To want to settle a generation gap argument: older (female) relative is saying women had to give up work when they got married?

My MIL was a very skilled and clever woman who worked as a senior scientist. She didn't give up work when she got married, but after having a baby she had to go back to work, full time from the baby being 6 weeks old if she wanted to keep her job. Part time/flexible - not a chance.
Read Helen Lewis' book - Difficult Women if you want a summary of how recently many of the'rights' women have actually came about. My teen DD read it and was quite shocked.

I'm sure it was harder to work in some professions and I'm not denying the sexism. But your aunt would have also known a lot of women who were still working after they got married at the time, so I think she is rewriting history.

Yes I agree with this. I was a teenager in the 60’s and don’t recognise the world some people are portraying on this thread. It sounds more like the 1930s. The economy would have collapsed without married women working. It would have been impossible to run an education system. For more people married in those days and they married young. Yet the workforce did not consist of men and teenage girls.

Women did give up work when they had young children but tended to go back to work when there children were older. My mother and nearly all my friends’ mothers worked when I was at secondary school; they were all married (or had been and were now divorced). I don’t think any of our dads felt any shame or embarrassment about this either.

My dad insisted my mum gave up work when they got married.
‘No wife of mine is going out to work,’ etc etc

He soon changed his tune when the kids got older and the bills went up

@Graphista l know what late 70’s means. But feel free to pop along and clarify what early 70’s means. I’m not quite clear on that I appreciate that the civil service is a large organisation but the disparities can’t have been that big

@sashh Love how the bankhas decided 'GIRLS' include 31 year olds!
On the whole, tho, it's a pleasure to see a company so keen to employ people in decent entry-level jobs. Wouldn't happen now.

It was definitely expected for many women it was almost an insulting future DH when a woman needed the work to help support the family.
I feel sorry for your aunt too almost 50 year's on and being disbelieved.

I can't find the one with a ring, but have a look at this, you actually get paid money if you get married, as long as you have worked for 5 years.

c8.alamy.com/comp/2D9RAFW/job-advert-for-working-in-the-midland-bank-inside-an-evening-standard-souvenir-newspaper-replica-for-the-apollo-11-moon-landings-on-21st-july-1969-2D9RAFW.jpg

Aunt is right, my mum got married in 1962 and had to give up her job at a stockbrokers, she did some part time factory work occasionally.

In my family it was seen as a disgrace that my grandmother had to work, her husband died before she was 40 so she 'didn't get a proper widows pension, only 10 shillings a week'

Long after it became illegal some companies made life hard for married women and into the 80s one national company did not employ mothers, it was illegal but the made "An offer you cannot refuse" to not come back after maternity leave.

In the 1980s one bank (Barclays I think) ran adverts in women's magazines saying something along the lines of, "here this won't hold you back" and a picture of a wedding ring.

My grandmother was a single mother so couldnt not work, 1965, but I guess she'd already committed the biggest controversy that no one would challenge her on working. My other grandmother also didn't work, which she hated, and went back to work as soon as "acceptable" when her youngest was in school, 1960s, my grandad was well paid though.

Agree with the PP ; this depended on class.No stay at home mum's in my family ,going way back . (Glasgow and Ayrshire).

My dm got married and had me in 1962. She was a Secretary and never stopped working and went on to be an import clerk

I'm also an army brat, I believe it wasn't until the 90's That serving female soldiers no longer had to ask their CO for permission to marry

gosh @Graphista I'd completely forgotten that! i refused for ages and in the end just wrote a form letter advising them I'd be getting married and keeping my own name.

My mother (married in 1970) worked throughout her life as did both my grandmas and step grandma so no the experience in my family.

My DM had to leave the Wrens when she got married in 1954.

My mother had to leave her job on marriage (1966) which was annoying as she was better paid than my father. She got another part time job instead that was closer to home. The only mothers who worked when I was at school were doctors (& 1 journalist & 1 TV presenter) or those who were divorced.

I think it may have been a thing in some work places but those women could have got a job elsewhere.

My parents got married in 1965 when my mum was 18 so she would have never had a career of thst rule had been true!

But she worked as a secretary before training to be a teacher. Worked the whole time except for a few years when we were small.

My Mil is 10 years older than my parents and worked her whole life as a nurse.

I'm sure it was harder to work in some professions and I'm not denying the sexism. But your aunt would have also known a lot of women who were still working after they got married at the time, so I think she is rewriting history.

Oh yes, the married woman's income tax where the wife's money was an extension of the DHs.

Late 70s it was common to be asked during a job interview whether you were going steady. At one interview, I was asked whether I was "winching". Said no, got the job. Another job application I got a reply saying I wouldn't be considered as women got married and pregnant.

During the summer holidays, jobs were relatively easy to come by, but the married women I worked beside were taxed on every pound as if it were their husbands' income. Married women were seen as working for pin money.

A few years later, at Mothers and Toddlers group, the older women made sure we knew that you could get your husband's name removed from the front of your child benefit book.

My grandmother had to give up work (secretary) when she got married in 1930.
My mother had to leave the army as an officer when she got married in 1964.
Pretty horrific!

Indeed so, and girls who stayed on into the sixth form were more likely to go to a Teacher Training College for which you only needed 5 O levels, rather than go to University. When I left school in 1969 some Colleges of Education were just introducing B Eds, for which you did need A levels. Non graduate teachers were paid less, I recall, so since they were more likely to be women, this was another piece of discrimination.

Not necessarily; it much the same for boys; college of education was something you could go to if you didn’t get high enough A level grades for university. And yes, graduate teachers were much better paid. I don’t know if take up of the BEd was higher among male students; quite possibly!

My mum married in 1967 and carried on working for the BBC until I was born in 1970. By then things were changing and employment tended to carry on til you had your first child- which was shortly after you married.

There weren’t before/after school clubs in our areas- a very new concept.
Yes that's a really recent thing to my mind, possibly starting late 90's but not normal and widespread until late 2000's, I had a hell of a time finding one for dd.

These started to appear in the mid 90s, there was one started in our town just before DS started school, so about 1995, then we were very lucky as someone set one up just as DS started which was actually at the school, I think this was 1997 so only two that I knew of, the one at school and the one at someones house. Before that DS went to a workplace nursery which set up in about 1990, we were very lucky with that as it was subsidised and very convenient.

I was refused a credit card from my bank without my husband’s signature in 1984.

That’s very odd. I got a credit card no problem at all in 1983. Just filled in the form - no involvement from my husband at all.

My mother was in the armed forces in the 1970s. Whilst it wasn't strict policy it was pretty much expected you were discharged once you got married