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.

It's not a choice for most families now though, is it? Most families, certainly here in London, need two full time incomes to put a roof over their head and food on the table.

So the table has turned that in that choice in being a SAHM or not is a luxury that most families can't afford.

I think it was worse for some and better for others. Unfortunately we’ve swapped the issue of women being trapped at home with small children to many women being economically trapped working and caring for the children. I don’t think we are anywhere near the average woman having a choice. That would require an economic revolution in the way we view all care work in this country through a (genuinely) feminist lens. I have no doubt that if men were the primary carers of children, disabled people and elderly people then society would reward the work!

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.

You're assuming that a 'job' working for an employer is more important than the 'job' of raising children.

Some would argue that raising children is a much more important and fulfilling job?

I think it might be more to do with the increased availability and size of mortgages that people have been able to get.

I agree that being a SAHM is a recent concept. I do wonder however if farm labourers actually saw their own money though. Or if the husband didn't collect it for his own use. I'm talkng about 19th century conditions here when money was just handed over. No PAYE or NI or accounts to keep and when the man was head of the household.

Oh my god.

Really? Did you really say that?

I've got two gorgeous kids. And I work. And I am a great role model for my kids (especially my daughter) that education pays off, that I can thrive in a career that I love, that I can be financially independent while having a great family life too. This is best for my family and I wouldn't change it.

I'm delighted for you your family are wonderful (mostly down to luck) but please don't assume we're all bringing up druggie children because we're not doing it the 'old fashioned way'. You sound a bit smug saying so to be honest, and you also forget the many families out there who don't have the financial means to have one parent at home either.

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

I had assumed that men were out hunting while women looked after the home/cave and the many children they would have had?

So SAHM is an ancient concept

I think in hunter /gatherer society the women do the gathering.

I've heard this too. House prices increased to only be affordable with two incomes.

I don't understand why people are making out women have all this choice when in reality many have to work because they have to.

My mother was a SAHM till her youngest was 12. My father wouldn’t ‘let’ her work. It was an unhappy marriage. She had no money of her own and her family were living overseas. She was depressed and emotionally unavailable as a result.

I was a SAHM mother too until my youngest was about 10. OH had a very demanding job working very long g hours and I would have been working to pay for childcare. I found it isolating, boring and depressing. I was in my own a lot and we moved several times so it was difficult to make friends. My family were not nearby and pretty disinterested anyway.

I don’t think there are any easy answers. Having two stressed parents working full time and trying to run a house and do all the chores at weekends is very stressful too. Often children don’t get much quality attention in that situation. I think having a choice is great, but it isn’t easy in either scenario.

It has to be said that when women didn’t work the husband would be home at 5 or 6 and didn’t work weekends in the main. That isn’t the case now. Mobile phones and laptops plus a much more demanding work culture , and it’s difficult to draw a line between home and work now. That means stressed parents who can never switch off. All that impacts on family life.

Or indeed choose to work, given that the cost and availability of childcare precludes many women, and it usually is women, from working/working in the way they would prefer.

In my DM's profession she wasn't expected to work after marriage. She became a SAHM before I was born. When my parents divorced she HAD to go back to work, she also couldn't get a mortgage to buy my DF out without a male guarantor, thankfully a friend's DF was a solicitor and did this for her. In those early years she earned more in her career than my DF, her salary supported him setting up his business so it was a kick in the teeth that she needed a male guarantor while my DF was free to run up debts she had been working to pay for.

Growing up I just saw a strong, independent career woman and I have copied that in my own life. Its only now that I am fully aware that she was content as a SAHM, she got married so she could quit working because that's what everyone did and had her busy social life sorted. When she had to go back to work after the divorce she was very bitter that she was divorced and the only working woman amongst the married playground mums. She felt very stigmatised, and she was ostracised and treated as a potential threat by other women, even accused of being after someone's husband. As a result she used to trash talk SAHM's all the time, my friends mums were a dear bunch of women but she called them lazy and pathetic, relying on men. And when a couple of neighbours went back to work she sneered at them and called it 'pin money' because those women had husbands who were the main earner. TBH its partly what wrecked her MH, she is still very bitter.

My MIL also quit work when she married and was a SAHM for 30 years, she started working part time for a charity when her youngest was 18.

So to answer the OP, yes it was terrible. Women were far less free to make choices and faced a hell of a lot more stigma and judgement for not fitting a particular mould. Now plenty of people don't even getting married before having DC, divorce is common and we have a lot more freedom. I see nastiness about SAHM on here quite a lot, a generation later the pendulum has swung in the other direction but its all bollocks, we should be able to live our lives as we choose without society and other women piling on either way.

Most Working class woman worked, some upper working class could afford to be a SAHM, yet many would take in work and work in the home.

if you have at least one professional income coming in, you could probably lower your standard of living to cope on one income (particularly if you are paying out for childcare). But you might be miserable being a SAHM with no money having downgraded to a smaller home and no car.

Looks like the boys saw this set up as advantageous to the males at the expense of the females and your daughters witnessed the same thing and made their decisions accordingly.

I wish I could be a SAHM but I don't have the choice because we can't afford it.

@Gummibär - in hunter gatherer societies, it’s believed that woman did the gathering and most of the food consumed was gathered, not hunted - however this does assume that non-breastfeeding woman would still have been the adults to stay with the children rather than join the hunt, and that most men (even those not in their prime of 20s) would join the hunt.

This. My grandmothers (born 1920s, married and had children in the 1940s) always worked - one in a factory, the other running a corner shop. They were both working class. And of course, many women worked during WW2 to do the jobs men would normally do. The SAHM of the 1950s ideal seems very much a middle-class idea.

I actually think there's a lack of choice now as well as back in the day. Households that can survive on one wage are either quite poor or quite wealthy. Most middle earners can't afford a SAHP, which is a real shame as I think there are huge benefits to not having to try to cram in time for everything. If it was genuinely a choice, I think more parents would stay at home during the early year

I'd have hated that, but DH would be a great SAHP - we can't afford it though, for either of us.

This - though women were barred from many professional and white-collar jobs after marriage.

Remembering my childhood in early sixties, no one had any money and they just scraped by. Everyone rented from the council and car ownership was rare, as were holidays.

Choice.

I come from very poor /working class background & a large families both sides. My Grandmas & aunties all worked, as has my female cousins. The men stepping up
& sharing the workload is normal - my
Grandad used to feed & put kids to bed as my Granny did the Night Shift at local hospital.

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

It seems to be only a middle class housewife that could SAH, without choice and forced to give up any career that she may have wished for herself the minute she got married. I hope we never go back to that time and all families should have choices.

My mother was a sahm and I remember her doing jobs like selling Avon, then getting into some pyramid selling things. Think it caused more stress than made money. She was not expected to have a career but then neither was I. I was told it wasn’t worth sending girls to Uni as they just got married and had children. Very low expectations in working class 60s. The expectation was you worked to find a husband then stopped work to have children. ( no, I didn’t follow the pattern)

How far back are we going? The women in my family have always worked, one of my great grandmothers ran a pub, another worked in a cotton mill. It's actually only now that we have some sahms, my cousin and my sil.

This might still be possible if council housing was readily available but we all know why it isn't don't we.

Oh and an empty nest meant mums then went back to work. Its really such a good life for a family.

Yeah, easy as that! Just walked back into a great job after years and years at home didn't they ?