To be confused by the two working parent set up

Well said. If this happens on a 2nd or 3rd child there needs to be a deterrent such as reduce benefits.

I mean in all senses… financially, emotionally, physically. If it’s not feasible to have a child or children due to financial constraints then do not have them. The same goes emotionally.

You see it time when time again, couples having children when they don’t really have the structures in place to raise them. Then they go around blaming everyone else. It’s more the case for 2nd, 3rd child etc. no learning.

I am almost 57 and always had a cooked dinner and home made pudding or something like instant whip.
Sunday roast
curry with the Sunday meat on monday
spag bol
homemade burgers
tropical chicken made in the pressure cooker
Homemade minestrone soup again in the pressure cooker
homemade pies or quiches.

My DM worked full time and commuted into London, I don’t know how she did it.

I think your last sentence is true of just about everything in modern family life tbh.
When we were kids, our parents - working or SAH - just got on with things, did their best and were not constantly judged for everything they did or didn't do. Of course, this was before social media, which is an absolute curse for this.
Every aspect of a child's life seems to be micromanaged now, from the food they eat (healthy, high protein, non-UPF), to the exercise they take, to the sports they play, to the books they read. The irony is for a generation of working parents, bringing up children is now like another 'job' with KPIs and progress reports. All very demanding and stressful for the parents as well as the child.
We are going down a road that anything other than the healthiest and premium food is regarded as neglect (I remember a thread when a dad feeding his toddler a bag of crisps (I think) was declared neglect by posters), clubs and activities are considered essential for mental development and health and travel is expected. Eyebrows are raised if children have to share bedrooms or a parent can't drive (so no second car). And we wonder why parents can not afford to stay at home! Different times.

My mum eventually went full time back to work about 15 years ago for similar reasons. I watched her try to balance home life with a full time job and it was very sad to see because she couldn’t do it. She lost all her motivation for things she once enjoyed and my youngest sibling suffered the most. She hit the bottle too. Then lamented about simpler times and perhaps she didn’t have it too bad.

I think secondary is the hardest phase. They need so much support.Women stayed home in the past because there were no washing machines/mixrowaves/freezwrs/airdrywrs/hoovers.

Now we have all these things they have moved more women into work.

Im 62. We had a cooked dinner at school and sandwiches for tea. This has really swapped round now. Everyone is cooking fussy meals. We just had sugar sarnies!

Likewise my peers, late 50s

I’m early 60’s.

All my peers worked all their lives ( graduates) no one stayed home.

There’s a reason mothers in the 1950s and 1960s were prescribed Valium in large numbers.

sure, not working and endless coffee dates sounds great.

but in practice as a married woman who had a child your husband and/or where you worked made the choices for you.

some companies would sack you as soon as you were married, others would wait until your first child. You wouldn’t have any money unless your husband gave you some and he didn’t have to.

so maybe think of it more as not allowed to work and totally dependent on your husband as to whether you were given any money to go on coffee dates!

This was basically my mum’s SAHM life - sounds idyllic but she certainly found it stifling. Eventually she got a part time job (which my dad didn’t approve of) met another man at work, had an affair then ran off with him!

OP, you were born in 1985, had your parents already bought their house then? If so don't underestimate how much £70,000 was for a house back then. The average was around £25,000 so if your mother didn't have to work then your father must have been earning a really decent salary. My parents married in the late 1960s, couldn't afford to buy a house and both of them were working. Most people I knew even in the 90s could only afford a house with two full time incomes.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing that more women work now than they used to. I think people are just pointing out that it's not like zero women worked in the 70s and 80s

My mum in the early 80s worked full time and I was with a childminder till I was 1 and then at nursery. There weren't loads of nurseries but there definitely were some.

Around half of my friends' mothers worked, some in serious professional careers, teachers, Drs, etc.

this is what I was posting about upthread. When my eldest was born in 1993, the family was very much 'a package' and the advice around at the time reflected this. We were encouraged to put our babies to sleep alone so that everyone slept better and bottle feeding was accepted if the mother did not want to breastfeed as it meant dad could be more involved. Holding the baby constantly was not regarded to be a good thing.
Now I know today's parents are convinced today's way is the best way and will probably berate me for what I have just written as cruel, heartless and uncaring, with a side helping of 'Your Poor Baby'
Now it seems it's all about the baby to the detriment of everything and everyone else. Vanishingly-small chances of harm are jumped on and treated as if they are an absolute given if you don't follow the rules. Parents who post on MN saying they have put their five-month-old baby in their own room are regarded as putting their child in grave danger. See also early weaning, forward-facing car seats, bottle feeding, leaving baby to cry for a couple of minutes, discouraging napping in the parent's arms etc. The perceived danger is massively out of kilter with the actual danger, yet the criticism of parents who don't like to be woken up every hour by the baby shuffling about or being 'nap-trapped' or not 'enjoying milky cuddles/newborn snuggles' is real. We seem to have reached a point where the only acceptable way to parent is to be a complete martyr and not regard yourself or the rest of the family at all. That's not healthy.

