. The small stuff was massively outweighed by the fact she was doing it out of love, not because she was getting paid to do it.
CMs and nurseries may enable you to micromanage your child's care to a degree but at the end of a day, it's a job.

I grew up in the 80s and the majority of Mums in our fairly middle class village were SAHMs. I suppose it was just the 'done thing'. My own DM gave up work when she fell pregnant with me at 25, and only returned to very part-time work when my younger sibling started Secondary school, almost 20 years later. And then retired at 60! My parents have never been wealthy but are very careful with money.

Even at my DCs school now, the majority of families seem to have one part time worker to do the school run, and if not, grandparents are close at hand to help out. In a school of just under 200, there are only 10 kids regularly in the after school club. The local childminder always has 5 or 6 children with her too.

I would love to be a SAHM again. Those few years were the best of my life. I work p/t now but would give it up in an instant if I could. One of my friends is a SAHM to primary aged kids and looks far less stressed and about ten years younger than me!

I looked after my GC 2 days a week from 18 months when mum became single parent and they've only recently stopped staying over at 16 - it worked well for all of us. She knew they were loved and cared for - I potty trained, taught them not to run away (using dreadful reins as an aid), read to them and played with them. She has a demanding job and knew they was safe with me and relied on me to bring them up the same way I did her. I was delighted to do it.

You're not wrong. I was an SAHM till my youngest was several years into primary school and it was absolutely brilliant. Yes I have a less shiny career & a smaller house but I have zero regrets. Also its interesting having moved from the south east to a very affordable part of the north - here most mothers are part time when the kids are in primary school, because they can afford to be.

Nor me. You just have to look at MN on pretty much any day to see parents moaning about inconsequential trivia such as drinking squash, eating biscuits, watching TV etc and treating these 'misdemeanors' as if they were very serious dangers. And don't get me started on parents 'gently explaining' to their parents (who raised them, don't forget) that they basically don't now how to look after children because 'research'.
To deny this happens is crazy.
My mum looked after my eldest so we could both work and I just accepted things were different at grandma's house and this was outweighed by the peace of mind of knowing he was with someone who thought the world of him and loved him.
Now some parents seem to think their parents should be the grateful ones to be 'allowed' to look after the little emporers we are raising and the grandparents should simply fall in line and be micromanaged on the trivia of daily life. I am not talking about things such as nit using car seats obviously, but more of the 'My mum had a visitor while looking after m child' or 'My MIL took my child somewhere without my permission' or 'My dad gave my child a biscuit when we avoid UPF type of post.

I agree OP. My mum is 89 and she stopped working when I arrived (I was adopted and it was a condition of the adoption that she was at home - that said, hardly any of my friends mums worked either so it was very normal, and affordable). She never worked more than one day a week after that and retired fully at 55. Am I jealous? You bet 😂

It's a valid opinion - I don't see any chips.

@Inthewrongtimezone
Almost all of the mums that I knew in the late 1970s and early 1980s didn't consider going back to work until their youngest child started junior school. It just wasn't possible before then because of the lack of available childcare. Many children were looked after by older siblings until mum got home from work.
Yes, this was how it was for nearly all the mums at our school in the '80s.

Definitely I don't think it should fall into the mother to go part time. Unless they'd rather be at home with the kids.

A family with two full time parents is sooo busy. Evenings and weekends spent prepping laundry and food and catching up on chores, squeezing in homework.
And with two working parents the woman is still doing most of the household and childcare mental load.
A lot of the working mums I know are totally overloaded and stressed out, not so much with the Dads.
Yes maybe it just feels like a long stretch to do when you're in it! Good to know there is light at the end of the tunnel.

But what if you quite enjoy working and don't really enjoy spending time with small children?

I enjoy my teenagers, because they're a bit more like cats: bob in for food and a fuss, then fuck off again. Small children were hard and boring. But the whole working ft/ young kids stage doesn't really last long in the grand scheme if things. One of mine will start learning to drive this year; 2 minutes ago he was up at 5am every morning and we were counting down to cbeebies starting at 6.

I have come to the conclusion that two working parents (full time) just does not work!!
I want to enjoy my time with my children, once they are grown up I feel like we will regret the time we missed with them.
Two things I am trying:
1Working less hours. We live on a real budget, have less money than most in our friendship group but I think we make up for it with actually being able to enjoy our weeks, not just surviving them.
2Genuinely sharing the load, I follow some 'mental load' people on Instagram who have really helped me understand and verbalise the mental load that (mostly) women carry. And therefore I am beginning to feel less guilt about taking time for myself or relinquishing tasks to my husband.
Absolutely dont spend any money on childcare so that someone else can enjoy your kids. You could try instead try to reduce working hours if possible with your job or spend money on the tasks you don't want to do: cleaning, laundry, meal subscriptions etc. Giving you more time to enjoy with your children.

Almost all of the mums that I knew in the late 1970s and early 1980s didn't consider going back to work until their youngest child started junior school. It just wasn't possible before then because of the lack of available childcare.

My experience is a little different. I agree there was less childcare available, especially for children under 3. I do think far fewer women worked with toddlers. But lots worked with school aged kids, they just did things that fitted around it - nurses doing night or weekend shifts & they slept while kids were at school, teachers who did supply or shot out at 3.15 to go get their own kids, who were often stood waiting at the school gate for half an hour before & after school at 7 or 8 years old because you could do that then (this was me!). Part time work in shops, school hours work in hair salons, evening & weekend work. Lots of women i knew worked pretty much school hours at councils, as receptionists in doctors etc.

Even now, more than half of my peers are SAHMs and quite a lot homeschool. Must just be the sort of area I live in

This is really unusual. I live in a village in the south & there's only 3 or 4 sahms across both my kids classes and they are generally low earning types for whom the maths didn't add up.