To think we are failing as a society?

[Udderly]

My DH calls me a 'crusty' when I come out with these views :)
I am sitting here with my beautiful DD fast asleep, all warm and snuggly in my lap. This to me is what life is all about. I've just read a thread on another site by a mother who is devastated at the prospect of returning to work. This isn't a SAHM v's working mom debate - each to their own - but I wonder if previous generations had it right and we have it all wrong?

I'd love the idea of a house full of kids, with a number of generations, men who lovingly work the land, good wholesome natural food, children running around playing in the fresh air, time... No commuting to the daily grind, stressing about work, stressing about bills, being absolutely exhausted come evening time and sitting in front of a big advertising machine all night.

Have we gotten it all wrong or am I just a big crusty at heart?

Ah nostalgia, it isn't what it used to be ;)

Well, we just need to decide which 90% of the population to wipe out.

I think the people in the idyllic image you describe were possibly just as stressed and hard worked as we are now in some ways!

I agree though that our lives have become so complicated and cluttered up with materialism and the pursuit of stuff that we don't need that it's become alot harder for people to appreciate the simpler things in life. The more you have, the less satisfied you are and the more you want - that seems to be how much of our society operates now IMO.

Men lovingly working the land? Watch Victorian Farm if you want to see just how hard physical work it was ploughing and planting and harvesting crops, it was back-breaking boring work that often has to be done for 12-14 hours a day. In my husband's country which is heavily agricultural, they can't get young people to stay and 'lovingly work the land' for love nor money, they all move to the cities and sit in offices as it's easier and nicer.

the thing is in those days people were often crippled by poverty

there was no welfare state to keep them so if your husband was injured lovingly toiling on the land you had to rely on the church for handouts before going to the poorhouse

no credit cards or hp but pawn shops and money lenders but if a big item was broken very often there was no other way of replacing it

wholesome food was very different from our idea of wholesome food
bread and scrape
soup and stew bulked out by ever more potatoes
no fruit not much meat or dairy
sugar sandwiches

not being able to afford the doctor if your children were ill

having to hand do all the housework
brush the floors beat the rubs
scrub and wash the clothes mangle them and then dash in and out whilst they dried outside

nope i'll keep what i have thanks

I do realise that I am conveniently not taking into account terrible living conditions, illnesses, shorter lifespans, higher mortality, very few choices for women etc.

No, but its a payoff isn't it. People tend to have work the daily grind and all that entails (long commute, long days, minimal free time etc) to be able to afford what they see as a decent standard of living, including the wholesome food, nice house etc etc.

I think if most people could enjoy the life you describe by "lovingly work[ing] the land" - they would. I like your vision and could think of nothing nicer than sitting around our woodburner with a brood of children eating home made food. However I know that if we personally took up that way of life, DH would probably only manage to grow a moderately sucessful crop of beetroot that would then be decimated by weevils. We'd probably be homeless and destitute within the month and have to resort to foraging in Iceland for dented tins and reduced price fish fingers

ahhh yes - being unble to feed your family when the crops failed, being evicted by land owners, children dying in infancy - what a lovely life!

you are being massively rose tinted but there is nowt wrong with dreaming x

I think life is growing ever more frantic, while we now have all our labour saving devices and machinery we seem to cram more and more into our hectic lives to the point where we make appointments for our leisure time.

I do worry about children who seem to be spun in the door from school and whisked out to various hothousing activities 5 nights a week. Sunday lunch as a family concept seems to be rare in the football playing households and every third person I know has a child that attends school on Saturday.

Sometimes I would just like to slow the world down.

I've been wanting to say this for ages but hate getting involved in sahm/wahm debates. I hope it's okay to use your thread to say it, as you don't seem to want a bunfight!

Thing is, when people talk about previous generations, what they tend to mean is the last 100 years, and it's only in the last couple of generations that the 'mummy. daddy, children' unit has become the norm. Before the Victorian era you were either upper class - then other people looked after your kids, middle class (which was tiny then) then you had a maid and your extended family helped look after the kids, or working class then EVERYBODY worked including the older kids, and granny looked after the very small ones.

As a farmer's daughter back for generations upon generations, I can tell you that unless you owned the land, it was an exhausting, grinding, back-breaking way of life, which is why so many people flocked to the city with the industrial revolution - better paid, better chance of bettering yourself (though still rubbish for the very poor). The women had 10 kids, 3 of whom would die in infancy. They worked 14-18 hour days with no leisure time except going to church (which was people's social life then). they were worn out by 30-40. If your man died and you couldn't work the land, you and your children were out on their ear, thrown to the mercy of the parish. Those jolly yokels in paintings from the 1800s with their rosy cheeked wives and kids? They were working for the local landowner and at his mercy.