This idea that women didn’t work in the past assumes everyone was middle class. Working class women in my parents and grandparents generation worked. They did shifts and struggled with limited childcare options. The “village” didn’t mean you had extra time, it meant when you weren’t on shift yourself, the woman in your family who’d had your dcs while you worked expected you to help out with hers. Men didn’t.

You were expected to keep your house clean and your husband fed, he was not expected to do half, even if your shifts took you to full time hours. Washing machines, vacuum cleaners, freezers - all expensive so many working class families had to cope without. Tumble driers and dishwashers weren’t really an option after they were common in middle class families in working class homes until the 90s.

Clothes were more expensive so it was normal that children would have only one set of uniform and 2 shirts. You would be expected to wash it and iron to have your kids clean for school again.

Please stop romanticising life for the bulk of women in the last two generations.

I’m wondering what today’s parents will think in 30-40 years when their kids are complaining about how hard they have it and how today’s mn-ers had it so easy.

I don't agree. @shouldntbeonhereagain is making a very fair point and acknowledging that people have different circumstances. I see this so often here, women who give up careers for family either being accused of being smug or pathetic for being financially dependent. There is very little respect for women who choose to give up work, they know they that can afford to choose and others dont have that luxury, but there is still a difficult choice with consequences.

I would not call the lifestyle of my mother and her friends as oppressive! Living the dream! No work, low mortgages/rent, endless coffee dates. I’d take that!

I once complained to my mother (born 1950s) about how hard it was to cover parenting and housing costs (especially nursery fees) these days, which was why both I and DH had to work FT. She was adamant she had had it just as hard, just as expensive, and all with no help (disregarding my father), raising 3 kids in the 80s/90s. But in point of fact, it was significantly cheaper for her and my father (I calculated the childcare/school fees they paid with inflation), and my mother had her parents who stayed for weeks when babies were born (my mother refused to even visit the hospital when her GC were born despite being begged to), she had a network for shared babysitting (because other mothers didn’t work so were available), my mother had a weekly cleaner, a gardener, and a lady down the road who did ironing. So there’s rather a lot of selective memory and self aggrandisement in some accounts. Therefore I’m wary of “lived experience” accounts that don’t fit either peer reviewed statistics, evidenced histories, or plain common sense. I know there are always exceptions, and maybe some of the accounts on here are exceptions, but they are exceptions for a reason.

Well, maybe you just lived in a particularly oppressive place where women’s careers were routinely regarded as optional as soon as they got pregnant?

I agree with this. My own dm, and most of the other Mums were SAHMs growing up. I was born in the 80s. I had a minority of friends whose Mums did work, and remember how cool it felt visiting their homes at lunchtime wnd watching TV (in the days they let you out of school at lunchtimes from 9), we thought it was so cool! I did think it was sad for them going home from school to an empty house every day though. Now it is the norm, there's wrap around care, and kids aren't left as young.

Obviously even going back 50-60 years many mothers DID work, it was plenty common enough. So it’s not like we have moved from a position where “mothers didn’t work” - they did, and still in significant numbers.

I think in part it was just really hard work for those women who did work full time 50 years ago! In part there were more women who didn’t work in the community so more options to use the “village” - sharing some childcare.

We are now though in a position where more women don’t feel being a SAHM is an option, financially.

The benefit system now strongly incentivises women to work while children are younger.

Higher living standards demand a higher income.

And I have said it earlier but COST OF HOUSING is a huge factor. When banks started taking account of two salaries rather than one when calculating affordability, this has driven up housing prices (greater purchasing power + constrained supply = prices go up). This combined with other factors driving up housing costs mean that people can’t afford to buy or rent a family home on a single income.

The first place I bought with my DH was a 1910 house that had been divided into 2 flats. Half a house was the max we could afford on two good full time professional salaries. I looked at the census for 1911 (when the house was new) and at that time the whole house was occupied by a family of 5 where the only worker was the husband who was a local bookkeeper. So in less than a century we had gone from a whole house being affordable to a family on 1 income to half a house being affordable to a couple either 2 incomes. And we wonder why women have to work now?

I agree this was my experience growing up too. I remember late 90’s early 00’s there was a push for two income households and tax credits / childcare was set up to support that. It sounded great in theory as families would be better off but almost immediately cost of living and housing started to rise. So it went from being a sensible financial choice to a necessity.