Did Women really always work?

[MaggieBroonofGlebeSt]

Genuine question but definitely most interested if possible in actual data not anecdotal. On most threads about SAHMs people will always say that women have always worked apart from the rare recent middle classes who are an outlier.
Is that true? For example I was reading Call the Midwife; none of the women seem to have a job despite being very working class. Reading old books I never read about married women with kids from any background who worked.
In my family I don't know of any married women who worked but fair enough, they were generally wellish off.
All that is anecdotal though!
If women did work, who looked after their kids? I honestly don't see how it would be possible for most women with children.

The kids went to work as well. Even toddlers would be found something useful to do. Children worked in mines and factories. Lucky ones would be apprentice gardners or servants

Yes working class women always worked, but they weren't usually paid a living wage- that was a 'man's wage'. Often the work was part time and insecure. Middle class women often didn't work after marriage because they were fired upon marriage , especially in jobs like the civil service and teaching. So it wasn't really a matter of choice for them.

Both my grandmothers worked (born around 1910). One did cleaning and would bring her children with her if they weren't at school. Later after she was widowed she worked in catering in a workplace canteen.

The other was a confectioner by trade and would work from home making things like wedding cakes.

They didn't have full time, fixed hours jobs after marriage though. Just what they could fit in around the children and not a living wage.

80s and 90s…not in a factory but I was doing it till 10 years ago! Dh came in and I went out…I still do late and nightshift and I’m only in my 50s-it just works for my family

@Heyhoherewegoagain the only reason I said then is because I wasn't sure if it still happened the factories local to me that did it have all closed and shipped jobs abroad (Germany and far east)

The women in my family didn't work. Very poor but in another country, and they had lots of dc. I always forget exactly how many, but my DPs each have 10+ siblings. No labour saving devices so the time would be spent looking after dc and the house.
But the women in my mother's generation all worked (born 1950s). My mother ended up being the breadwinner due to DF's poor health. There was no judgment about that and it was just accepted in the wider family.

My sisters work but I'm a sahm to 2 dc. My wider family find it odd and my mum often comments about me getting a job "to have some money of my own". She doesn't get the concept of having access to shared money and I've never understood how their finances worked.

When I had my kids 30 odd years ago, there was only 2 working mums in my peer group. We were all stay at home mums, going back part time once they started school, maybe a couple of days a week. Life was so much easier then. Everyone seemed to pick their career back up after 5 years, it was the norm.

I'm from a working class family, all the women in my family worked. My mum worked. My grandmother worked as a teaching assistant in a school. My great grandmother worked at home as a sewing machinist, so she helped with the children while my grandmother worked.

What era are you asking about? My mum, started work full time at 15 (1950s), then after having children did evening, home working jobs, cleaning (1960s) to supplement income from Dad. In 1970, she started work full time and had a career in electronics (not traditionally a female role at the time) and myself and brother went to school on our own from age 8, with a key around my neck (this was London in a very different world from that of London today)! Women's roles in the workplace, or the work they carried out in support of the home, is sadly often overlooked in the history books. I'd recommend a book by Maud Pember Reeves, called 'Round about a pound a week' to give an insight into women's roles in the early 20th century and it will highlight just how hard working class women worked in supporting their families, not paid, but nevertheless vital. We should never underestimate women's work, paid or unpaid, in public or the private realm.

I don't know about my paternal grandmother, but my maternal grandmother worked, mainly because my grandfather was often ill. All the kids worked from about 14 and gave their wages to my grandmother.

Women did work outside the home especially during the wars but after WW2 "they" wanted jobs for the returning troops so sacked all the women and it took decades for women to get recognition in the workplace again.

My mum had friends who worked for places where they used to sack women when they got married so didn't tell anyone they were married! I guess it only came out once they became pregnant.

My mum worked part-time from when I was about 6 and she was an outlier - very few women seemed to work outside the home in the early 80s. One friend's parents ran a B&B so her mum worked, and one other friend's parents had split up so her mum worked. And another friend's dad was made redundant and he bought a petrol station and ran that with her mum. But it was unusual and probably more self-employment.

Well in France (and, from what I'm reading, Scandinavia) there was nothing like that. in the 70s, women were 40% of the workforce, and only 13% of that was part time work, so that would explain why I never personally knew any woman who didn't work.
I've just read that in the UK, until industrialisation, when women and children started to be banned from taking on some jobs for being too dangerous, "men had not been idealised to be the sole breadwinner". The ideal then started to be that men would work and the woman should stick to the private sphere, but in practice a lot of women still worked, in ways that were not necessarily recorded. (www.europeana.eu/en/blog/a-womans-work-is-never-done-womens-working-history-in-europe)
I've just read another article that said that the attitude to women working would have depended on what stage the country was at when its rural population flocked to towns and women started to take up paid work. In France, we kept a large agricultural population until the 1950s, by which time paid jobs available to women would have been desk jobs (teaching, clerical etc), as opposed to unsafe jobs in industry. Maybe that's how French women avoided the fate of being thought of as having to stop working after marriage.

