Was life really worse as a women when they were expected to stay at home and look after the dc

[hibiscusjam]

And what happened when the dc flew the nest?!.

I wish I could be a sahm but I can't afford to. Curious to hear from people who think it was terrible when society expected women to raise the dc once they had them vs go to work.
I find myself raising my dc and going to work most of the time. It's stressful. My dh travels for work but does help when he's home.

My DH works 2 days. I work 4 days (just increased from 3 since my youngest started school nursery). I love it. We both get some time at home and some time at work. I was more career focused, so I work more. I am lucky enough to be in a career where being part time is acceptable and doesn't halt progression.

The difficulty for many people is it is either not something that is accepted in their jobs, or it is seen as a way to halt progression. For many others it is just not affordable. But it's great IMO if you can make it work.

And you say your DH helps out around the home - plenty didn’t. My DF flatly refused to move his plate from the table to the sink “because that was DM’s job”. He had absolutely no respect for her, because she was “just a housewife”. She had been a supervisor in his department prior to them getting married (she wasn’t his direct line manager, but she was a couple of grades more senior). His career then took off, and she was left picking up his dirty cups. He wouldn’t even wash the car, mow the law or do any gardening. That was all her job, apparently. His was to go to work, hers was absolutely everything else.

Have you watched Shirley Valentine? You should. That scene where she is talking to the wall, because she is so bored and lonely as a housewife? My mum said she had done the exact same thing. The minute my dad died she went back out to work (she didn’t need the money, he had a brilliant life insurance/pension provision).

Yes, this. And now people are just as trapped as before because they can't afford to leave (again).

I don’t agree with you personally OP. I was a SAHM when my DC were little, and we could have afforded for me to continue (DH earns a lot more than me), but I went back to work when they started school because I wanted to. I have a job I love, and feel happier and more fulfilled than I did as a SAHM.

Both my parents worked full time when I was growing up, so maybe that’s why I never expected to be a SAHM long term.

@Lairig that's what's happened in the end. I would say that the majority of childcare and raising dc does actually still fall to women (I'm not saying I agree it should be that way just that it is) women are still held back, but in different ways now.

@Tarahumara I never expected to be a sahp because I know life is too expensive now. I just wish I could have that experience and be with my dc more and I'm not overly convinced the choice is more available now. I imagine lots of women are like me.

Financial independence is what makes it possible for women to leave knob end partners, whether domestic abuse or just common or garden knobbery.

If sahm is the default, it reduces women's power enormously.

It would be better if society placed more value on childrearing and provided better support but I for one don't want to be chained to the kitchen sink.

It's a myth that most women were sahms during history.

Working class mother's have always worked.

There was a tiny pocket of history post ww2 in the UK/USA where the women who had been working on the war effort were forced out their jobs to make way for the returning men. This continued for 30 ish years.

Everyone has a choice now. When you say you don't it's that you don't want to make whatever lifestyle sacrifices you'd have to make to make sahming possible. Eg move to a cheaper area.

I stayed at home for 6 years…I hated it for the most part. I ran back to work as soon as I could! For me and my mental health, working is important and I truly believe I would have gone crazy if I had stayed home! What good is that to anyone?!

My Nan, born in the 1920’s, always worked. She had 3 kids, and those kids were left with her mother when she worked. My own mother did my father’s books and took messages for him when she had me, as he was self employed. When he left us she found work that she could do while I was at school. If I was off school I went to work with her.
Women have always worked and run homes.

Back in the day, unless you were wealthy, staying at home was incredibly hard work - without modern appliances most of the day would have been spent keeping house not having a lovely time with your children.

You were also totally dependent on your husband, hence the nagging characters in novels who are trying to push their husbands forward in their careers. If I want to better our circumstances I can for a promotion, I don't just have to nag my husband to progress his career.

And then imagine being trapped in an abusive relationship without the means to do anything about it.

Finally even for wealthy women with decent husbands if they were bright it could be incredibly frustrating and depressing. My great grandmother was one of the first women to qualify as a doctor, but had to stop when she got married. I've read her diaries and the frustration and sense of loss is palpable.

Echoing this. I'm in my early 40s and my mum worked in the city throughout my childhood (returning to work when I was 3 months old) and my grandmother also worked as they ran a shop.

Most other mums had at least part time jobs once their kids went to school. It's weird that people think women with children working is such a recent thing.