I think when we look back at 'people lovingly working the land', it's a gold-tinted view of the 1910-1950s. BUT the 1910s millions of men dies in the Great War, the 1920s were a period of major depression in the UK (The US had it in the 30s) 1930s and 1940s were marred by war and food shortages and it wasn't until the 1950s that life started to get better for everyone.

Trust me, from 1960s to now is the best era to be a woman and having children. We have choice - to stay at home or to work. Our children tend to live. If our partner leaves us/dies we no longer starve.

Enjoy your lovely baby, but don't wish up back in the past please - it sucked. Enjoy your choices

Phew sorry, that was a bit polemical.

As I see that while I was writing other people have posted the same. Sorry!

"lovingly work the land" - that's a good one! (Why is there no ROFL emoticon?)

Storminaccup, very funny, if our attempts at growing things in our end of the garden vegetable patch are anything to go by, we would be fighting you in the aisles for those reduced price items.

If you take poverty and disease out of the equation, it's still a hard life. I have some very funny friends who go on and on about living a simpler life, and promote sustainable agriculture, but at the end of the day, they would rather earn their money by lecturing about this than actually getting their hands dirty. They ran a smallholding for about a year. In this climate, it's not all sitting about in hammocks and eating roots, it's about being cold and getting dirty and being highly dependent on the weather. It's sounding worse the more I think about it (though it is crazy that we still work long hours).

Udderly my lovely, your brain has turned to mush

For most women in the past, their children were looked after by an aged granny or a dissaffected teenager. Women (except very rich ones) have always had to work.

This self-sufficiency/idyllic rural living crap is only feasible if you are like Huge Furrywhippingstool and make your money out of wanking about it in print and on the telly.

And life in the past was shit for women. We've had less than 100 years of proper civilisation (the hallmarks of which are proper plumbing, effective contraception and vaccinations). It's not perfect yet but things are slowly getting better.

Onetoomany - exactly. Rosie Boycott started up a small pig farm in search of the simple life (she has plenty of money behind it too). She made nothing and sold up after about 2 or 3 years I think. Proves your point.

My DH and I plan to move out of London and start a smallholding, but as I know the ins and outs of farming I can promise you one of us will keep a 9-5 job to pay for it!

• men who lovingly work the land

• men who work themselves to an early grave through relentlessly backbreaking toil in the fields.

You ave watched little house on the prairie once to often methinks

Have you read any literature about families living from the land?
Little House in the Big Woods?

It is back breaking and stressful. Bad winters, hot summers, floods, disease. These can all wipe out your crop at the drop of a hat.
And what happens if your man dies or gets injured?

There is a reason why for the first time in history more humans live in cities than not.

cross posts apocolyse.LOL.

And the books cast the whole situation in a lot less rosy light than the tv show.

Much of this is just a dream, only ever a reality for a privileged few (perhaps those who have inherited lots of ££), while others toiled day an night for a low wage, poor quality food, living in shocking conditions etc etc.

As for lovingly toiling the land - it's bloody hard work!!

We can get around many of the problems of daily life by working closer to where we live (thereby eliminating the commute), finding ways to manage/deal with stress (by yoga/exercise/meditation etc, modifying our behaviour or even removing the stress by changing jobs for example, or not living beyond our means), and TV is a choice - whether to have one or not, when to turn it on/off.

Think small, modify your own life to suit you & your family, eliminate all the stress you can - that's how things really change.

And just think - no mooncup/tampons/sanitary towels. Nope. None of that. Just a rag. Soaked in blood ... nice.

You could not pay me enough to go back to the good old days, for the lack of sanitary towels only. And other stuff.

Udderly...YANBU...I totally understand where you're coming from in your sentiment. Everything is backwards and society's priorities are all skewed. On the other hand I do recognise and accept how we live as we have a good life.
My dad runs a sort of movement/meditation centre and every summer runs courses. All these people come with their children and we all live and work together. the children play all day outside, we all cook and eat together, everyone helps out with the kiddies, so you don't feel alone. There;s no TV so in the evenings people just chat or read, or sit round the fire. I always think wouldn't it be nice if we could live like this all the time, but I know that that is a holiday scenario and not an everyday existance. There is that place near Stroud called i think 'Springhill' which is a community. Sounds great, you still have your own house but you can choose to eat communally at night I think