If there was no labour saving device, then that would have been (very hard) work, just not paid work...

They did - took in laundry, did cleaning etc - something they could do with kids around. Plus I think there was more 'it takes a village' going on.
As for middle class - they often worked too, and after they had kids. My mother was born in the 1920s. She had three older sisters. All went to uni, one was a doctor, one was a lawyer, she was a medical social worker - the other one worked as receptionist for her GP husband. Their mother did not work (had 8 kids though). My father's mother worked as a teacher (must have been born around 1890).

In my family, the females always worked. Mainly in local shops (grandparents owned a shop). My nan then looked after us kids while my mum worked when she had us. I think often older relatives took care of children - it was very common when I was at school for children to be picked up by grandparents. Almost no one had a childminder.

My grandmother worked after being left a widow with five kids during the war.
She didn't have a choice as the ' labour exchange ' made her take the job or starve.
Her neighbour looked after the kids.

I remember my aunt talking about the 1920s, older children would bring babies up to the factory gates to be breastfed by their mother's, before taking them back to who was looking after them and the child would go back to school.

Often on the census women's work was not recorded, I certainly know of one relative who had her own market stall but listed as "at home".

https://www.striking-women.org/module/women-and-work/19th-and-early-20th-century#:~:text=Women's%20wages-,Women%20and%20work%20in%20the%2019th%20century,households%20or%20in%20family%20businesses.

Most working class women in Victorian England had no choice but to work in order to help support their families. They worked either in factories, or in domestic service for richer households or in family businesses. Many women also carried out home-based work such as finishing garments and shoes for factories, laundry, or preparation of snacks to sell in the market or streets.

Victorian times and earlier there were baby farms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_farming

One of my great grandmothers was sole wage earner - around 1900- had to as her DH was an alcoholic who struggled to hold a job and she had three kids to feed- she was a butcher when everyone had a backstreet pig - she ran a local business from her own kitchen. GF was working at 13 and were his siblings after school and weekends.

My DGM both worked late 40-50s- had bit of time of then DGP and other family helped and by 6-7 parents were latch key kids - helped they lived near families and playing out and other adults and kids being about was common.

MIL 70s found a p/t job she could take DH to or would leave with her parents or her cousin then he was latch key kid in primary. DMum was let go when pg in 70s form her office job - normally they have had her leave on marriage but were being more progressive letting her stay but later found a p/t paying job when her youngest was a toddler then work p/t work round us at school but always making sure she was there end of school day and early evening. Dad despite having an office job got paid overtime without that and Dm working we'd have been in real financial hardship.

The BBC did is an entire program - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07zd454 Victorian Slum which showed entire families pitching in to do piecemeal work or working as costermongers* *to make rent and eat.

My MIL is French and she had to give up her teaching job when she married, in the 1970s.

It wasn't really a luxury was it? And as I've said, plenty of evidence that some very working class women didn't work outside the home.

The majority would have worked if they could to help provide for their children. Being a SAHM or Housewife has always been a luxury.

Some are mentioning that the census didn't always mention women working. I wonder if some jobs they did were cash-in hand, So not mentioned on the census papers just to avoid any tax questions. 🤔

My MIL is French and she had to give up her teaching job when she married, in the 1970s.
That's not possible, sorry.
Teachers in France are hired directly by the state after they have passed their official exam, and they are moved around the country by the state, the headteachers don't even have a say.
Unless your MiL worked in a small private catholic school where normal rules don't apply?
Otherwise, hiring and firing of teachers was not down to individual schools and there's no way in hell a state school teacher could have been made to leave for having kids!
My mum had 4 kids in France in the 70s while teaching full time - our family was moved around by the state, I just can't believe an individual or even a school would have an influence on making a teacher resign, they're classed as civil servants! My mind boggles.
Obviously if it's a private catholic school then I suppose they could do what they liked... Though I wouldn't be surprised it may have broken some laws even then, tbh (though I don't know for sure)

Even in the 90’s you used to get comments from male co workers that women were taking men’s jobs and they should be at home looking after the kids. Thank goodness men aren’t as misogynistic these days.
Going back further, I can also remember my own mother in the early 70’s doing what they called ‘piece work’ for local factories. Paid peanuts per each item made but they could do it at home and still look after the home and kids. And yes twilight shifts in local factories 6pm-9pm once the husband was home.

My nans older sister (born 1912) would take her 3 youngest siblings to school with her and they played at the back of the classroom while their mum went to work as a cleaner.
It wasn’t unusual for children to miss school to help the family out.
Their died when the youngest of 8 was 3yrs old so the mother had no choice but to work

I don't know but why on earth would she lie about it? She still complains 50 years later!

We know some people who leave their 6 year old at home, in the UK, though they're not British originally. I have a six year old and there's no way I would do that, and I know she would get very upset if we tried!
Perhaps we're a bit too protective of older kids but that is way too young imo.

If you read mill on the floss , one example of childcare is tying the child on a leash so it can’t fall into the fire whilst the parent is out working.