It really depended on the husband... Imagine you married a wife beating alcoholic and couldn't leave

Why oo you think though that neither girl had their own children but both boys did? Might it be something to do with their upbringing? Perhaps none of them wanted to have the sahp role and for the girls the only way they saw was to opt out of children entirely.

I absolutely think it was terrible that many women didn’t have a choice to work outside the home. Basically we were removed from a huge part of society and the power and influence that went with that. Most women had jobs anyway- just it was acceptable to pay them less and treat them badly.

i don’t know, because this time you think was universal has never been the case in my family. Staying at home with children is a relatively new invention that came with the rise of the middle class, and was meant to be a statement about a man’s status. Working class women were working.

We both work, and we also both raise our child. We know that our responsibilities as parents include hands on caring AND paying for their clothing/food/shelter. We know that our job as parents includes being financially responsible for our children. So - we work, and raise them. The same as generation after generation of our families.

I’m a shit housewife. I can’t cook very well and I hate laundry.
I would have ended up talking to the wall, and I have a horrible feeling it would talk back

I'm not convinced it was worse because expectations were different. What was wrong was that women lacked meaningful choice - with no maternity leave you had to quit.

Having a sahp is definitely less stressful for the family if you can afford it, especially if that handle all the boring admin, housework etc during the school day, means when the kids are home you aren't catching up on household jobs, plus no issues with covering sickness, school holidays etc

Not having a choice is always worse than being able to make a choice.

This. Women should have the choice to get a n education and work or to stay at home and look after their family.

Unfortunately due to financial pressures not all women can choose to stay at home

Many of those women were totally dependent financially on their husbands. If the husband was what was called 'a good provider', he brought his wages home unopened and his wife would open the packet and deal with the money. If he was a bastard he went to the pub, spent some and then went home.At least that happened in the working class area I was from. The woman also had no pension and if widowed she struggled. I decided early on that I would work because I saw women who were often treated badly by their husband as he had the money and they were left destitute at his death. Maybe middle class women were better treated, but I don't know enough about how they ran their lives to say. My dad was the type who took the unopened pay packet home to be opened by mum.

There is more choice, but none of the options seem particularly easy or ideal. Becoming a SAHM means being financially dependent on someone else. Juggling children and full time work seems like a lot of hard work.

I have chosen not to have children. Society now gives women more choice, but not having kids is still considered an ‘odd’ choice by many.

One reason I chose not to have children was because I didn’t want to compromise my career and my financial independence. DH earns more than me, so I could see it being my job that would have to take the back seat if we had kids.

Yes. It was. Loads worse. And fucked women over when the man traded them in.

Cringing at this!
Of course it's the fault of those pesky working women that house prices went up!

Or perhaps if you educate yourself you will realise that it was due to the BOE and credit easing plus a drive to improve the social and living conditions.
In the 20s/30s 80% rented, often living in squalor.
House building boomed and the change from renting/ council housing to home ownership and improvement in living conditions took place.
Then the boom/ bust late 80s.
Recently the Tories kept the housing market, particularly new builds artificially inflated via the H2B schemes.
Christ knows what's going to happen there when people need to pay that back.
But hey -let's blame women!

Yes is the answer to your question.

I’m a lawyer and I love my job though obviously with small kids working can be hard. In the time you seem to romanticise I would probably not have been able to go to law school. I could have become a legal secretary though so I could marry a lawyer and he could have the career that I would have enjoyed and been good at and I could have stayed at home and been bored out of my mind once the kids had gone to school.

That choice wasn’t available for huge swathes of women at any point though, it’s not new.

My Nana had to give up her career in nursing when she married, but when they had children she still had jobs. She did cleaning or ironing.

Only moderately & well off families had women who could afford to be properly full time at home. Millions of others had to do odd jobs (with low pay and zero security) to help make ends meet.

There’s a few problems with an expectation that all women will be SAHM.

Firstly, they’re dependent on their husband.
Which might be fine for women who’ve got a good loving supportive husband, but if the husband is abusive or just generally useless and feckless then the wife is stuck in a bad situation if she doesn’t have the opportunities to earn her own money.
Plus without all the modern appliances, keeping a home running smoothly was a lot more hard work.

And secondly, not all women want to stay at home. Many women want to continue working, even if it’s not a financial necessity.
Being forced into the role of SAHM and housewife isn’t any good for women.

It’s having the choice that’s key.

But historically being a SAHM is a very new concept dreamt up by the middle class in the 20th century.

Women & Men went to work (or did the work) from farmers over labourers to professionals. Think midwife, cook, seamstresses and a lot of servent roles - all done by women/ mothers.