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?

well you still spend more time a week NOT at work though!

you don;t get weekends off in Victorian fafm land!

It's pretty common, and would have been back then as well.

AND - it makes you appreciate your DH more. Imagine if you were stuck with him all day every day. I worked with a couple who were in the same team, and sat opposite each other, and worked closely on a lot of projects. I mean, I love DP from the bottom of my heart, but being around him all the time would drive me nuts.

I'm not from any kind of privilledged bubble at all - far from it. Just that having a baby made me question why we do things the way we do in society, when I know that I would prefer a different type of life, and I know that there are other people who feel the same, but we continue to do as we did because society tells us that this is right

MyNameIsInigoMontoya - your family sounds just like my mother's family.

Udderly - if you were working the fields on the landowner's farm you'd have to work alongside people you didn't choose. And if you are a landowner like my dad, well come lambing or harvest he employs whoever's interested and has to work alongside them...

Udderly - I don't think you're from a privileged bubble, just dreaming for a life that doesn't exist. No harm in that (she says, having systematically destroyed that dream).

Gosh, I look forward to getting away from my husband by going to work, when we worked together at home a lot, we nearly killed each other. But then, I do like my work, so for me, it's not about being a 'wage slave', I actually find it fulfilling, but I realise most people don't find it like that.

I agree with the poster who said that there are simple ways you can change your life if you want to, that don't require some regression to the bad old days. You are free to spend your evenings however you want, no TV, knitting is very popular again as is making home-made clothes, you can learn 'older' skills like lace-making, anything you fancy (and your children won't freeze to death if you are a bit rubbish at it).

You could get an allotment and spend time gardening and being close to nature, this is shown to reduce stress (I can't think of anything more stressful than getting cold and muddy, but apparently some people like it). It's also a nice thing to do as a family.

And some people do live in communes or communities, although I don't think I know anyone who has stuck it out for a very long time. Thing is that human nature being what it is, people get jealous or angry or have relationships which they shouldn't, even in communities. That doesn't make them bad, it just makes the people in them human.

Any view of life which is idealistic is bound to fail when it comes up against human frailty. But you can make your own life, in these circumstances better and that seems to me a more appropriate way of dealing with that 'oh my god, isn't the world horrible' feeling you get when you have a child.

Also (sorry 3 posts in a row) we live in a free market-driven capitalist society. Change would involve enormous upheaval and some people getting the very shitty end of a very shitty stick (even more than they do now). Looks like we're stuck with it for the time being.

Udderly you can follow your dream. Why not? If it makes you are your family happy, then go for it.

But your dream seems to include the rest of us.
That somehow we should all join in and form your loving community.
The trouble is the vast majority of us don't want to.

We are not unhappy with our lives. We're not stressed. We're not contemplating suicide, or our loneliness etc

Some very good answers here, OP.

I think you are right that we have become too materialistic and lost sense of perspective on so many things.

However, I wouldn't advocate going back to the old days. I am probably older than you and come from a country with a more rural economy and the tales I have heard from my grandparents of what life was like have always made me so grateful for all the things we take for granted.

Going out to work is a good thing. Women being trapped in the home doing nothing but housework and childcare led to a lot of alcoholism and tranquilizer dependency even when their partners were not actually abusive.
And the loss of 'tight-knit' communities is no bad thing, either: those only worked when a) the vast majority of people conformed to the worldview of the powerful ones within that community and b) there was at least one community scapegoat to bond the others together.
All 'golden age' dreams ignore the fact that the nice life some had in those allegedly good old days was dependent on other people having miserable lives and doing all the shitwork.

I've researched my family history...every one of them dirt poor, too many kids and lucky to make it past 5, working in harsh dangerous conditions, slum living 4 families to a house, dead by 50.

No thanks.

My (and my extended family's) life isn't even close to perfect, but absolutely everything about it is 100% better than those that came before me.

I think the OP is choosing to see the good things about rural/subsistence way of life vs. the reality.

Other posters have already mentioned some of the specifics - women dying in childbirth due to a lack of medical care, lack of education, spouse beating, starvation, the absolute indignity of truly having to beg the church or a richer person for handouts/charity even if a hard working husband fell ill, or was involved in an accident. Dying of chest infections that are cleared up within the week with modern medicine. Breaking a leg and being crippled for the rest of your life due to a lack of advanced surgery available.

I mean, if we're able to pick and choose which rosy tinted bits to look at in history, why not say we should go back to the war era when children truly appreciated the simple food that was put on the table? Conveniently ignoring the fact that malnutrition wasn't uncommon. Or let's say the Nazi era in Germany really knew how to sort out the employment problems being faced by the country in the 1930s? Forgetting the horror of that period too.

In fact let's skip forward a few generations and look at my DH, who has a cushy job in a nice warm office, legal protection against being abused by his boss, entitlement to holidays, and access to unimagined wealth and opportunity. Yet take those rose tinted glasses off and we need to remember that he's also in a job where if he wanted to advance his career further he'd have to be more committed, willing to work lots of overtime, move away from his expertise into more management activity, thereby meaning he gets to see even LESS of his family and children because of it.

Any period in time is going to look like heaven when you only look at the lovely sections of it, compared to the reality of how things are. The fact is that we've never had it so good. There are still problems (materialism, I'll give you that, totally agree) but let's not pretend any period of time before ours was perfect, or better. It depends what you look at, which role in society you'd have fulfilled, etc.

This article is quite interesting - shows the differences between the 1911 and 2011 censuses. Shows how far we have come as a society - child mortality has not had to be a major concern of the government for the last 40 years.

Failing as a society? There's no such thing as society. Margaret Thatcher told us as much in 1987. Grumble, grumble....

There is no such thing as society just a random collection of people who couldn't give a crap about each other.

Rose tinted glasses are great and theres no doubt the media has a part to play in our rosy view of the past, promoting only the positive in an attempt to show that we have somehow become corrupted when in truth nothing has changed, years ago woman had less rights, domestic violence was pretty much an accepted part of daily life, as was high child mortality rates, the poor dying long before the rich, working till you drop etc.

Whats different now is we expect more, we expect social mobility and the opportunity to better ourselves and have a better life instead of putting up with our lot and knowing our place.

This leads ultimately to disappointment no matter what your background as you have now been led to believe you should be doing better and have failed no matter what you have done because you can all ways do better, just being happy you are scrapping by and being alright was all anyone aspired to in the past as social mobility was an accepted none starter.

Nothing is ever black and white, no pros without cons.

I don't know if this is apocryphal, but I read a story about some 200-year-old graffiti in Pompeii which basically says, 'the kids of today have no respect. It was better when I was young'.

I love that and always want to quote it at the kind of frothing right-winger who believes that society is corrupt and modern kids are awful!

sorry that's 2000 year old graffiti...

OP, read Tom Hodgkinson, "How to be Free." I think you'd enjoy it.